The Italian Genome-Fiorito et al 2015

The last phoenician survivors of Carthage after the third punic war were sold as slaves throughout the Mediterranean not deported in Latium. It's a fact in the roman chronicles.
 
The last phoenician survivors of Carthage after the third punic war were sold as slaves throughout the Mediterranean not deported in Latium. It's a fact in the roman chronicles.
He is a lost case: he claims that slaves in Rome were all Levantines, because there are brief mentions of "Hellenized" slaves in 3 or 4 satyrial or other gossip works, but totally forget that Caesar alone captured nearly a million of Celto Germanic slaves and moved them to Italy. Selective quoting as usualy. Not to mention the countless of Germanic, Briton and other Northern Euros who were captured in centuries of constant warfare.Anyway we are still waiting the long list of middle eastern inscriptions in Italy.
 
He is a lost case: he claims that slaves in Rome were all Levantines, because there are brief mentions of "Hellenized" slaves in 3 or 4 satyrial or other gossip works, but totally forget that Caesar alone captured nearly a million of Celto Germanic slaves and moved them to Italy. Selective quoting as usualy. Not to mention the countless of Germanic, Briton and other Northern Euros who were captured in centuries of constant warfare.Anyway we are still waiting the long list of middle eastern inscriptions in Italy.

Talking about real lost causes: We are all still waiting for proof of your gratuitous assertion that practically no Near Easterners knew Greek or have Greek names. Getting debunked in public must be very frustrating, but you should get better informed before making claims.

The work of satirists are not "gossip" and actually a good source, they criticized the society in which they lived. The fact that they hardly ever mention slaves from north of the Alps is very telling. Had they been very common during those times, we see no reason why they shouldn't have been mentioned more often. These guys loved to make comments, often sarcastic or disparaging, about slaves and foreigners.

The claim that Caesar took 1 million slaves from Gaul was made by Plutarch, who was not Roman but Greek and also lived more than a century after the facts. Needless to say, the figure is obviously exaggerated even for Roman standards. One might give credit to several thousands of captured and enslaved people in those times at any given campaign, like the figures cited in one of the above posts, but a million is absurd. Velleius Paterculus, a Roman who lived closer to Caesar's times, gives a figure closer to 400,000 Gauls being captured. A bit more believable, but still probably somewhat exaggerated. On the other hand, Cato the Younger, a contemporary of Caesar, only seems to mention that 300,000 Germans were killed. Canfora gives such figures and specifically says that the ones given by Plutarch are devoid of criticism:

https://books.google.com/books?id=Z...shes these figures without criticism"&f=false
 
Talking about real lost causes:

Talking about real lost causes you personally have contributed much to derail this thread about a population genetic study and turn it into the usual and unnecessary anthro-wars.

I firmly believe that Eupedia should remain different.
 
Talking about real lost causes you personally have contributed much to derail this thread about a population genetic study and turn it into the usual and unnecessary anthro-wars.

I firmly believe that Eupedia should remain different.

You must admit this was a study purely for western Italy and the western med area..............its goal, I am unsure...........but ancient etruscan and ligurian association with the south of Italy and Sardinia seems to be its core
 
Talking about real lost causes you, Drac II, have contributed much to derail this thread and turn it into the usual and unnecessary anthro-wars.

I firmly believe that Eupedia should remain different.

Nobody "derailed" anything since the subject matter being discussed appertains to the paper that is the subject of this thread, and the person who started the arguments (and the rude responses; see post #144) was actually Angela, first when she attempted to make it look as if the genetics of the study was "bad" just because it suggested admixture dates she does not like (see first pages), and then when she started to bring up Iberians and Africans while she was exchanging posts with the supposed Roman history professor (see post #141.) Typical Angela tactics. If the topic of Italian genetics is getting dangerously close to making inferences she does not like, bring up those pesky Iberians and Africans.

Indeed, it should be different, but as long as some people want to push blatant double standards and agendas, unfortunately not exactly friendly exchanges like this will continue to happen.
 
You must admit this was a study purely for western Italy and the western med area..............its goal, I am unsure...........but ancient etruscan and ligurian association with the south of Italy and Sardinia seems to be its core

Sile, I agree with you. The lack of samples from eastern Italy (Veneto, Friuli-Venezia-Giulia, Trentino-Alto Adige, Marche, Abruzzi, Apulia) in this study makes it unfinished, absolutely Ferrara isn't enough to cover all east Italy.
 
Talking about real lost causes: We are all still waiting for proof of your gratuitous assertion that practically no Near Easterners knew Greek or have Greek names. Getting debunked in public must be very frustrating, but you should get better informed before making claims. The work of satirists are not "gossip" and actually a good source, they criticized the society in which they lived. The fact that they hardly ever mention slaves from north of the Alps is very telling. Had they been very common during those times, we see no reason why they shouldn't have been mentioned more often. These guys loved to make comments, often sarcastic or disparaging, about slaves and foreigners.The claim that Caesar took 1 million slaves from Gaul was made by Plutarch, who was not Roman but Greek and also lived more than a century after the facts. Needless to say, the figure is obviously exaggerated even for Roman standards. One might give credit to several thousands of captured and enslaved people in those times at any given campaign, like the figures cited in one of the above posts, but a million is absurd. Velleius Paterculus, a Roman who lived closer to Caesar's times, gives a figure closer to 400,000 Gauls being captured. A bit more believable, but still probably somewhat exaggerated. On the other hand, Cato the Younger, a contemporary of Caesar, only seems to mention that 300,000 Germans were killed. Canfora gives such figures and specifically says that the ones given by Plutarch are devoid of criticism:https://books.google.com/books?id=Z...shes these figures without criticism"&f=false
Still way less ridicolous than people like you who claim that these millions of Near Easterners haven't left a single inscription in their own languages, but left plenty of them written in Greek, and that everyone with such name like Luke or Thomas was an Hellenized Arab, because Juvenal in his satires says so in few brief passages, and not some native who had adopted Christiany or some other Eastern Cult. After all millions of North Europeans with Hellenized Levantine names are officially Christians.
 
We're going back and forth quite a bit. It's not that productive.

First, it is a mistake to take the statistics, or, for that matter, many statements of ancient historians as gospel. A well-known example is the Persian force at the Battle of Thermopylae. It wasn't a million. It was large, but nowhere near one million. There is a lot of legend in ancient sources.

The entire population of Gaul at the time of Caesar was ~1 million. The notion that he took 400,000 slaves must be greeted with some skepticism.

I want people to understand that ancient mass movements of people were not possible like they are in the Jet Age, or even as frequent as they were during the Germanic upheavals at the dawn of the "Dark Ages." A rather standard ancient warship, the quadrireme, carried about 75 people, 100 if packed.

(This is why I laugh at notions of the Anatolian--->Etruscan mass migration proffered by Herodotus, as more legend than fact. A "starving" inland nation of, say, 200,000 travels to coastal Anatolia, in the hostile territory of their neighbors, and cuts down enough trees, and builds 2000 ships?)

Always keep in mind the logistics. If they sound hard to believe, they are.

Caesar took 400,000 Gaulish slaves? How were they transported to Rome? Where are the mass graves from the tens of thousands who must have died en route?

Surely some went to places other than Italy. Why is there no Gallic genetic signature in North Africa? It had been solidly Roman by the time of Caesar, for about ~200 years (the age of our country).

Think it through. Healthy skepticism with logic are both your friends.
 
No, the Roman Republic controlled only Coastal Northern Tunisia, not the whole North Africa, by the time of Caesar, and that only after the third punic war (146 BC), so for less than one century. In fact North Africa was repopulated by Arabs and Black slaves in the last 1000 years, so the original Romanized Berber population is now completely mixed.

Those estimates are not totally correct and but are the only solid evidences we have.
 
We're going back and forth quite a bit. It's not that productive.

First, it is a mistake to take the statistics, or, for that matter, many statements of ancient historians as gospel. A well-known example is the Persian force at the Battle of Thermopylae. It wasn't a million. It was large, but nowhere near one million. There is a lot of legend in ancient sources.

The entire population of Gaul at the time of Caesar was ~1 million. The notion that he took 400,000 slaves must be greeted with some skepticism.

I want people to understand that ancient mass movements of people were not possible like they are in the Jet Age, or even as frequent as they were during the Germanic upheavals at the dawn of the "Dark Ages." A rather standard ancient warship, the quadrireme, carried about 75 people, 100 if packed.

(This is why I laugh at notions of the Anatolian--->Etruscan mass migration proffered by Herodotus, as more legend than fact. A "starving" inland nation of, say, 200,000 travels to coastal Anatolia, in the hostile territory of their neighbors, and cuts down enough trees, and builds 2000 ships?)

Always keep in mind the logistics. If they sound hard to believe, they are.

Caesar took 400,000 Gaulish slaves? How were they transported to Rome? Where are the mass graves from the tens of thousands who must have died en route?

Surely some went to places other than Italy. Why is there no Gallic genetic signature in North Africa? It had been solidly Roman by the time of Caesar, for about ~200 years (the age of our country).

Think it through. Healthy skepticism with logic are both your friends.

Though Velleius Paterculus' 400,000 figure still seems exaggerated, it still is way more believable than Plutarch's absurd 1 million captives claim.

The Anatolian origin of Etruscans, or at least of some of them, is not any impossibility at all, but not in the migration proportions used in your example.

The reason why we should not expect North Africa to show much "Gallic" or any other such signatures is simply because there weren't that many people from those areas brought there. The Romans themselves were a minority in the conquered territories, and North Africa was one more of their labor supplies, not the other way around. Whenever possible, empires have relied on local labor. Simple logistics and economics. It is cheaper and more expedient to rely on the conquered local population for a labor force than have to import it from other places far away.
 
LoL between 400.000 to one Million of captured Gauls by Caesar alone and settled in Italy, plus only God knows how many Germans, Aquitanians, Belgians, Britons,... etc plus 150.000 Cimbri and Teutoni seized by Marius, 25.000 Salassi, 32.000 Gauls between 225 and 222, 500.000 Dacians seized by Thraian,... should I continue?

https://books.google.it/books?id=A9...=viewport&dq=Velleius+Paterculus+slaves&hl=it

That source also gives similar reported figures for slaves from Africa and the Near East. And Plutarch's 1 million claim is hardly believable. It has no equivalent anywhere in the other reported figures.
 
Still way less ridicolous than people like you who claim that these millions of Near Easterners haven't left a single inscription in their own languages, but left plenty of them written in Greek, and that everyone with such name like Luke or Thomas was an Hellenized Arab, because Juvenal in his satires says so in few brief passages, and not some native who had adopted Christiany or some other Eastern Cult. After all millions of North Europeans with Hellenized Levantine names are officially Christians.

You already know why the majority of the Near Easterners that the Romans were in contact with at the time would have been Hellenized. Hellenization of the areas in question had been going on for centuries. Greek had even spread to some parts of Arabia, let alone the Near East. You also have seen how common the Greek language was associated by the Romans with people like Syrians.

It still does not answer the question of why Roman writers from around the last century BC and the coming centuries AD usually mention more slaves and foreigners from Greece, the Near East and Africa than they do from north of the Alps. Also doesn't answer the question of why the Roman paranoia with foreigners and their supposed "corrupting" influence on Roman society was concerned mostly with Greeks and Near Easterners. You would think that if people like Gauls and Germans were so common in Rome that they too would have been the target of Roman xenophobia. Yet they are not nearly as targeted. And it is not because the Romans somehow liked Gauls and Germans. Their writings usually speak of these peoples with contempt as barbarians.

Again, you are comparing modern naming practices of today, after Christianity has spread all over the world for centuries, with those of around 2000 years ago, when Christianity was not even around yet. Apples & oranges.
 
That source also gives similar reported figures for slaves from Africa and the Near East. And Plutarch's 1 million claim is hardly believable. It has no equivalent anywhere in the other reported figures.
Ok 100.000 Jews, who were endogamic and did not mix with anyone, and 250.000 from the Punic wars, who included Celts, Iberians, Italics, Greeks etc... indeed the native Phoenician element among Carthaginians was a very tiny minority.
 
You already know why the majority of the Near Easterners that the Romans were in contact with at the time would have been Hellenized. Hellenization of the areas in question had been going on for centuries. Greek had even spread to some parts of Arabia, let alone the Near East. You also have seen how common the Greek language was associated by the Romans with people like Syrians.It still does not answer the question of why Roman writers from around the last century BC and the coming centuries AD usually mention more slaves and foreigners from Greece, the Near East and Africa than they do from north of the Alps. Also doesn't answer the question of why the Roman paranoia with foreigners and their supposed "corrupting" influence on Roman society was concerned mostly with Greeks and Near Easterners. You would think that if people like Gauls and Germans were so common in Rome that they too would have been the target of Roman xenophobia. Yet they are not nearly as targeted. And it is not because the Romans somehow liked Gauls and Germans. Their writings usually speak of these peoples with contempt as barbarians.Again, you are comparing modern naming practices of today, after Christianity has spread all over the world for centuries, with those of around 2000 years ago, when Christianity was not even around yet. Apples & oranges.
I've posted hard evidence from historians that hundreds of thousands if not millions of native European slaves were settled in Italy, while you are just selective quoting satires and anecdotes. Plus your own source states that Levantines were bilingual in Greek and in their own native languages, yet you want me to believe that they managed to leave no inscripions in any middle eastern language anywhere in Italy, but only Greek ones?
 
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Carthage is known to use mercenaries. The phoenician element among their army was low.
 
Ok 100.000 Jews, who were endogamic and did not mix with anyone, and 250.000 from the Punic wars, who included Celts, Iberians, Italics, Greeks etc... indeed the native Phoenician element among Carthaginians was a very tiny minority.

Also "a massive intake of slaves" from the Mithridatic wars. Also 100,000 Parthians. Then there's also the contributions of other means of obtaining slaves other than war captives, like commerce with the Eastern Mediterranean slave traders and "pirates". The Eastern parts of the empire were rife with them and had some of the most important slave markets, like those of Ephesus, Tyre, Chios, Thasos and Delos.

Jewish slaves would not have the freedom to decide with whom not to mix until they regained their freedom.

Almost all the figures given in the book are for the centuries BC, when the empire was expanding. Slavery continued all the way until the end of the empire. Once the empire stopped expanding (around Hadrian's times) Roman conquests no longer played an important role in the slave supply.
 
I've posted hard evidence from historians that hundreds of thousands if not millions of native European slaves were settled in Italy, while you are just selective quoting satires and anecdotes. Plus your own source states that Levantines were bilingual in Greek and in their own native languages, yet you want me to believe that they managed to leave no inscripions in any middle eastern language anywhere in Italy, but only Greek ones?

The same sources say that hundreds of thousands if not millions of native Near Easterners and North Africans were also brought to Italy. But those figures are mostly for the BC centuries, during Rome's expansion.

Roman writers from the times of Nero, the Antonines, the Severans, etc., more often make references to slaves and foreigners from Africa, Greece and the Near East than from north of the Alps.

The source I cited clearly says that in entire areas of places like Syria Greek actually predominated. Notice that a totally Hellenized Syrian like Lucian did not write anything in any language other than Greek.
 
You are a liar. 100.000 captured endogamic Jews and 100.000 Persians from Ctesiphon don't add up to millions as you claim. Nothing compared to the nearly 2 millions of seized Dacians, Epirotes, Iberians. North Italians, Germans and Gauls in just five military campaigns. Your lame attempt to prove that millions of supposed Levantines only speak and wrote in Greek in Italy is making me laugh. Even your own source states that they were bilingual. Do you realize that you are going against your own source?
 

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