The Italian Genome-Fiorito et al 2015

[moore2moore]

A little knowledge is dangerous. You are a sapient creature who can read, and you've read an ancient source or two.

You don't know, for example, what every serious historian does: that the numbers in ancient sources are exaggerated.

I hope you don't think Methuselah lived for 1000 years, as ancient Hebrew historians tell us.

I hope you don't seriously think that an ancient people, the Persians, fielded an army of 2.5 million, because an ancient Greek historian told you that. (ALL credible modern estimates are that the Persian force was about 1/10 that size.)

If you knew a little more, you would know that Valleius Paterculus was a bit of a sycophant, exaggerating the victories of his patrons, for his patrons.

So, after a little further education, I hope you don't think that the "100,000 captives" is a precise count. News flash: it's NOT.

Let's assume it was 10,000, which is consistent with the exaggeration level often found in ancient sources.

Using comparable figures from historic slave trading, 25% would have died en route to their destination. That leaves 7500.

You have heard of the wealthy Roman-era cities like Antioch, Athens, Sirmium, etc. outside of Italy right?

You do recognize that most agricultural demand was in places like Sardinia and Egypt, right?

You do understand that the salt and metal mines were not in Italy, right?

OK, but you stubbornly cling to this notion that all the slaves went to Italy.

We'll give you 20%. That's 1,875.

Now, let's assume that half of them weren't allowed to have kids, or were castrated, or were too poor to ever think of having a family, or weren't allowed to marry.

That leaves about 900 people from this "massive slave trade" in Italy who got to procreate. I think Italy could have absorbed that.

If one of these freedmen made it big, it was big news. Very splashy. Very newsworthy. And the Romans would complain loudly, so it made its way into Juvenal.

But these were not the huge demographic events you argue for. Not even close. This is why the clines in Italy: north, south, east, west still cling to their prehistoric configurations.

 

[Drac II]

A little knowledge is dangerous. You are a sapient creature who can read, and you've read an ancient source or two.

You don't know, for example, what every serious historian does: that the numbers in ancient sources are exaggerated.

I hope you don't think Methuselah lived for 1000 years, as ancient Hebrew historians tell us.

I hope you don't seriously think that an ancient people, the Persians, fielded an army of 2.5 million, because an ancient Greek historian told you that. (ALL credible modern estimates are that the Persian force was about 1/10 that size.)

If you knew a little more, you would know that Valleius Paterculus was a bit of a sycophant, exaggerating the victories of his patrons, for his patrons.

So, after a little further education, I hope you don't think that the "100,000 captives" is a precise count. News flash: it's NOT.

Let's assume it was 10,000, which is consistent with the exaggeration level often found in ancient sources.

Using comparable figures from historic slave trading, 25% would have died en route to their destination. That leaves 7500.

You have heard of the wealthy Roman-era cities like Antioch, Athens, Sirmium, etc. outside of Italy right?

You do recognize that most agricultural demand was in places like Sardinia and Egypt, right?

You do understand that the salt and metal mines were not in Italy, right?

OK, but you stubbornly cling to this notion that all the slaves went to Italy.

We'll give you 20%. That's 1,875.

Now, let's assume that half of them weren't allowed to have kids, or were castrated, or were too poor to ever think of having a family, or weren't allowed to marry.

That leaves about 900 people from this "massive slave trade" in Italy who got to procreate. I think Italy could have absorbed that.

If one of these freedmen made it big, it was big news. Very splashy. Very newsworthy. And the Romans would complain loudly, so it made its way into Juvenal.

But these were not the huge demographic events you argue for. Not even close. This is why the clines in Italy: north, south, east, west still cling to their prehistoric configurations.

You do understand that you are not telling me anything "new" here since I said it long before you that these quoted figures have to be taken with a grain of salt. They are likely exaggerated, but some are more believable than others. Compared to Plutarch's one million outlandish figure, Patercullus' figure sounds tame. So you should be directing your comments at people like "Joey", who want to take all such figures at face value. To me they are just usually exaggerated approximations.

Since you are such a "sapient creature", who apparently hasn't even bothered to read his own recommendations, it should have occurred to you that the Romans had no problem using local labor wherever possible, including where those farms and mines were located. Also, the concentration of wealth was in Italy, therefore it would more naturally attract foreign influx, both in the form of slaves and free foreigners.

Juvenal was not complaining just about one or two foreigners "making it big" in Rome, he was ranting about the large numbers of Greeks and Hellenized Near Easterners at Rome. Then we have others like Livy, Petronius, Martial, etc. who also comment -some of them quite contemptuously- on the subject of such foreigners. Cicero already proclaimed that people like Jews and Syrians were "born to be slaves". The notion of Near Easterners as slaves and laborers was deeply ingrained in the Roman intellectual class.

 

[Drac II]

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?

You conveniently forget the number of prisoners from the Mithridatic wars, and the Carthaginians. Also, the author gives all the figures simply as examples that give an idea of the large scale of Roman slavery, with a good degree of caution not to take the actual figures in the examples given as being entirely accurate.

Read the quote again, it says that in entire regions of Syria Greek predominated. Of course other autochthonous languages were also common in Syria, but that does not mean that Greek was not very common as well. Contact with the Roman world would obviously have been more pronounced in the strongly Hellenized areas than more remote areas. You have already seen how Romans like Cicero's grandfather and Juvenal associated Greek with people like Syrians.

 

[Angela]

The discussion of this side issue has gone on long enough. The argument is also going around in circles; all relevant points have been made. In addition this kind of provocation and selective use of data can't be tolerated beyond a certain point. As a poster stated, this is not a racist anthrofora.

All further points not directed at the paper specifically will be deleted. My apologies for my own participation in this discussion. Sometimes the rational response to the agenda of certain posters is a statement of disagreement and then to ignore the person's posts as unworthy of debate. I intend to follow my own advice.

Again, all further posts not strictly on topic will be deleted.

I may not be able to check in very often. To report a violation just PM me. It might reach me quicker that way.

 

[Sile]

I agree, Ferrara isn't really Emilia and neither Romagna. Neither Arezzo and Siena are the best choice for the whole Tuscany but just good enough for Southern Tuscany. I agree they should really have included one more from the North West Tuscany, Pistoia and Lucca would be good choices.

What is Ferrara if it is not Romagna then?

 

[Sile]

Near Easterner means anyone coming from the Near East, irrespective of ethnolinguistic affiliation:

IMO
since hittite, hurrian and hatti languages have nothing to do with the semetic languages as based on all linguistics, then in ancient times , Asia Minor ( Anatolia ) was/must of been regarded as European ( I used the modern term )
Sometime later in history , it stopped being "european"

 

[Pax Augusta]

What is Ferrara if it is not Romagna then?

Of course Ferrara is Emilia (although even to many Italians is not clear and they think is Romagna) but Ferrara is the only Emilian province capital where the Via Aemilia doesn't pass. The Via Aemilia is the Roman road running from Ariminum (Rimini in Romagna) to Placentia (Piacenza in Emilia) from which Emilia region took its name and where ancient Romans founded on previous Etruscan and Gallic settlements the colonies of Bononia (Bologna), Mutina (Modena), Regium (Reggio Emilia) and Parma.