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The last Romans are still around

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Re: The last Romans are still around

#191

Post by empath75 »

meta_gunslinger wrote: post #121
trashb wrote: post #111

I 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.

The Roman empire was large and diffuse enough, and enough people had local power that it was becoming increasingly difficult for Romans to hold power by force alone. At some point, you need _just enough_ people who feel like they have a stake in "the system" that they participate in supporting it rather than tearing it down.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#192

Post by pm3003 »

gwerbin wrote: post #75
dhosek wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The scale and distances of migrations throughout Europe in the 4th-5th centuries are hard to comprehend, as well as the rapid transformation of the societies of the groups that migrated. It has the same feel to me as a major geological event, like the breaking apart of Pangea.

Research on this topic has been very active since the late 2000s (before that scholars on the topic had been very few). It seems that the scale of the migrations are much better understood now (100k-300k people over 3 centuries).

But as you say, the rapid transformation of the societies of the groups that migrated at the time is very hard to comprehend, but also the changes of those where they migrated, in cases where it was more of a fusion than an invasion / displacement.

I think it is a very interesting point to offer to those in Europe minimizing the current migration waves (often for noble reasons of reducing racism and countering far right ideologies). It's no use denying that welcoming tens of millions of people from other cultures over a few decades has and will have very deep social and political effects.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#193

Post by frollogaston »

high_5 wrote: post #178
frollogaston wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're always British in film for some reason

Because of the allusion to British Empire?

It's probably because anything set in ancient or medieval times in American film uses British accents. You'll seen it for Rome, Sparta, Macedonia, and even Persia.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#194

Post by Alles »

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 Reich was ruled by a "Kaiser" which its the translation for Emperor from Caesar in Latin, Augustus was Imperator Caesar Augustus.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#195

Post by pm3003 »

4rtem wrote: post #33

I bought a torrone (Italian nougat dessert) in local Auchan (French supermarket chain) today and while briefly researching the dessert history found out that it was popular in Ancient Rome named as cupedia and in some Southern parts of Italy it still called as cupeta. Just imagine to make recipe so good that it not just transferred across generations through 2000 years, but also evolved to come in supermarket in Russ…

Pissaladière (classic dish from southeastern France) is sometimes said to come from old garum-like recipes (the Roman functional equivalent to Asian soy sauces).

Re: The last Romans are still around

#196

Post by bloppe »

carlosjobim wrote: post #181
bloppe wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Your clean-sounding taxonomic framework tends to be much, much messier in practice, but ok. As so often happens, I think this boils down to a vocab disagreement. Normally, you would refer to the ethnolinguistic group as "Latins". "Roman" is much more closely associated with the populus romanus, which was defined by citizenship.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#197

Post by pm3003 »

muvlon wrote: post #52

Besides Romanians, there are several more eastern european romance-language-speaking peoples ("Vlachs") like Aromanians, Megleno-Romanians and Istro-Romanians. I think they might also deserve a mention.

Talking about Vlachs, Welsch is a derogatory noun for Romance language speakers around the French-German border.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#198

Post by thatoneguy »

carlosjobim wrote: post #177
rodric wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I can appreciate this, it was not the historical point of view of the people calling themselves Americans. “What then is the American, this new man? He is either an European, or the descendant of an European, hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman,…

Does it matter much if they called themselves American? The tribes and nations on the continent were certainly more related to each other than to the arrivals from other continents. Just as European tribes and nations were more related to each other than to faraway peoples. And African tribes and nations. The "American" described in your quote there by Crevecoeur is not an American in any ethnic sense. Any modern non…

"American" is a poor demonym because "America" is both North and South America. USian would be a better fit and "Native USian" would naturally include all indigenous and non-indigenous people in the US.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#199

Post by pm3003 »

Alles wrote: post #194
pjio wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Reich was ruled by a "Kaiser" which its the translation for Emperor from Caesar in Latin, Augustus was Imperator Caesar Augustus.

France in German is Frankreich, the Frankish Reich. But no Kaiser here, though we had an imperator at some point.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#200

Post by ericmay »

carlosjobim wrote: post #177
rodric wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I can appreciate this, it was not the historical point of view of the people calling themselves Americans. “What then is the American, this new man? He is either an European, or the descendant of an European, hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman,…

Does it matter much if they called themselves American? The tribes and nations on the continent were certainly more related to each other than to the arrivals from other continents. Just as European tribes and nations were more related to each other than to faraway peoples. And African tribes and nations. The "American" described in your quote there by Crevecoeur is not an American in any ethnic sense. Any modern non…

If you’re following this line of reasoning then even the “native” Americans aren’t actually native because they migrated here too. Further, the concept of “America” referring to what is geographically the United States today isn’t a concept that was held be tribal peoples. It wouldn’t have ever made sense to describe them in this context as the original Americans because they never held such a concept themselves.

Also, tribal peoples, whether that’s in Europe or elsewhere are defeated and destroyed and swallowed up by other tribes and civilizations and over the long arc of history lose the status of being original as they are absorbed into a new entity. You can’t describe or study a Roman people as if they are “native” but not extended that same viewpoint to the modern day United States, for example, because both have absorbed other peoples who were native.

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