The citizens of Byzantium identified as being Romans. Interesting, many Greek Christians still did at the time that the modern Greek state was created. When told they are "Hellenes" they responded that they have always been "Romioi".
The last Romans are still around
141–150 of 245 posts
Re: The last Romans are still around
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
None of these statements are meaningful without a definition on your part of what it means to be "Ancient Roman" in a genetic sense. Do you mean, say, a handful of villagers living in the area of today's Rome on 21 April 753 BCE? I'll grant you that those were possibly a homogeneous bunch. Anything later? Definitely not. Trying to pretend that there is something like a clear genetic definition of "Roman" is... what d…
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You're right! To the Romans, every Roman citizen was a Roman. There was no "genetically Roman" category. The OP's "genetic" category is indeed a "made up concept", as you say! And the reason they made it up is the reason I stated above.
Re: The last Romans are still around
#143This is strictly about linguistic similarity and not genetic similarity. On a genetic map, a PCA plot, Romans and Romanians simply don't overlap. Romanians cluster with their Balkan neighbors, (1) on account of massive Slavic migration from around the 7th century AD, and (2) on account of strong historical and genetic evidence to suggest that the Roman colonists sent to Dacia were largely recruited from neighboring B…
Rome was famously multi-ethnic. This is sort of like asking who are the "ethnic Americans". It's just the wrong question to ask.
Re: The last Romans are still around
#144This is strictly about linguistic similarity and not genetic similarity. On a genetic map, a PCA plot, Romans and Romanians simply don't overlap. Romanians cluster with their Balkan neighbors, (1) on account of massive Slavic migration from around the 7th century AD, and (2) on account of strong historical and genetic evidence to suggest that the Roman colonists sent to Dacia were largely recruited from neighboring B…
> Genetically, the nearest populations to Ancient Romans are Cypriots I’ve often wondered what the ethnicity of ancient Romans actually was. Looking at pictures of Greek Cypriots on google was enlightening. The “Roman nose” is quite prominent for many people!
Their ethnicity would of course be Roman, and sub-tribes of Romans. Or am I missing something? We can't apply modern ethnicities as the template to fit ancient ethnicities. It can only be the other way around.
Re: The last Romans are still around
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not only July and August; January, May, June, and Mars, are named after Roman gods; February and April after Roman rituals; and September to December after Roman numerals (7 to 10th month, as they were when the calendar first started).
Also the weekdays in many Latin derived languages.
Also the vast majority of the rest of the vocabulary in those languages
Re: The last Romans are still around
#146For a much more convincing chronicle of people identifying as Roman well into the modern era, see https://open.spotify.com/episode/66SexoFR9AvdKaDzWaqR8w
Re: The last Romans are still around
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
None of these statements are meaningful without a definition on your part of what it means to be "Ancient Roman" in a genetic sense. Do you mean, say, a handful of villagers living in the area of today's Rome on 21 April 753 BCE? I'll grant you that those were possibly a homogeneous bunch. Anything later? Definitely not. Trying to pretend that there is something like a clear genetic definition of "Roman" is... what d…
Well we've got to define something ... I'd opt for something like Latium natives of 750-300 BCE, adding Etruscans. My point is to exclude Magna Graecia, because it would make it harder to make an ethnocultural statement or conclusion.
Consider this: We do not, in fact, have to define something. We don't have to define an artificial genetic category just so we can then categorize people into artificial genetic buckets.
Re: The last Romans are still around
#148I think even in the Roman times anyone could be "Roman". The way I understand it being Roman was not a measure of your ethnicity but a measure of your devotion to the empire. Rome was an extremely militaristic society so they needed soldiers and what I understand is that your status in the military largely dictated your status in society. They requited soldiers from all of their empire thus all backgrounds within (la…
That's not true. Roman citizenship was sacrosant, there was even a war during the late Roman Republic time between the Romans and allied Italians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_War_(91%E2%80%9387_BC) fought over it. During the Roman Empire, Caracalla extended citizenship to everyone mainly to spite the Senate.
Can you provide another source for that?
There are two threads in the ancient accounts: one depicting the struggle as one for Roman citizenship and another as one against Roman domination.
The following two articles barely mention religious status.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_citizenship
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_class_in_ancient_Rome
I think there is no denying that religion was important in Rome. However what I can gather the Military was more important for citizenship and status.
Military service was one of the main ways to upgrade your social status.
For non-citizens, the reward of Roman citizenship after 25 years' military service offered social transformation, not only for themselves, but their families too.
Re: The last Romans are still around
#149This is strictly about linguistic similarity and not genetic similarity. On a genetic map, a PCA plot, Romans and Romanians simply don't overlap. Romanians cluster with their Balkan neighbors, (1) on account of massive Slavic migration from around the 7th century AD, and (2) on account of strong historical and genetic evidence to suggest that the Roman colonists sent to Dacia were largely recruited from neighboring B…
None of these statements are meaningful without a definition on your part of what it means to be "Ancient Roman" in a genetic sense. Do you mean, say, a handful of villagers living in the area of today's Rome on 21 April 753 BCE? I'll grant you that those were possibly a homogeneous bunch. Anything later? Definitely not. Trying to pretend that there is something like a clear genetic definition of "Roman" is... what d…
This is a silly argument. Biology is inherently messy and “ethnicity” is just a fuzzy clustering. You can make the exact same argument about “species” - because that too is a human abstraction that breaks down in biological reality because there are no clear lines.
Re: The last Romans are still around
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fun fact: The -gh endings of many English words share a proto–Indo European root with that enclitic¹ -que in Senatus Populusque Romani. I remember being skeptical of this when I first heard it assuming that the person was arguing for a shared Latin heritage until I dug in and discovered that it actually went back to PIE.² ⸻ 1. For the non-linguists here, an enclitic is a suffix added to a word that either functions a…
It seems this -que was already a relic at that time, or maybe sort of literary, because it coexisted with et (as in etc , et cetera , &c ), which still exists e.g. in French. Or maybe one is from antic Latin and the other is from "vulgar"/late Latin ?
There were a number of different ways to write and in Latin. The Vulgate Bible, apparently unhappy with all the vav-connectives in its Hebrew sources uses them all.