bicicleur 2
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Germanics did in south-germany and Austria to name one area
was there a language for the elite and a native language for the peasants?
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Germanics did in south-germany and Austria to name one area
was there a language for the elite and a native language for the peasants?
That's interesting. Could you provide some sources for that? I mean of dates and indicia of "Gaelic" presence in Ireland pre-Norse migrations, and indications that is pre-Christian era as well.
Updated Geographic distribution of the ancestry in ancient Iceland
View attachment 10255
I've asked you kindly to provide links of where you're finding these images.
"More importantly, no matter the era, no matter the groups involved, I'm always for the civilized "core" against the "barbarians" of the periphery. "
would you also be for the "barbarian" core against the "civilized" periphery? note the quote.
the reason why the lombards should not be extempted, is not because of your comparison with rome. if i compared them with rome i could certainly get some good arguments for them too.
btw if you compare lombard to romans to make an example on why lombards should not be extempted and then only mention all the points in which the romans were better, no, the "good" guys according to you, aren't you somehow implying that if the lombards actually were like the romans they should be extempted and thus the romans themselves should be extempted?
you already mentioned the points why you dislike rome but you did not mention any of these points when you compared the romans to the lombards.
"Consider yourself ignored"
and why should i do that?
Because I planned to put you on ignore, which means I can't read your posts. You join a considerable and always growing list. I just didn't get to it. I will now.
Don't think that means you can go "rogue" and ignore forum rules, however, like insulting other members. Report buttons have their uses, and if necessary I can unblock to read the offending posts. There are also other moderators.
Back in the days rulers were very clear about what they expected of their subjects, though this often resulted in resentment.so, did the germanics force their language on conquered people? or did they actually adopt it? i do not celebrate the lombard conquest or the saxon one or the viking one. i dislike them. but why should i differentiate between these conquerors only based on their thechnological or social standards? roman society was probably not really superior to the ones of the people they conquered anyway.
imo you cant just force someone to speak your language. there needs to be long enough contact. the germanics were simply not able to impose their language on such huge areas as the romans did it. the germanics settled among the natives who outnumbered them. when they settled they often did not stay germanic maybe because they often lost the connection to their origin lands. and thats because, and also the reason why, they did not have a "germanic empire" but just tribes who moved to settle somewhere else. their conquests formed new kingdoms that were often independant unlike rome who conquered regions to implement them in their growing empire and made them dependant. that's what makes rome imperialistic. and that's also why rome liked to use punitive campaigns and control the conquered people with fear. there was constant latin culture flow into the conquered regions because they always stayed connected to the roman core. the germanics often moved and then settled somewhere while the romans conquered and then placed military and colonies that were ultimately under the control of rome
that's also why i think the brits and maybe also the gallo-romans got conquered by the germanics. they were too dependant on rome. when the romans left it was like losing the head for the britons.
There were a lot more Germanics in Italy than there were Romans in other parts of Europe as a percentage of the population in each case. The fact is that even while the Lombards discriminated against the native population, and despite some prior decreases in that population, the Germanic tribesmen didn't have the numbers, the literacy, or the first clue how to govern, administrate or even collect taxes in what was left of Rome in the Italian peninsula. They had to turn all of that over to the natives. It could be argued, indeed, that the Goths had no desire to destroy it, but rather wanted to be part of it. It was the Lombards who couldn't maintain what was left because they didn't trust the natives as much, and because unlike the Goths, they hadn't already been partially Romanized through long contact with the Roman Empire.
You're right that with the Germanics, it boiled down to a question of numbers. In places like Italy and Spain and much of France, where they were such a minority and where there were many more indicia of Roman civilization left, they weren't able to impose their language. Let's not forget, too, that they were largely illiterate.
In England, where perhaps they numbered 1/3 of the population, they were indeed successful. That's why we're now all speaking a Germanic language.
Rome was a different case. The conquered people spoke Latin because they didn't stay a conquered, subject people for long. (Nor was it all about conquest. A lot of it was about making alliances with different groups. You know: divide and conquer.)
Within quite extraordinarily short periods after such "conquests", the local elites were co-opted with wealth, positions of authority, as tax collectors who could keep a percentage of the tax collected etc. Local gods were represented in Roman temples. Locals went to the arena, the baths, had access to imported goods. As time passed, locals could become citizens, with all the civil rights of Romans. Heck, all over Europe people without a drop of "Italianate" ancestry considered themselves proud "Romans". They "wanted" to learn Latin; no one had to force them.
Have you never heard of "Romanization"? Dozens and dozens of books and papers have been written about it. You really can't discuss these issues meaningfully without a grasp of the history of these periods. Just google it. Or pick up a good volume on the Roman empire. I can recommend Peter Heather's "Empires and Barbarians".
As for the Germanics not wanting to create empires, that's absolutely untrue. Not wanting to do something is different from not having the ability. Again, read Peter Heather. He's probably the most accessible and readable for lay people on this topic. As soon as they had the wherewithal they definitely tried. What on earth else was Charlemagne all about? Even later in the Middle Ages they created what they called the Holy Roman Empire (neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire,as the saying goes, much as they tried), and fought over which Germanic king should be "Emperor" or Caesar. Italy was still the golden prize. Then there was the German "Kaiser" and Russian "Czar". The Romans cast a very large shadow, much imitated, but never equaled. That's why even into the 19th century Nordicists wanted so desperately to believe the Romans were actually Nordics. In the east, in the eastern half of the Roman Empire, Greeks and Anatolians and Armenians were calling themselves "Romans" until 1453.
As I said, you have to read and know history to understand why certain things occurred.
Angela I don’t question the uniqueness and the result of the Roman civilization. My son still learns Latin at secondary school, beside Greek.
But still your tone contains some Roman pride. Nice to see on the one hand, nothing wrong with that. But when the nose gets to high you can probably miss something.
The thing is that the Romans made a statue for themselves vis a vis the barbarians. But partly due to the Roman civilization they were not as wild as it seemed like. In the end they were pretty well organized had at fist their own kind of alphabet (runes), a gift system that maintained the political power.
In the end there was, see the rise and fall of the Roman empire (good old Gibbon) a decline .... due to factors still discussed.
IMO the ‘karls’ of the Germans laid some kind of foundation of the middle class and of entrepreneurship. With all the pro’s and cons. But this was in the end more dynamic than the hierarchical, client patron system of the Roman world...
That kind of system seemed very attractive for the Franks Moesan! First they were indeed Germans just above the Rhine/IJssel then they went to nowadays Belgium headquarter Tournai/ Doornik to chance it for even more Romanized Paris....
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I'm sorry you see it as an ethnic "pride" thing on my part, Northener, because I value your input, and respect your opinion. All I can do is assure you that it isn't. Some of my ancestry is from them, yes, but it's probably equally from people they conquered, and whom they then either killed, enslaved, or exiled. I hold no grudges. That was the way of the ancient world. They picked the wrong side, although hindsight is, of course, 20/20. I also assure you I see the warts of the Roman character and culture very clearly. I find nothing admirable in conquest, slavery, the gladiatorial contests etc. Nor do I find the posturing about how simple, noble, brave and honest they were very attractive. Some particular individuals I downright abhor as people, Sulla for one, Cato the Elder, I could go on and on.
Fwiw, I don't really start to "identify" with "my people", until the Middle Ages. That's, imo, when our "identity" was forged. If you've ever seen the cultural stuff I publish, Italians don't run around in Roman togas, re-fighting those old battles. Our celebrations center around our city-states of the Medieval and Renaissance times. They were extremely flawed as groups and individuals as well. I don't see anyone through rose colored glasses, including myself.
Be that as it may, Rome in those centuries represented the civilized "core", the place where a prosperous, sophisticated, complex culture, relatively safe within its borders, held sway. Its fall was calamitous for all Europeans within those borders, even if it is natural for all empires to fall. It took hundreds if not a thousand years and more to recover and re-attain some of those accomplishments and that standard of living. I feel the same about the Han versus the Mongolians etc. It's the cycle of history. It makes no difference if I share ancestry with the group I'm describing as the civilized "core" or not.
Facts, however, are facts, even if they might wound our pride a bit.
Everything I've written on the subject of the Roman Empire, its fall, and the well known process called "Romanization" comes from texts and papers by Anglophone scholars, both English and American, written within the last thirty or so years, some of which I studied at university, and some of which I've read over the years to "keep up". History was, after all, not only my major, but also my passion to some degree. I didn't make any of this up or skew the interpretation.
You might be interested in some of the books I've mentioned, including those by Peter Heathers and Brian Ward Perkins, from Cambridge and Oxford, or Goldsworthy. If you don't have enough interest, you might just want to listen to the podcast which coincidentally just went up today and to which I posted a link, where the fall of Rome and the period of Late Antiquity is discussed by Spencer Wells, Razib Khan, and Patrick Wyman, a historian and archaeologist specializing in Late Antiquity. I assure you, not a smidgen of Italian ancestry in any of them, so perhaps you'll believe that they're being objective.
https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-insight/e/54794596?autoplay=true
Thanks Angela I will certainly listen too it!!!!
But be aware that civilized vs. barbarian is a kind of dehumanization. That’s why Caesar was proud to slaughter about 200000 barbarians, he spoke of 450000 killed, without a civilized ‘shame” it were after all ‘only’ barbarians you know.....
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I completely take your point, and agree to some extent, with the quibble that the Romans didn't much care whether the people they conquered were "barbarians" or equally or more "civilized" than they themselves, i.e. the Greeks, the Parthians, etc. etc.
That has, however, indeed been used by Europeans in other times and places as a justification for conquest and virtual extermination, i.e. the Americas, with the "savages" of North America, as they called them, the indigenous Amazonian tribes in South America, all over Africa during the Imperialist Era etc. I'm sure you know the other examples of dehumanization being used to justify extermination.
Anyway, I forgot to mention, in case you didn't read about the podcast on the thread where I originally posted it, after the interview they spend the most time talking about the Anglo-Saxons, the Lombards, and the Huns, the first of whom are of particular interest to you, I think.
In terms of the Anglo-Saxons it's clear that they instituted a system where there was one level of "rights" as it were, economic, political etc., where the "native" inhabitants were of a much lower status. You surely don't doubt that? The documentation is crystal clear and well known. I shouldn't need to provide it if you've been interested in this subject for a while.
The same is true of the Lombards. Are we supposed to totally park our value systems at the door when discussing ancient groups, even ancient groups who probably contributed something to our ancestry?
I'm certainly free with my criticism of the Romans: the conquests, the slavery, the persecutions of Jews and Christians. I can and do acknowledge that this was the way of the ancient world, but that doesn't mean I approve it personally.
Why should the Lombards be exempt?
Indeed, it might be instructive to do a comparison of the two sets of conquerors in my area.
The Romans conquered the Celt-Ligures, my ancestors (and later mixed with them, of course), and Lombards then arrived, although the Lombards were probably fewer in number. The Romans brought increased wealth, a much higher standard of living, baths and clean water, a sophisticated system of laws which are the basis even today for much of European law, literacy, the arts, urban life, long distance trade and all its benefits, and even citizenship on an equal footing with Romans in a very short period of time.
After the Lombards and other invasion era tribes, there was widespread destruction of the roads and therefore of trade and the importation of goods, a vast decrease in average wealth except for the lords, and even for them, a vastly decreased standard of living, no clean water, no public baths, illiteracy, what minor arts there were under the heavy hand of the Church, widespread brigandage on the roads and therefore basically no travel, reduction to serfdom for the vast majority of the people, oh, and yes, trial by combat instead of Roman law! To some degree this was the case all over Europe. Surely you're aware of this?
What, are we supposed to celebrate that, even if they did contribute genetically to some degree? We'd have to be mad. This is not "ethnic" as you seem to think. For one thing, given the dozens of Lombard castles in my area and the names in my family tree I have no doubt I carry some of their ancestry, even if it's a minority. More importantly, no matter the era, no matter the groups involved, I'm always for the civilized "core" against the "barbarians" of the periphery. Of course, the people who were once the barbarians can then become the civilized core, as has indeed happened. Those are the cycles of history, yes?
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