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The last Romans are still around

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Re: The last Romans are still around

#181

Post by carlosjobim »

bloppe wrote: post #173
carlosjobim wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? Native American Indians are exactly ethnic Americans. The rest are from other ethnicities. Just as there were (are) ethnic Romans.

Ok, but the vast multitude of Native American tribes absolutely identified as distinct ethnicities from one another. If you were to apply this to the Romans, then "ethnically Roman" would include Greeks, Celts, Berbers, and dozens if not hundreds of other ethnic groups, each of which was represented in all the social strata of the Roman state at various times.

Certainly, as does everybody, all the way down to the core family level. Persons make up families, which make up clans, which make up tribes, which make up nations, which make up races. You are part of subdivisions within subdivisions, by heritage. Different persons give different value to each subdivision - or no value to them at all.

The native Americans would absolutely consider themselves as more similar to each other than to the European and African arrivals. Just by matter of undeniable physical features.

As for the Romans, it is within the mists of history and mythology (Rape of the Sabine Women), but nobody can deny that there was an original people there in Italy, and other peoples who became citizens and/or subjects of Rome weren't ethnically Roman.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#182

Post by pm3003 »

roysting wrote: post #131
derdi wrote: post #122

Earlier 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…

[flagged]

>It’s like how peasants used to say that the King is a divine representative of God, because that was the king and the system’s con job back then, to make the dumb peasants obedient through religion.

Well no one really knows because most of this comes from the writing ruling classes. If we're talking Middle Ages and the Modern Age, France offers an interesting example : absolute monarchy by divine right came very late (17th cent) and was almost never fully accepted. The system relied greatly on religion (which kept one's standing within a social class), weak origin stories (the Franks came and conquered the Gallo-Romans/ my ancestor fought in the crusades, which is why you're a serf), and a very strong system of local rights and privileges (I'm a legitimate ruler because I keep your right to hold poultry markets on Sundays, which the next village doesn't have).

The divine dimension you refer to was a constant effort in France and England (where the king was not a religious ruler) well described in "The Royal Touch" by Marc Bloch.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#184

Post by ecshafer »

trinix912 wrote: post #86
fhars wrote: post #84

Depending on who's legal fiction you believe, the Roman Empire was only dissolved in 1806 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichsdeputationshauptschluss

That’s the German Holy Roman Empire, not the classical Roman Empire.

In the Legal Fiction they are the descendants of Charlemagne, who was crowned Emperor, and thus were the direct descendants of the Roman Empire.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#186

Post by trashb »

throwthrowuknow wrote: post #140
trashb wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethnicity is hard to define and a term that spurs a lot of debate. Therefore I think it is best avoided in serious discussion. For America (and in extension the american continent) it is quite clear who is ethnically native, actually it is probably one of the clearest examples there is partly because it is near in history. And already it gets messy when you dig deeper because of limited record keeping etc. Broadly in…

Comparing Britain and the Americas is a category error. Even comparing England to the USA would be incorrect.

I didn't compare the Americas and Britain.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#187

Post by pm3003 »

Quarrel wrote: post #76
dhosek wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still find it somewhat fascinating that the Slavs arrived in Europe during recorded history.

The earliest Roman records of Slavs are of the Veneti, who lived in roughly western Ukraine, Belarus, south-east Poland. Very much in Europe. Then, like now, they were the people east of the German speakers.

There are Germans from Slavic / protoslavic descent in North-Eastern Germany aside from the small Slavuc speaking minorities. Some location names and family names (Wend, Wenden, etc) are very telling in this regard. I like this direct link to ancient history.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#188

Post by NooneAtAll3 »

benj111 wrote: post #132
frollogaston wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans are whatever, British ethnicity is a thing though

Ok. So is a french person more British than a 5th generation black person? Surely 'ethnic americans' are Native North Americans? This is the thing. Ethnicity gets wrapped up in a value judgement. We don't want to talk about ethnic Americans, but are willing to talk about ethnic Britons. Which then implies some rights those ethnic groups should have. But I would dare say the majority of 'ethnic Britons' wouldn't ident…

> So is a french person more British than a 5th generation black person?

...yes?

Re: The last Romans are still around

#189

Post by empath75 »

pjio wrote: post #107
Alles wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither Holy nor Roman nor an empire

Voltaire gets quoted so often without ever mentioning that the German word "Reich" has a different meaning than the loose translation "empire". A "Reich" is not necessarily an empire, so no news here.

The Holy Roman Empire considered itself a successor to the Roman Empire, so in this case, it is an exact translation.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#190

Post by tremon »

Quarrel wrote: post #76
dhosek wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still find it somewhat fascinating that the Slavs arrived in Europe during recorded history.

The earliest Roman records of Slavs are of the Veneti, who lived in roughly western Ukraine, Belarus, south-east Poland. Very much in Europe. Then, like now, they were the people east of the German speakers.

It's an open question whether the Veneti themselves were ethnically Slavic though. We know of the earlier Gallic Veneti, which were a Celtic seafaring tribe that settled multiple locations along the European coastline. The Italian region Veneto and the city Venice can also trace their names to an ancient group called "Veneti", and they seem to have spoken a mix of Italic and Celtic. In contrast, the Slavic language seems to have originated much further east.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetic_language :

A 2012 study has suggested that Venetic was a relatively conservative language significantly similar to Celtic, on the basis of morphology, while it occupied an intermediate position between Celtic and Italic, on the basis of phonology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Proto-Slavic#Pre-Sl... :

The most archaic Slavic hydronyms are found here, along the middle Dnieper, Pripet and upper Dniester rivers [..] inherited Common Slavic vocabulary [includes] well-developed terminology for inland bodies of water (lakes, river, swamps) and kinds of forest (deciduous and coniferous), for the trees, plants, animals and birds indigenous to the temperate forest zone, and for the fish native to its waters

The fact that the Slavic language seems to have developed inland but the Veneti mostly settled coastal areas puts a big question mark under the Veneti == Slavs link.

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