No Spoilers Perhaps odd historical question about Italians

wwkirk

wwkirk

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Maybe this isn't the best place to do historical research, but I'll give it a try anyway. A lot of you guys are smart, right? And some of you are probably actually from Italy; so maybe a good place after all!

I listen to a lot of audiobooks on a range of topics. (I pretty much compel Audible to let me "return" audiobooks periodically due to being such a good customer.) Well one of the topics I like hearing about is Ancient Rome. I like to come at them from various angles: conquests, interactions with barbarians, interactions with religious groups, Romanization of the provinces, etc. And oh, did I mention CONQUESTS?

Another topic I'm interested in is World War II, including the interwar period. And, as everybody knows, Italy played a significant role in that war. Not a terribly distinguished role, mind you, but a significant one nonetheless. [History buffs might be guessing where I'm headed.]

Now, it may be my imagination, but I do believe the Roman Republic-Empire originated in Italy. And indeed, Rome is still there to this day! Well, by the application of GeographyMath™ we can deduce that

Romans = Italians

Okay, now finally I present my question:

Why the hell are Italians so unlike their old selves, the Romans?

The Romans were practically the definition of disciplined power with the destiny to conquer. But present day Italians don't appear to have that quality. Obviously their World War II endeavor for empire was a fiasco. So, why are they so different?

Are they truly ethnically identical as I have imagined? Or could it be something as bland as that they burnt themselves out during their Roman run?

What say, Shermanos?
 
wwkirk said:
Maybe this isn't the best place to do historical research, but I'll give it a try anyway. A lot of you guys are smart, right? And some of you are probably actually from Italy; so maybe a good place after all!

I listen to a lot of audiobooks on a range of topics. (I pretty much compel Audible to let me "return" audiobooks periodically due to being such a good customer.) Well one of the topics I like hearing about is Ancient Rome. I like to come at them from various angles: conquests, interactions with barbarians, interactions with religious groups, Romanization of the provinces, etc. And oh, did I mention CONQUESTS?

Another topic I'm interested in is World War II, including the interwar period. And, as everybody knows, Italy played a significant role in that war. Not a terribly distinguished role, mind you, but a significant one nonetheless. [History buffs might be guessing where I'm headed.]

Now, it may be my imagination, but I do believe the Roman Republic-Empire originated in Italy. And indeed, Rome is still there to this day! Well, by the application of GeographyMath™ we can deduce that

Romans = Italians

Okay, now finally I present my question:

Why the hell are Italians so unlike their old selves, the Romans?

The Romans were practically the definition of disciplined power with the destiny to conquer. But present day Italians don't appear to have that quality. Obviously their World War II endeavor for empire was a fiasco. So, why are they so different?

Are they truly ethnically identical as I have imagined? Or could it be something as bland as that they burnt themselves out during their Roman run?

What say, Shermanos?
Click to expand...
Interesting. Another related item of interest is that if Romans do equal Italians, when did the language morph from Latin to Italian? I don't speak Italian but I did take two years of Latin in high school but am not sure how similar the two languages are.
 
wwkirk said:
Why the hell are Italians so unlike their old selves, the Romans?

The Romans were practically the definition of disciplined power with the destiny to conquer. But present day Italians don't appear to have that quality. Obviously their World War II endeavor for empire was a fiasco. So, why are they so different?

Are they truly ethnically identical as I have imagined? Or could it be something as bland as that they burnt themselves out during their Roman run?

What say, Shermanos?
Click to expand...
The Italians' national confidence was shook when Americans put pineapple on pizzas

Pineapple-pizza-meme.jpeg
 
Think of it this way: God's punishment for the romans was turning them into italians.

Not unlike what happened to the goths.

AFanNotAFighter said:
Interesting. Another related item of interest is that if Romans do equal Italians, when did the language morph from Latin to Italian? I don't speak Italian but I did take two years of Latin in high school but am not sure how similar the two languages are.
Click to expand...
Latin is closer to Romanian than to Italian i believe.
 
No, they are not ethnically identical. Many groups, mostly germanic, have occupied Italy at various points since the Roman Empire.

To your second question, Romans didn't focus on conquest for nearly 3 centuries after the reign of Trajan. In fact, Hadrian abandoned territories that Trajan had conquered to consolidate the empire and focus on defense. Like for one instance, Trajan conquered Arabia but Hadrian let it go. Speaking of that I wonder what would have happened if Arabia had been part of the Eastern Roman Empire during the time of Mohammed. Would the Arab Spring have even happened?
 
AFanNotAFighter said:
Interesting. Another related item of interest is that if Romans do equal Italians, when did the language morph from Latin to Italian? I don't speak Italian but I did take two years of Latin in high school but am not sure how similar the two languages are.
Click to expand...
The Romance languages started splitting off upon the collapse of the Empire. Linguists have determined that the modern Romance languages "consist mainly of evolved forms of Vulgar Latin."

In my limited exposure to linguistics I've been somewhat awed. Their analytic systems are almost like a mathematics of language.
 
Interesting question. I think alot of that happened to them was lnternal splits. East and West Anatolia vs Rome centered. As the empire collapsed and invasions from different groups left every thing splintered into small city states. People from Sicily have their ideas while people f rom Milan have theirs. The modern Italian of the past 50 years I think cared more about local problems.
 
Christianity conquered Rome, and Italy didn't really exist in the modern nation sense until the Borgia pope united the major cities of what is now Italy in the 1500s.
 
Domitian said:
No, they are not ethnically identical. Many groups, mostly germanic, have occupied Italy at various points since the Roman Empire.

To your second question, Romans didn't focus on conquest for nearly 3 centuries after the reign of Trajan. In fact, Hadrian abandoned territories that Trajan had conquered to consolidate the empire and focus on defense. Like for one instance, Trajan conquered Arabia but Hadrian let it go. Speaking of that I wonder what would have happened if Arabia had been part of the Eastern Roman Empire during the time of Mohammed. Would the Arab Spring have even happened?
Click to expand...
Username checks out.
 
Italian legions were made of people from concored lands and italy main land.
 
The Romans' legacy exists through Italic-speaking countries. In order of peak GDP, the most powerful have been:
  1. France
  2. Brazil
  3. Italy
  4. Spain
  5. Mexico
  6. Argentina
 
They did of course attempt to carve out an empire, voted in an extreme nationalist to do so and currently seem to be voting pretty right wing again.

You could argue perhaps though that Italian nationalism is less strongly ingrained than other large western European nations? for most of the period between the fall of the western empire and the rise of the italian state it was divided between various small states or ruled by foreign powers. The same was true of the Germans as well I spose but the Prussian Empire existed long prior to the German state and the idea of pan Germanism was much stronger than pan Italianism?
 
moreorless87 said:
They did of course attempt to carve out an empire, voted in an extreme nationalist to do so and currently seem to be voting pretty right wing again.

You could argue perhaps though that Italian nationalism is less strongly ingrained than other large western European nations? for most of the period between the fall of the western empire and the rise of the italian state it was divided between various small states or ruled by foreign powers. The same was true of the Germans as well I spose but the Prussian Empire existed long prior to the German state and the idea of pan Germanism was much stronger than pan Italianism?
Click to expand...
Good question. To make matters worse, for quite a while the Roman Catholic Church explicitly opposed Italian unification.
 
Man, some of the replies in here.

Romans from Italia were still called Italian back then, just it was a secondary identity to being a citizen of an empire/republic with a name thats a relic from the city state era. Fun fact, when the Turks conquered the last vestiges of the empire, the last emperor transfered his imperial titles to the King of Spain. So modern Spanish citizens are kinda sorta Roman citizens.

Italians are still badass just they had a huge tech advantage back then and now they are on a level playing field with the rest of Europe.
 
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