Roman people

Meaning of "Roman"

Six of the Fayum mummy portraits, contemporary portraits of people in Roman Egypt from the 1st century BC to the 3rd century AD

The term 'Roman' is today used interchangeably to describe a historical timespan, a material culture, a geographical location, and a personal identity. Though these concepts are related, they are not identical. Many modern historians tend to have a preferred idea of what being Roman meant, so-called Romanitas, but this was a term rarely used in Ancient Rome itself.^[14] Like all identities, the identity of 'Roman' was flexible, dynamic and multi-layered,^[15] and never static or unchanging.^[14] Given that Rome was a geographically vast and chronologically long-lived state, there is no simple definition of what being Roman meant^[16] and definitions were inconsistent already in antiquity.^[17] Nevertheless, some elements remained common throughout much of Roman history.^[14]

Some ancient Romans considered aspects such as geography, language, and ethnicity as important markers of Romanness, whereas others saw Roman citizenship and culture or behaviour as more important.^[6][7][8][9] At the height of the Roman Empire, Roman identity formed a collective geopolitical identity, extended to nearly all subjects of the Roman emperors and encompassing vast regional and ethnical diversity.^[10] Often, what individual believed and did was far more important to the concept of Roman identity than long bloodlines and shared descent.^[6] The key to 'Romanness' in the minds of some famous Roman orators, such as Cicero, was keeping with Roman tradition and serving the Roman state.^[18] Cicero's view of Romanness were partly formed by his status as a "new man", the first of his family to serve in the Roman Senate, lacking prestigious lines of Roman descent himself.^[19] This is not to say that the importance of blood kinship was wholly dismissed. Orators such as Cicero frequently appealed to their noble contemporaries to live up to the 'greatness of their forefathers'.^[18] These appeals were typically only invoked towards illustrious noble families, with other important traditions emphasising Rome's collective descent.^[7][20]

Throughout its history, Rome proved to be uniquely capable of incorporating and integrating other peoples (Romanisation). This sentiment originated from the city's foundation myths, including Rome being founded as something akin to a political sanctuary by Romulus, as well as the rape of the Sabine women, which represented how different peoples had commingled since the very beginning of the city.^[7][20] Cicero and other Roman authors sneered at peoples such as the Athenians, who prided themselves in their shared descent, and instead found pride in Rome's status as a "mongrel nation".^[21] Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Greek historian who lived in Roman times, even embellished the multicultural origin of the Romans, writing that Romans had since the foundation of Rome welcomed innumerable immigrants not only from the rest of Italy, but from the entire world, whose cultures merged with theirs.^[21]

A handful of Roman authors, such as Tacitus and Suetonius, expressed concerns in their writings concerning Roman "blood purity" as Roman citizens from outside of Roman Italy increased in number. Neither author, however, suggested that the naturalisation of new citizens should stop, only that manumissions (freeing slaves) and grants of citizenship should be less frequent. Their concerns of blood purity did not match modern ideas of race or ethnicity, and had little to do with features such as skin colour or physical appearance.^[22] Terms such as "Aethiop", which Romans used for black people, carried no social implications, and though phenotype-related stereotypes certainly existed in Ancient Rome, inherited physical characteristics were typically not relevant to social status;^[23] people who looked different from the typical Mediterranean populace, such as black people, were not excluded from any profession and there are no records of stigmas or biases against "mixed race" relationships.^[24] The main dividing social differences in Ancient Rome were not based on physical features, but rather on differences in class or rank. Romans practised slavery extensively, but slaves in Ancient Rome were part of various different ethnic groups, and were not enslaved because of their ethnic affiliation.^[25] According to the English historian Emma Dench, it was "notoriously difficult to detect slaves by their appearance" in Ancient Rome.^[22]

Non-Romans

Coin of Emperor Constantine II (r. 337–340), depicting the emperor on horseback, trampling two barbarians

Although Ancient Rome has been termed an 'evidently non-racist society',^[23] Romans carried considerable cultural stereotypes and prejudices against cultures and peoples that were not integrated into the Roman world, i.e. "barbarians". Though views differed through Roman history, the attitude towards peoples beyond the Roman frontier among most Roman writers in late antiquity can be summed up with "the only good barbarian is a dead barbarian".^[26] Throughout antiquity, the majority of Roman emperors included anti-barbarian imagery on their coinage, such as the emperor or Victoria (the personification and goddess of victory) being depicted as stepping on or dragging defeated barbarian enemies.^[27] Per the writings of Cicero, what made people barbarians was not their language or descent, but rather their customs and character, or lack thereof.^[28] Romans viewed themselves as superior over foreigners, but this stemmed not from perceived biological differences, but rather from what they perceived as a superior way of life.^[25] 'Barbarian' was as such a cultural, rather than biological, term. It was not impossible for a barbarian to become a Roman; the Roman state was itself seen as having the duty to conquer and transform, i.e. civilise, barbarian peoples.^[29]

Relief from Arch of Titus of Romans with loot from the Temple in Jerusalem

A particularly disliked group of non-Romans within the empire were the Jews.^[30] The majority of the Roman populace detested Jews and Judaism, though views were more varied among the Roman elite.^[30] Although many, such as Tacitus, were also hostile to the Jews,^[31] others, such as Cicero, were merely unsympathetically indifferent^[32] and some did not consider the Jews to be barbarians at all.^[30] The Roman state was not wholly opposed to the Jews, since there was a sizeable Jewish population in Rome itself, as well as at least thirteen synagogues in the city.^[33] Roman antisemitism, which led to several persecutions and massacres, was not rooted in racial prejudice, but rather in the perception that the Jews, uniquely among conquered peoples, refused to integrate into the Roman world.^[30] The Jews adhered to their own set of rules, restrictions and obligations, which were typically either disliked or misunderstood by the Romans, and they remained faithful to their own religion.^[34] The exclusivist religious practices of the Jews, and their opposition to abandoning their own customs in favour of those of Rome,^[30] even after being conquered and repeatedly suppressed,^[34] evoked the suspicion of the Romans.^[30]

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Culture of ancient Rome

Culture of ancient Rome

The culture of ancient Rome existed throughout the almost 1200-year history of the civilization of Ancient Rome. The term refers to the culture of the Roman Republic, later the Roman Empire, which at its peak covered an area from present-day Lowland Scotland and Morocco to the Euphrates.

Demography of the Roman Empire

Demography of the Roman Empire

Demographically, as in other more recent and thus better documented pre-modern societies, papyrus evidence from Roman Egypt suggests the demographic profile of the Roman Empire had high infant mortality, a low marriage age, and high fertility within marriage. Perhaps half of the Roman subjects died by the age of 5. Of those still alive at age 10, half would die by the age of 50.

Fayum mummy portraits

Fayum mummy portraits

Mummy portraits or Fayum mummy portraits are a type of naturalistic painted portrait on wooden boards attached to upper class mummies from Roman Egypt. They belong to the tradition of panel painting, one of the most highly regarded forms of art in the Classical world. The Fayum portraits are the only large body of art from that tradition to have survived. They were formerly, and incorrectly, called Coptic portraits.

Roman Egypt

Roman Egypt

Egypt was a subdivision of the Roman Empire from Rome's invasion of the Ptolemaic Egyptian Kingdom after the battle of Alexandria in 30 BC to its loss by the Byzantine Empire to the Islamic conquests in AD 641. The province encompassed most of modern-day Egypt except for the Sinai, and was bordered by the provinces of Crete and Cyrenaica to the west and Judea, later Arabia Petraea, to the East. Egypt came to serve as a major producer of grain for the empire and had a highly developed urban economy. Aegyptus was by far the wealthiest Eastern Roman province, and by far the wealthiest Roman province outside of Italy. The population of Roman Egypt is unknown, although estimates vary from 4 to 8 million. Alexandria, its capital, was the largest port and second largest city of the Roman Empire.

Material culture

Material culture

Material culture is the aspect of social reality grounded in the objects and architecture that surround people. It includes the usage, consumption, creation, and trade of objects as well as the behaviors, norms, and rituals that the objects create or take part in. Some scholars also include other intangible phenomena that include sound, smell and events, while some even consider language and media as part of it. The term is most commonly used in archaeological and anthropological studies, to define material or artifacts as they are understood in relation to specific cultural and historic contexts, communities, and belief systems. Material culture can be described as any object that humans use to survive, define social relationships, represent facets of identity, or benefit peoples' state of mind, social, or economic standing. Material culture is contrasting to symbolic culture, which includes nonmaterial symbols, beliefs, and social constructs.

Romanitas

Romanitas

Romanitas is the collection of political and cultural concepts and practices by which the Romans defined themselves. It is a Latin word, first coined in the third century AD, meaning "Roman-ness" and has been used by modern historians as shorthand to refer to Roman identity and self-image.

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome

In modern historiography, Ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom, Roman Republic and Roman Empire until the fall of the western empire.

Roman citizenship

Roman citizenship

Citizenship in ancient Rome was a privileged political and legal status afforded to free individuals with respect to laws, property, and governance. Citizenship in Ancient Rome was complex and based upon many different laws, traditions, and cultural practices. There existed several different types of citizenship, determined by one's gender, class, and political affiliations, and the exact duties or expectations of a citizen varied throughout the history of the Roman Empire.

Cicero

Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the establishment of the Roman Empire. His extensive writings include treatises on rhetoric, philosophy and politics. He is considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the Roman equestrian order, and served as consul in 63 BC.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus

Dionysius of Halicarnassus

Dionysius of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric, who flourished during the reign of Emperor Augustus. His literary style was atticistic – imitating Classical Attic Greek in its prime.

Manumission

Manumission

Manumission, or enfranchisement, is the act of freeing enslaved people by their enslavers. Different approaches to manumission were developed, each specific to the time and place of a particular society. Historian Verene Shepherd states that the most widely used term is gratuitous manumission, "the conferment of freedom on the enslaved by enslavers before the end of the slave system".

Race (human categorization)

Race (human categorization)

A race is a categorization of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into groups generally viewed as distinct within a given society. The term came into common usage during the 16th century, when it was used to refer to groups of various kinds, including those characterized by close kinship relations. By the 17th century, the term began to refer to physical (phenotypical) traits, and then later to national affiliations. Modern science regards race as a social construct, an identity which is assigned based on rules made by society. While partly based on physical similarities within groups, race does not have an inherent physical or biological meaning. The concept of race is foundational to racism, the belief that humans can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another.

Classical antiquity

Founding myths and Romans of the republic

Fresco of Roman banquet scene from Herculaneum, Italy, c. 50 BC

The founding of Rome, and the history of the city and its people throughout its first few centuries, is steeped in myth and uncertainty. The traditional date for Rome's foundation, 753 BC, and the traditional date for the foundation of the Roman Republic, 509 BC, though commonly used even in modern historiography, are uncertain and mythical.^[35][c] The myths surrounding Rome's foundation combined, if not confused, several different stories, going from the origins of the Latin people under a king by the name Latinus, to Evander of Pallantium, who was said to have brought Greek culture to Italy, and a myth of Trojan origin through the heroic figure Aeneas. The actual mythical founder of the city itself, Romulus, only appears many generations into the complex web of foundation myths. Interpretations of these myths varied among authors in Antiquity,^[d] but most agreed that their civilisation had been founded by a mixture of migrants and fugitives. These origin narratives would favour the later extensive integrations of foreigners into the Roman world.^[40]

The origins of the people that became the first Romans are clearer. As in neighbouring city-states, the early Romans were composed mainly of Latin-speaking Italic people,^[41][42] known as the Latins. The Latins were a people with a marked Mediterranean character, related to other neighbouring Italic peoples such as the Falisci.^[43] The early Romans were part of the Latin homeland, known as Latium, and were Latins themselves. By the time of the 6th century, the inhabitants of Rome had conquered and destroyed all the other Latin settlements and communities such as Antemnae and Collatia and defeated the hegemony of the settlement of Alba Longa, which had previously united the Latin people under its leadership, a position that now belonged to Rome.^[44]

From the middle of the 4th century onwards, Rome won a series of victories which saw them rise to rule all of Italy south of the Po river by 270 BC. Following the conquest of Italy, the Romans waged war against the great powers of their time; Carthage to the south and west and the various Hellenistic kingdoms to the east, and by the middle of the second century BC, all rivals had been defeated and Rome became recognised by other countries as the definite masters of the Mediterranean.^[45] By the late 3rd century BC, about a third of the people in Italy south of the Po river had been made Roman citizens, meaning that they were liable for military service, and the rest had been made into allies, frequently called on to join Roman wars.^[45] These allies were eventually made Roman citizens as well after refusal by the Roman government to make them so was met with the Social War, after which Roman citizenship was extended to all the people south of the Po river.^[46] In 49 BC, citizenship rights were also extended to the people of Cisalpine Gaul by Julius Caesar.^[47] The number of Romans would rapidly increase in later centuries through further extensions of citizenship.^[47] Typically, there were five different mechanisms for acquiring Roman citizenship: serving in the Roman army, holding office in cities with the Latin right, being granted it directly by the government, being part of a community that was granted citizenship as a "block grant" or, as a slave, being freed by a Roman citizen.^[48] Just as it could be gained, Roman status could also be lost, for instance through engaging practices considered corrupt or by being carried off into captivity in enemy raids (though one could again become a Roman upon returning from captivity).^[49]

Romans of the early empire

Collection of female and male Roman busts in the Vatican Museums in Rome

In the early Roman Empire, the population was composed of several groups of distinct legal standing, including the Roman citizens themselves (cives romani), the provincials (provinciales), foreigners (peregrini) and free non-citizens such as freedmen (freed slaves) and slaves. Roman citizens were subject to the Roman legal system while provincials were subject to whatever laws and legal systems had been in place in their area at the time it was annexed by the Romans. Over time, Roman citizenship was gradually extended more and more and there was a regular "siphoning" of people from less privileged legal groups to more privileged groups, increasing the total percentage of subjects recognised as Romans though the incorporation of the provinciales and peregrini.^[50] The capability of the Roman Empire to integrate foreign peoples was one of the key elements that ensured its success. In antiquity, it was significantly easier as a foreigner to become a Roman than it was to become a member or citizen of any other contemporary state. This aspect of the Roman state was seen as important even by some of the emperors.^[51] For instance, Emperor Claudius (r. 41–54) pointed it out when questioned by the senate on admitting Gauls to join the senate:^[51]

What else proved fatal to Lacedaemon or Athens, in spite of their power in arms, but their policy of holding the conquered aloof as alien-born? But the sagacity of our own founder Romulus was such that several times he fought and naturalized a people in the course of the same day!^[51]

From the Principate (27 BC – AD 284) onwards, barbarians settled and integrated into the Roman world. Such settlers would have been granted certain legal rights simply by being within Roman territory, becoming provinciales and thus being eligible to serve as auxilia (auxiliary soldiers), which in turn made them eligible to become full cives Romani. Through this relatively rapid process, thousands of former barbarians could quickly become Romans. This tradition of straightforward integration eventually culminated in the Antonine Constitution, issued by Emperor Caracalla in 212, in which all free inhabitants of Empire were granted the citizenship.^[52][53] Caracalla's grant contributed to a vast increase in the number of people with the nomen (name indicating familial association) Aurelius.^[54][e] By the time of the Antonine Constitution, many people throughout the provinces already considered themselves (and were considered by others) as Romans. Through the centuries of Roman expansion, large numbers of veterans and opportunists had settled in the provinces and colonies founded by Julius Caesar and Augustus alone saw between 500,000 and a million people from Italy settled in Rome's provinces. In AD 14, four to seven percent of the free people in the provinces of the empire were already Roman citizens.^[47] In addition to colonists, many provincials had also become citizens through grants by emperors and through other methods.^[55]

The Roman Empire in AD 117, at its greatest extent

In most cases, it is not clear to what extent the majority of the new Roman citizens regarded themselves as being Roman, or to what extent they were regarded as such by others.^[11] For some provincials under Roman rule, the only experience with "Romans" prior to themselves being granted citizenship was through Rome's at times coercive tax-collection system or its army, aspects which were not assimilative in terms of forming an empire-spanning collective identity.^[56] Caracalla's grant marked a radical change in imperial policy towards the provincials.^[57] It is possible that decades, and in many cases centuries, of Romanization through Rome's cultural influence had already begun the evolution of a "national" Roman identity before 212 and that the grant only made the ongoing process legal,^[58] but the grant might also have served as the important prerequisite for a later nearly all-encompassing collective Roman identity. According to the British jurist Tony Honoré, the grant "gave many millions, perhaps a majority of the empire's inhabitants […] a new consciousness of being Roman".^[57] It is likely that local identities survived after Caracalla's grant and remained prominent throughout the empire, but that self-identification as Roman provided a larger sense of common identity and became important when dealing with and distinguishing oneself from non-Romans, such as barbarian settlers and invaders.^[12]

Egyptian relief depicting Emperor Trajan (r. 98–117; right) as a pharaoh

In many cases, ancient Romans associated the same things with their identity as historians do today: the rich ancient Latin literature, the impressive Roman architecture, the common marble statues, the variety of cult sites, the Roman infrastructure and legal tradition, as well as the almost corporate identity of the Roman army were all cultural and symbolic ways to express Roman identity.^[59] Although there was a more or less unifying Roman identity, Roman culture in classical times was also far from homogeneous. There was a common cultural idiom, large portions of which was based in earlier Hellenistic culture, but Rome's strength also laid in its flexibility and its ability to incorporate traditions from other cultures. For instance, the religions of many conquered peoples were embraced through amalgamations of the gods of foreign pantheons with those of the Roman pantheon. In Egypt, Roman emperors were seen as the successors of the pharaohs (in modern historiography termed the Roman pharaohs) and were depicted as such in artwork and in temples. Many cults from the eastern Mediterranean and beyond spread to Western Europe over the course of Roman rule.^[60]

Late antiquity

4th-century portrait of a woman from Roman Egypt

Once the very core of ancient Romanness, the city of Rome gradually lost its exceptional status within the empire in late antiquity.^[61] By the end of the third century, the city's importance was almost entirely ideological, and several emperors and usurpers had begun reigning from other cities closer to the imperial frontier.^[62] Rome's loss of status was also reflected in the perceptions of the city by the Roman populace. In the writings of the 4th-century Greek-speaking Roman soldier and author Ammianus Marcellinus, Rome is described almost like a foreign city, with disparaging comments on its corruption and impurity.^[61] Few Romans in late antiquity embodied all aspects of traditional Romanness. Many of them would have come from remote or less prestigious provinces and practiced religions and cults unheard of in Rome itself. Many of them would also have spoken 'barbarian languages' or Greek instead of Latin.^[63] Few inscriptions from late antiquity explicitly identify individuals as 'Roman citizens' or 'Romans'. Before the Antonine Constitution, being a Roman had been a mark of distinction and often stressed, but after the 3rd century Roman status went without saying. This silence does not mean that Romanness no longer mattered in the late Roman Empire, but rather that it had become less distinctive than other more specific marks of identity (such as local identities) and only needed to be stressed or highlighted if a person had recently become a Roman, or if the Roman status of a person was in doubt.^[64] The prevalent view of the Romans themselves was that the populus Romanus, or Roman people, were a "people by constitution", as opposed to the barbarian peoples who were gentes, "peoples by descent" (i. e. ethnicities).^[65]

Given that Romanness had become near-universal within the empire, local identities became more and more prominent.^[64] In the late Roman Empire, one could identify as a Roman as a citizen of the empire, as a person originating from one of the major regions (Africa, Britannia, Gaul, Hispania etc.) or as originating from a specific province or city.^[66][f] Though the Romans themselves did not see them as equivalent concepts, there is no fundamental difference between such Roman sub-identities and the gens identities ascribed to barbarians.^[67] In some cases, Roman authors ascribed different qualities to citizens of different parts of the empire, such as Ammianus Marcellinus who wrote of the differences between 'Gauls' and 'Italians'.^[66] In the late Roman army, there were regiments named after Roman sub-identities, such as 'Celts' and 'Batavians', as well as regiments named after barbarian gentes, such as the Franks or Saxons.^[68]

Late Roman soldiers, possibly of barbarian origin, as depicted in a relief by Emperor Theodosius I (r. 379–395)

The Roman army underwent considerable changes in the 4th century, experiencing what some have called 'barbarisation',^[68] traditionally understood as the result of recruitments of large amounts of barbarian soldiers.^[69] Though barbarian origins were seldom forgotten, the large scale and meritocratic nature of the Roman army made it relatively easy for "barbarian" recruits to enter the army and rise through the ranks only thougth their skills and achievements.^[70][g] It is not clear to what extent there was actual non-Roman influence on the military; it is plausible that extensive numbers of barbarians were made part of the normal Roman military but it is equally plausible that there was also, or instead, a certain 'barbarian chic' in the army, comparable to the 19th-century French Zouaves (French military units in North Africa who adopted native clothing and cultural practices).^[68] The rise of non-Roman customs in the Roman military might not have resulted from increasing numbers of barbarian recruits, but rather from Roman military units along the imperial borders forming their own distinctive identities.^[72] In the late empire, the term "barbarian" was sometimes used in a general sense by Romans not in the military for Roman soldiers stationed alongside the imperial border, in reference to their perceived aggressive nature.^[73] No matter the reason, the Roman military increasingly came to embody 'barbarian' aspects that in previous times had been considered antithetical to the Roman ideal.^[68] Such aspects included emphasising strength and thirst for battle, as well as the assumption of "barbarian" strategies and customs, such as the barritus (a formerly Germanic battle cry), the Schilderhebung (raising an elected emperor up on a shield) as well as Germanic battle formations. The assumption of these customs might instead of barbarisation be attributable to the Roman army simply adopting customs it found useful, a common practice. Some barbarian soldiers recruited into the Roman army proudly embraced Roman identification^[h] and in some cases, the barbarian heritage of certain late Roman individuals was even completely ignored in the wider Roman world.^[i]

Chi Rho as depicted on a 4th-century sacrophagus and the spread of Christianity from AD 325 (dark blue) to AD 600 (light blue)

Religion had always been an important marker of Romanness. As Christianity gradually became the dominant religion in the Roman Empire through late antiquity, and eventually became the only legal faith, the Christianised Roman aristocracy had to redefine their Roman identity in Christian terms. The rise of Christianity did not go unnoticed or unchallenged by the conservative elements of the pagan Roman elite, who became aware that power was slipping from their hands. Many of them, pressured by the increasingly anti-pagan and militant Christians, turned to emphasising that they were the only 'true Romans' as they preserved the traditional Roman religion and literary culture.^[77] According to the Roman statesman and orator Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (c. 345–402), true Romans were those who followed the traditional Roman way of life, including its ancient religions, and it was adherence to those religions that in the end would protect the empire from its enemies, as in previous centuries. Per Symmachus and his supporters, Romanness had nothing to do with Christianity, but depended on Rome's pagan past and its status as the heart of a vast and polytheistic empire.^[78] The ideas of Symmachus were not popular among the Christians. Some church leaders, such as Ambrose, the Archbishop of Mediolanum, launched formal and vicious assaults on paganism and those members of the elite which defended it. Like Symmachus, Ambrose saw Rome as the greatest city of the Roman Empire, but not because of its pagan past but because of its Christian present. Throughout late antiquity, Romanness became increasingly defined by Christian faith, which would eventually become the standard.^[79] The status of Christianity was much increased through the adoption of the religion by the Roman emperors.^[80] Throughout late antiquity, the emperors and their courts were viewed as the Romans par excellence.^[81]

As the Roman Empire lost, or ceded control of, territories to various barbarian rulers, the status of the Roman citizens in those provinces sometimes came into question. People born as Roman citizens in regions that then came under barbarian control could be subjected to the same prejudice as barbarians were.^[82][j] Over the course of the Roman Empire, men from nearly all of its provinces had come to rule as emperors. As such, Roman identity remained political, rather than ethnic, and open to people of various origins. This nature of Roman identity ensured that there was never a strong consolidation of a 'core identity' of Romans in Italy, but also likely contributed to the long-term endurance and success of the Roman state. The fall of the Western Roman Empire coincided with the first time the Romans actively excluded an influential foreign group within the empire, the barbarian and barbarian-descended generals of the 5th century, from Roman identity and access to the Roman imperial throne.^[83]

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Latins (Italic tribe)

Latins (Italic tribe)

The Latins, sometimes known as the Latians, were an Italic tribe which included the early inhabitants of the city of Rome. From about 1000 BC, the Latins inhabited the small region known to the Romans as Old Latium, that is, the area between the river Tiber and the promontory of Mount Circeo 100 km (62 mi) southeast of Rome. Following the Roman expansion, the Latins spread into the Latium adiectum, inhabited by Osco-Umbrian peoples.

Fresco

Fresco

Fresco is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the dry-powder pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the painting becomes an integral part of the wall. The word fresco is derived from the Italian adjective fresco meaning "fresh", and may thus be contrasted with fresco-secco or secco mural painting techniques, which are applied to dried plaster, to supplement painting in fresco. The fresco technique has been employed since antiquity and is closely associated with Italian Renaissance painting. The word fresco is commonly and inaccurately used in English to refer to any wall painting regardless of the plaster technology or binding medium. This, in part, contributes to a misconception that the most geographically and temporally common wall painting technology was the painting into wet lime plaster. Even in apparently Buon fresco technology, the use of supplementary organic materials was widespread, if underrecognized.

Herculaneum

Herculaneum

Herculaneum was an ancient town, located in the modern-day comune of Ercolano, Campania, Italy. Herculaneum was buried under volcanic ash and pumice in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.

Founding of Rome

Founding of Rome

The tale of the founding of Rome is recounted in traditional stories handed down by the ancient Romans themselves as the earliest history of their city in terms of legend and myth. The most familiar of these myths, and perhaps the most famous of all Roman myths, is the story of Romulus and Remus, twins who were suckled by a she-wolf as infants. Another account, set earlier in time, claims that the Roman people are descended from Trojan War hero Aeneas, who escaped to Italy after the war, and whose son, Iulus, was the ancestor of the family of Julius Caesar. The archaeological evidence of human occupation of the area of modern-day Rome dates from about 14,000 years ago.

Evander of Pallantium

Evander of Pallantium

In Roman mythology, Evander was a culture hero from Arcadia, Greece, who was said to have brought the Greek pantheon, laws, and alphabet to Italy, where he founded the city of Pallantium on the future site of Palatine Hill, Rome, sixty years before the Trojan War. He instituted the festival of the Lupercalia. Evander was deified after his death and an altar was constructed to him on the Aventine Hill.

Aeneas

Aeneas

In Greco-Roman mythology, Aeneas was a Trojan hero, the son of the Dardanian prince Anchises and the Greek goddess Aphrodite. His father was a first cousin of King Priam of Troy, making Aeneas a second cousin to Priam's children. He is a minor character in Greek mythology and is mentioned in Homer's Iliad. Aeneas receives full treatment in Roman mythology, most extensively in Virgil's Aeneid, where he is cast as an ancestor of Romulus and Remus. He became the first true hero of Rome. Snorri Sturluson identifies him with the Norse god Vidarr of the Æsir.

Latin

Latin

Latin is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area around present-day Rome, but through the power of the Roman Republic it became the dominant language in the Italian region and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. Even after the fall of Western Rome, Latin remained the common language of international communication, science, scholarship and academia in Europe until well into the 18th century, when other regional vernaculars supplanted it in common academic and political usage, and it eventually became a dead language in the modern linguistic definition.

Italic peoples

Italic peoples

The Italic peoples were an ethnolinguistic group identified by their use of Italic languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family.

Falisci

Falisci

Falisci is the ancient Roman exonym for an Italic tribe who lived in what is now northern Lazio, on the Etruscan side of the Tiber River. They spoke an Italic language, Faliscan, closely akin to Latin. Originally a sovereign state, politically and socially they supported the Etruscans, joining the Etruscan League. This conviction and affiliation led to their ultimate near destruction and total subjugation by Rome.

Antemnae

Antemnae

Antemnae was a town and Roman colony of ancient Latium in Italy. It was situated two miles north of ancient Rome on a hill commanding the confluence of the Aniene and the Tiber. It lay west of the later Via Salaria and now lies within a park in modern Rome.

Collatia

Collatia

Collatia was an ancient town of central Italy, c. 15 km northeast of Rome by the Via Collatina.

Alba Longa

Alba Longa

Alba Longa was an ancient Latin city in Central Italy, 19 kilometres (12 mi) southeast of Rome, in the vicinity of Lake Albano in the Alban Hills. Founder and head of the Latin League, it was destroyed by the Roman Kingdom around the middle of the 7th century BC, and its inhabitants were forced to settle in Rome. In legend, Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome, had come from the royal dynasty of Alba Longa, which in Virgil's Aeneid had been the bloodline of Aeneas, a son of Venus.

The Roman Empire's expansion facilitated the spread of Roman identity over a large stretch of territories that had never before had a common identity and never would again. The effects of Roman rule on the personal identities of the empire's subjects was considerable and the resulting Roman identity outlasted actual imperial control by several centuries.^[84]

Western Europe

Early endurance of Roman identity

Consular diptych of Rufius Gennadius Probus Orestes, a Roman consul appointed during the time that Rome was under Ostrogothic rule

From the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the late 5th century to the wars of Emperor Justinian I in the 6th century, the predominant structure of societies in the west was a near-completely barbarian military but also a near-completely Roman civil administration and aristocracy.^[85] The new Barbarian rulers took steps to present themselves as legitimate rulers within the Roman framework,^[86] with the pretense of legitimacy being especially strong among the rulers of Italy.^[87] The early kings of Italy, first Odoacer and then Theoderic the Great, were legally and ostensibly viceroys of the eastern emperor and thus integrated into the Roman government. Like the western emperors before them, they continued to appoint western consuls, which were accepted in the east and by the other barbarian kings.^[88] The imperial court in the east extended various honours to powerful barbarian rulers in the west, which was interpreted by the barbarians as enhancing their legitimacy; something they used to justify territorial expansion.^[89] In the early 6th century, Clovis I of the Franks and Theoderic the Great of the Ostrogoths nearly went to war with each other, a conflict that could have resulted in the re-establishment of the western empire under either king.^[90] Concerned about such a prospect, the eastern court never again extended similar honours to western rulers,^[89] instead beginning to emphasise its own exclusive Roman legitimacy, which it would continue to do for the rest of its history.^[90]

Culturally and legally, Roman identity remained prominent in the west for centuries,^[91] still providing a sense of unity throughout the Mediterranean.^[81] Italy's Ostrogothic Kingdom preserved the Roman Senate, which often dominated politics in Rome,^[92] illustrating the survival of and continued respect for Roman institutions and identity.^[93] The barbarian kings continued to use Roman law throughout the early Middle Ages,^[91] often issuing their own law collections. In 6th-century law collections issued by the Visigoths in Spain and the Franks in Gaul, it is clear that there were still large populations identifying as Romans in these regions given that the law collections distinguish between barbarians who live by their own laws and Romans who live by Roman law.^[91] Even after Italy was conquered by the Lombards in the late 6th century, the continued administration and urbanisation of northern Italy attest to a continued survival of Roman institutions and values.^[93] It was still possible for non-citizens (such as barbarians) in the west to become Roman citizens well into the 7th and 8th centuries; several surviving Visigothic and Frankish documents explain the benefits of becoming a Roman citizen and there are records of rulers and nobles freeing slaves and making them into citizens.^[94] Despite this, Roman identity was in a steep decline by the 7th and 8th centuries.^[k]

Disappearances of Roman identity

The 6th-century reconquests of Emperor Justinian I (in yellow)

The great turning point in the history of the latter-day Romans of the west was the wars of Justinian I (533–555), aimed at reconquering the lost provinces of the Western Roman Empire.^[95] During Justinian's early reign, eastern authors re-wrote 5th-century history to portray the west as "lost" to barbarian invasions, rather than attempting to further integrate the barbarian rulers into the Roman world.^[90] By the end of the Justinianic wars, imperial control had returned to northern Africa and Italy, but the wars being founded on the idea that anything outside of the eastern empire's direct control was no longer part of the Roman Empire meant that there could no longer be any doubt that the lands beyond the imperial frontier were no longer Roman and instead remained "lost to barbarians". As a result, Roman identity in the still barbarian-ruled regions (i.e. Gaul, Spain and Britain) declined dramatically.^[95] During the reconquest of Italy, the Roman Senate disappeared and most of its members moved to Constantinople. Though the senate achieved a certain legacy in the west,^[l] the end of the institution removed a group that had always set the standard of what Romanness was supposed to mean.^[96] The war in Italy also divided the Roman elite there between those who enjoyed barbarian rule and those who supported the empire and later withdrew to imperial territory, meaning that Roman identity ceased to provide a sense of social and political cohesion.^[96]

The division of Western Europe into multiple different kingdoms accelerated the disappearance of Roman identity, as the previously unifying identity was replaced by local identities based on the region one was from. The fading connectivitiy also meant that while largely Roman law and culture continued on, the language became increasingly fragmented and split, Latin gradually developing into what would become the modern Romance languages.^[17][97] Where they had once been the majority of the population, the Romans of Gaul and Hispania gradually and quietly faded away as their descendants adopted other names and identities.^[97] In Sub-Roman Britain, the people of the large urban centers clinged to Roman identity, but rural populations integrated and assimilated with Germanic colonisers (the Jutes, Angles and Saxons). Once the large cities declined, Roman identity faded away in Britain as well.^[98]

The adoption of local identities in Gaul and Hispania was made more attractive in that they were not binary opposed to the identity of the barbarian rulers in the same way that 'Roman' was; for instance, one could not be both Roman and Frankish, but it was possible to, for instance, be both Arvernian (i.e. from Auvergne) and Frankish.^[99] In Hispania, "Gothic" transitioned from simply an ethnic identity to being both an ethnic one (in the sense of descent from Goths) and a political one (in the sense of allegiance to the king). Gothic becoming more fluid and multi-dimensional as an identity facilitated a smooth transition from people identifying as Romans to people identifying as Goths.^[100] There were few differences between the Goths and the Romans of Hispania at this point; the Visigoths no longer practised Arian Christianity and Romans, just like the Goths, were from the 6th century onwards allowed to serve in the military. Though Roman identity was rapidly disappearing, the Visigothic Kingdom in the 6th and 7th centuries thus also produced several prominent latter-day Roman generals, such as Claudius [fr] and Paulus.^[101]

The disappearance of the Romans is reflected in the barbarian law collections. In the Salic law of Clovis I (from around 500), the Romans and the Franks are the two major parallel populations of the kingdom and both have well-defined legal statuses. A century later in the Lex Ripuaria, the Romans are just one of many smaller semi-free populations, restricted in their legal capacity, with many of their former advantages now associated with Frankish identity. Such legal arrangements would have been unthinkable under the Roman Empire and under the early decades of barbarian rule.^[102][99] By Charlemagne's imperial coronation in 800, Roman identity largely disappeared in Western Europe and fell to low social status.^{[103][104][m]} The situation was somewhat paradoxical: living Romans, in Rome and elsewhere, had a poor reputation, with records of anti-Roman attacks and the use of 'Roman' as an insult, but the name of Rome was also used a source of great and unfailing political power and prestige, employed by many aristocratic families (sometimes proudly proclaiming invented Roman origins) and rulers throughout history.^[103] Through suppressing Roman identity in the lands they ruled and discounting the remaining empire in the east as "Greek", the Frankish state hoped to avoid the possibility of the Roman people proclaiming a Roman emperor in the same way that the Franks proclaimed a Frankish king.^[106]

Reversion to Rome proper

Personifications (left to right) of the Slavic, German, Gallic (French) and Roman peoples, depicted as bringing gifts to Holy Roman Emperor Otto III

The population of the city of Rome continued to identify, and be identified, as Romans by westerners. Although Rome's history was not forgotten, the city's importance in the Middle Ages primarily stemmed from it being the seat of the pope,^[n] a view shared by both westerners and the eastern empire.^[107][108] During the centuries following Justinian's reconquest, when the city was still under imperial control, the population was not specially administered and did not not have any political participation in wider imperial affairs.^[108] When clashing with the emperors, the popes sometimes employed the fact that they had the backing of the populus Romanus ("people of Rome") as a legitimising factor, meaning that the city still endured some ideological importance in terms of Romanness.^[109] Western European authors and intellectuals increasingly associated Romanness only with the city itself.^[107][o] By the second half of the 8th century, westerners almost exclusively used the term to refer to the population of the city.^[108] When the temporal power of the papacy was established through the foundation of the Papal States in the 8th century, the popes used the fact that they were accompanied and supported by the populus Romanus as something that legitimised their sovereignty.^[108]

The Roman populace considered neither the eastern empire nor Charlemagne's new "Holy Roman Empire" to be properly Roman.^[110] Though the continuity from Rome to Constantinople was accepted in the west,^[111] surviving sources point to the easterners being seen as Greeks who had abandoned Rome and Roman identity.^[110] The Carolingian kings on the other hand were seen as having more to do with the Lombard kings of Italy than the ancient Roman emperors.^[111] The medieval Romans also often equated the Franks with the ancient Gauls, and viewed them as aggressive, insolent and vain.^[112] Despite this, the Holy Roman emperors were recognised by the citizens of Rome as true Roman emperors,^[p] albeit only because of their support and coronation by the popes.^[110]

The Franks and other westerners did not view the population of Rome favourably either. Foreign sources are generally hostile, ascribing traits such as unrest and deceit to the Romans and describing them as "as proud as they are helpless". Anti-Roman sentiment lasted throughout the Middle Ages.^[q] The Romans partly owed their bad reputation to sometimes trying to take an independent position towards the popes of the Holy Roman emperors. Given that these rulers were seen as having universal power, the Romans were considered intruders in affairs that exceeded their competence.^[113]

North Africa

Coin of the Vandal king Hilderic (r.  523–530). Reverse depicts Carthage personified and is inscribed Felix Karthago ("fortunate Carthage").

Unlike the other kingdoms, the Vandal Kingdom in North Africa did not maintain a pretense of loyalty to the Roman Empire. Since the term 'Roman' was seen as implying political loyalty to the empire, it was regarded by the Vandal government as politically loaded and suspicious. As a consequence, the Roman population of the kingdom rarely self-identified as such,^[114] though important markers of Romanness, such as Roman naming customs, adherence to Nicene Christianity as well as the Latin-language literary tradition,^[r] survived throughout the kingdom's existence.^[116] Despite objections to 'Roman' as a term for the populace, the Vandals partly appealed to Roman legitimacy to legitimise themselves as rulers, given that the Vandal kings had marriage connections to the imperial Theodosian dynasty. However, the Vandal state more strongly worked to legitimise itself through appealing to the pre-Roman cultural elements of the region, particularly the Carthaginian Empire. Some symbols of the ancient state were revived and the city of Carthage, capital of the kingdom, was heavily emphasised in poetry, on coinage and in the creation of a new "Carthaginian calendar". Coins minted by the Vandals were inscribed with Felix Karthago ("fortunate Carthage") and Carthagine Perpetua ("Carthage eternal").^[117]

The Vandalic promotion of independent African symbols had a profound effect on the formerly Roman populace of their kingdom.^[118] By the time the soldiers of the eastern empire landed in Africa during Justinian's Vandalic War, the Romance people of North Africa had ceased to identify as Romans, instead preferring either Libyans (Libicus) or Punic people (Punicus). Contemporary eastern authors also described them as Libyans (Λίβυες).^[118] During the Vandal Kingdom's brief existence, the Vandal ruling class had culturally and ethnically merged with the Romano-Africans. By the time the kingdom fell, the only real cultural differences between the "Libyans" and "Vandals" were that Vandals adhered to Arian Christianity and were permitted to serve in the army.^[119] After North Africa was reincorporated into the empire, the eastern Roman government deported the Vandals from the region, which shortly thereafter led to disappearance of the Vandals as a distinct group. The only individuals recorded to have been deported were soldiers; given that the wives and children of the "Vandals" thus remained in North Africa, the name at this stage appears to mainly have denoted the soldier class.^[120]

Despite North Africa's reincorporation into the empire, the distinction between "Libyans" and "Romans" (i.e. the inhabitants of the eastern empire) was maintained by both groups. Per the writings of the 6th-century eastern historian Procopius, the Libyans were descended from Romans, ruled by the Romans, and served in the Roman army, but their Romanness had diverged too much from that of the populace of the empire as a result of the century of Vandal rule. Imperial policy reflected the view that the North Africans were no longer Romans. Whereas governors in the eastern provinces were often native to their respective provinces, the military and administrative staff in North Africa was almost entirely constituted by easterners.^[121] The imperial government distrusting the locals was hardly surprising given that imperial troops had been harassed by local (formerly Roman) peasants during the Vandalic War, supportive of the Vandal regime, and that there had been several rebels thereafter, such as Guntarith and Stotzas, who sought to restore an independent kingdom.^[122] The distinction between the Romans and the Romance people of North Africa is also reflected in foreign sources, and the two populations appear to not yet have been reconciled by the time the African provinces fell during the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb and Roman rule was terminated.^[121][s]

Eastern Mediterranean

Survival of the Roman Empire in the east

Coin depicting emperors Constans II (r. 641–668) and Constantine IV (r. 668–685). The coin is inscribed with the Latin phrase Deus adiuta Romanis ("May God help the Romans").

Eastern Mediterranean populations, which remained under Eastern Roman (or "Byzantine") control after the 5th century, retained "Roman" as their predominant identity;^[123] the majority of the population saw themselves as being Roman beyond any doubt and their emperor as ruling from the cultural and religious center of the Roman Empire: Constantinople, the New Rome.^[124] In the centuries when the Byzantine Empire was still a vast Mediterranean-spanning state, Roman identity was more strong in the imperial heartlands than on the peripheries,^[t] though it was also strongly embraced in the peripheral regions in times of uncertainty.^[123][u] As in earlier centuries, the Romans of the early Byzantine Empire were considered a people united by being subjects of the Roman state, rather than a people united through sharing ethnic descent (i.e. gens like those ascribed to different barbarian groups).^[65][v] The term extended to all Christian citizens of the empire, in a general sense referring to those who followed Chalcedonian Christianity and were loyal to the emperor.^[126]

In Byzantine writings up until at least the 12th century, the idea of the Roman "homeland" consistently referred not to Greece or Italy, but to the entire old Roman world.^[127][w] Despite this, the Romans of Byzantium were also aware that their present empire was no longer as powerful as it once had been, and that centuries of warfare and strife had left the Roman Empire reduced in territory and somewhat humbled.^[129]

Given that the rulers of the Byzantine Empire were predominantly Hellenic, and the percentage of the population that was Hellenic became greater as the empire's borders were increasingly reduced, Western Europeans, from as early as the 6th century onwards,^[x] often referred to it as a Greek empire, inhabited by Greeks. To the early Byzantines themselves, up until the 11th century or so, terms such as "Greeks" and "Hellenes" were seen as offensive, as it downplayed their Roman nature and furthermore associated them with the ancient Pagan Greeks rather than the more recent Christian Romans.^[131] The westerners were not unaware of Byzantium's Romanness; when not wishing to distance themselves from the eastern empire, the term Romani was frequently used for soldiers and subjects of the eastern emperors.^[106] From the 6th to 8th century, western authors also sometimes employed terms such as res publica or sancta res publica for the Byzantine Empire, still identifying it with the old Roman Republic. Such references ceased as Byzantine control of Italy and Rome itself crumbled and the Papacy began to use the term for their own, much more regional, domain and sphere of influence.^[109]

After the Muslim conquests

15th-century miniature depicting Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos (r. 1391–1425) and his family. The text titles him as "Emperor and Autocrat of the Romans" and "forever Augustus".

As the Byzantine Empire lost its territories in Egypt, the Levant and Italy, the Christians who lived in those regions ceased to be recognised by the Byzantine government as Romans,^[129] much in the same vein as had happened with the North Africans under Vandal rule.^[118] The decrease in the diversity of peoples recognised as being Roman meant that the term Roman increasingly came to be applied only to the now dominant Hellenic population of the remaining territories, rather than to all imperial citizens.^[129] As the Hellenic populace were united by following Orthodox Christianity, spoke the same Greek language, and believed that they shared a common ethnic origin,^[132] "Roman" (Rhōmaîoi in Greek)^[123] thus gradually transformed into an ethnic identity.^[133] By the late 7th century, Greek, rather than Latin, had begun being referred to in the east as the rhomaisti (Roman way of speaking).^[129] In chronicles written in the 10th century, the Rhōmaîoi begin to appear as just one of the ethnicities in the empire (alongside, for instance, Armenians) and by the late 11th century, there are references in historical writings to people as being "Rhōmaîos by birth", signalling the completion of the transformation of "Roman" into an ethnic description. At this point, "Roman" also began being used for Greek populations outside of the imperial borders, such as to the Greek-speaking Christians under Seljuk rule in Anatolia, who were referred to as Rhōmaîoi despite actively resisting attempts at re-integration by the Byzantine emperors.^[134] Only a handful of late sources retain the old view of a Roman being a citizen of the Roman world.^[133][y]

The capture of Constantinople by the non-Roman Latin crusaders of the Fourth Crusade in 1204 ended the unbroken Roman continuity from Rome to Constantinople. In order to legitimise themselve as Romans in the decades when they no longer controlled Constantinople, the Byzantine elite began to look to other markers of what Romans were. The elites of the Empire of Nicaea, the Byzantine government-in-exile, chiefly looked to Greek cultural heritage and Orthodox Christianity, connecting the contemporary Romans to the ancient Greeks. This contributed to Romanness becoming even more increasingly associated with people who were ethno-culturally Hellenic. Under the Nicene emperors John III (r. 1222–1254) and Theodore II (r. 1254–1258), these ideas were taken further than ever before as they explicitly stated that the present Rhōmaîoi were Hellenes, descendants of the Ancient Greeks.^[135] Though they saw themselves as Hellenic, the Nicene emperors also maintained that they were the only true Roman emperors. "Roman" and "Hellenic" were not viewed as opposing terms, but building blocks of the same double-identity.^[136] During the rule of the Palaiologos dynasty, from the recapture of Constantinople in 1261 to the fall of the empire in 1453, Hellene lost ground as a self-identity, with few known uses of the term, and Rhōmaîoi once again became the dominant term used for self-description.^[137] Some Byzantine authors went as far as to return to using "Hellenic" and "Greek" solely as terms for the ancient pagan Greeks.^[138][z]

After the fall of Constantinople

Ottoman Greeks in Constantinople, painted by Luigi Mayer (1755–1803)

Rhōmaîoi survived the fall of the Byzantine Empire as the primary self-designation of the Christian Greek inhabitants of the new Turkish Ottoman Empire. The popular historical memory of these Romans was not occupied with the glorious past of the Roman Empire of old or the Hellenism in the Byzantine Empire, but focused on legends of the fall and the loss of their Christian homeland and Constantinople. One such narrative was the myth that the last emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos would one day return from the dead to reconquer the city,^[139] a myth that endured in Greek folklore up until the time of the Greek War of Independence (1821–1829) and beyond.^[140]

In the early modern period, many Ottoman Turks, especially those who lived in the cities and were not part of the military or administration, also self-identified as Romans (Rūmī, رومى), as inhabitants of former Byzantine territory.^[141] The term Rūmī had originally been used by Muslims for Christians in general, though later became restricted to just the Byzantines.^[142] After 1453, the term was not only sometimes a Turkish self-identification, but it was also used to refer to Ottoman Turks by other Islamic states and peoples.^[141] The identification of the Ottomans with the Romans was also made outside of the Islamic world. 16th-century Portuguese sources refer to the Ottomans they battled in the Indian Ocean as "rumes"^[143] and the Chinese Ming dynasty referred to the Ottomans as Lumi (魯迷), a transliteration of Rūmī, and to Constantinople as Lumi cheng (魯迷城, "Lumi city").^[144] As applied to Ottoman Turks, Rūmī began to fall out of use at the end of the 17th century, and instead the word increasingly became associated only with the Greek population of the empire, a meaning that it still bears in Turkey today.^[145]

As applied to the Greeks, the self-identity as Romans endured longer, and for a long time there was widespread hope that the Romans would be liberated and that their empire would be restored.^[146][aa] By the time of the Greek War of Independence, the dominant self-identity of the Greeks was still Rhōmaîoi or Romioi.^[147]

Discover more about Later history related topics

Problem of two emperors

Problem of two emperors

The problem of two emperors or two-emperors problem is the historiographical term for the historical contradiction between the idea of the universal empire, that there was only ever one true emperor at any one given time, and the truth that there were often multiple individuals who claimed the position simultaneously. The term is primarily used in regards to medieval European history and often refers to in particular the long-lasting dispute between the Byzantine emperors in Constantinople and the Holy Roman emperors in modern-day Germany and Austria as to which monarch represented the legitimate Roman emperor.

Consular diptych

Consular diptych

In Late Antiquity, a consular diptych was a type of diptych intended as a de-luxe commemorative object. The diptychs were generally in ivory, wood or metal and decorated with rich relief sculpture. A consular diptych was commissioned by a consul ordinarius to mark his entry to that post, and was distributed as a commemorative reward to those who had supported his candidature or might support him in the future.

Roman consul

Roman consul

A consul held the highest elected political office of the Roman Republic, and ancient Romans considered the consulship the second-highest level of the cursus honorum after that of the censor. Each year, the Centuriate Assembly elected two consuls to serve jointly for a one-year term. The consuls alternated in holding fasces – taking turns leading – each month when both were in Rome. A consul's imperium extended over Rome and all its provinces.

Ostrogothic Kingdom

Ostrogothic Kingdom

The Ostrogothic Kingdom, officially the Kingdom of Italy, existed under the control of the Germanic Ostrogoths in Italy and neighbouring areas from 493 to 553.

Justinian I

Justinian I

Justinian I, also known as Justinian the Great, was the Eastern Roman emperor from 527 to 565.

Odoacer

Odoacer

Odoacer, also spelled Odovacer or Odovacar, was a Germanic soldier and statesman of barbarian background, who deposed the Western Roman child emperor Romulus Augustulus and became Rex/Dux of Italy (476–493). Odoacer's overthrow of Romulus Augustulus is traditionally seen as marking the end of the Western Roman Empire as well as Ancient Rome.

Clovis I

Clovis I

Clovis was the first king of the Franks to unite all of the Frankish tribes under one ruler, changing the form of leadership from a group of petty kings to rule by a single king and ensuring that the kingship was passed down to his heirs. He is considered to have been the founder of the Merovingian dynasty, which ruled the Frankish kingdom for the next two centuries.

Roman Senate

Roman Senate

The Roman Senate was a governing and advisory assembly in ancient Rome. It was one of the most enduring institutions in Roman history, being established in the first days of the city of Rome. It survived the overthrow of the Roman monarchy in 509 BC; the fall of the Roman Republic in the 1st century BC; the division of the Roman Empire in AD 395; and the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476; Justinian's attempted reconquest of the west in the 6th century, and lasted well into the Eastern Roman Empire's history.

Lombards

Lombards

The Lombards or Langobards were a Germanic people who ruled most of the Italian Peninsula from 568 to 774.

Constantinople

Constantinople

Constantinople became the de facto capital of the Roman Empire upon its founding in 330, and became the de jure capital in AD 476 after the fall of Ravenna and the Western Roman Empire. It remained the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, the Latin Empire (1204–1261), and the Ottoman Empire (1453–1922). Following the Turkish War of Independence, the Turkish capital then moved to Ankara. Officially renamed Istanbul in 1930, the city is today the largest city and financial centre of the Republic of Turkey (1923–present). It is also the largest city in Europe.

Jutes

Jutes

The Jutes, Iuti, or Iutæ were one of the Germanic tribes who settled in Great Britain after the departure of the Romans. According to Bede, they were one of the three most powerful Germanic nations, along with the Angles and the Saxons:Those who came over were of the three most powerful nations of Germany—Saxons, Angles, and Jutes. From the Jutes are descended the people of Kent, and of the Isle of Wight, and those also in the province of the West Saxons who are to this day called Jutes, seated opposite to the Isle of Wight.

Angles

Angles

The Angles were one of the main Germanic peoples who settled in Great Britain in the post-Roman period. They founded several kingdoms of the Heptarchy in Anglo-Saxon England. Their name is the root of the name England. According to Tacitus, writing around 100 AD, a people known as Angles (Anglii) lived east of the Lombards and Semnones, who lived near the Elbe river.

Proclamation in 1849 of the Roman Republic in Piazza del Popolo, Rome

The citizens of the city of Rome, though identifying nationally and ethnically as Italians, continue to identify with the demonym 'Roman' to this day. Rome is the most populous city in Italy with the city proper being home to about 2.8 million citizens and the Rome metropolitan area to over four million people.^[148] Since the collapse of Roman political dominion, governments inspired by the ancient Roman Republic have been revived in the city four times. The earliest such government was the Commune of Rome in the 12th century, founded as opposition towards the temporal powers of the Pope, which was followed by the government of Cola di Rienzo, who used the titles of 'tribune' and 'senator', in the 14th century, a sister republic to revolutionary France in the 18th century, which restored the office of Roman consul, and finally as the short-lived Roman Republic in 1849, with a government based on the triumvirates of ancient Rome.^{[149][150][151]}

Roman self-identification among Greeks only began losing ground with the Greek War of Independence, when multiple factors saw the name 'Hellene' rise to replace it. Among these factors were that names such as "Hellene", "Hellas" and "Greece" were already in use for the country and its people by the other nations in Europe, the absence of the old Byzantine government to reinforce Roman identity, and the term Romioi becoming associated with those Greeks still under Ottoman rule rather than those actively fighting for independence. Thus, in the eyes of the independence movement, a Hellene was a brave and rebellious freedom fighter while a Roman was an idle slave under the Ottomans.^[152][153] The new Hellenic national identity was heavily focused on the cultural heritage of ancient Greece rather than medieval Byzantium, though adherence to Orthodox Christianity remained an important aspect of Greek identity.^[154] An identity re-oriented towards ancient Greece also worked in Greece's favour internationally. In Western Europe, the Greek War of Independence saw large-scale support owing to philhellenism, a sense of "civilisational debt" to the world of classical antiquity, rather than any actual interest in the modern country. Despite the modern Greeks bearing more resemblance to the medieval Byzantines than the Greeks of the ancient world, public interest in the revolt elsewhere in Europe hinged almost entirely on sentimental and intellectual attachments to a romanticised version of ancient Greece. Comparable uprisings against the Ottomans by other peoples in the Balkans, such as the First Serbian Uprising (1804–1814), had been almost entirely ignored in Western Europe.^[155]

Many Greeks, particularly those outside the then newly founded Greek state, continued to refer to themselves as Romioi well into the 20th century.^[ab] What Greek identity ought to be remained unresolved for a long time. As late as the 1930s, more than a century of the war of independence, Greek artists and authors still debated the contribution of Greece to European culture, and whether it should derive from a romantic fascination with classical antiquity, a nationalist dream of a restored Byzantine Empire, the strong oriental influence from the centuries of Ottoman rule or if it should be something entirely new, or "Neohellenic", reminding Europe that there was not only an ancient Greece, but also a modern one.^[157] The modern Greek people still sometimes use Romioi to refer to themselves, as well as the term "Romaic" ("Roman") to refer to their Modern Greek language.^[158] Roman identity also survives prominently in some of the Greek populations outside of Greece itself. For instance, Greeks in Ukraine, settled there as part of Catherine the Great's Greek Plan in the 18th century, maintain Roman identity, designating themselves as Rumaioi.^[159] The term Rum or Rumi also sees continued usage by Turks and Arabs as a religious term for followers of the Greek Orthodox Church, not only those of Greek ethnicity.^[160]

Language map of Switzerland, with regions speaking French (Romandy) in blue and Romansh in green

The vast majority of the Romance peoples that descended from the intermingling of Romans and Germanic peoples following the collapse of Roman political unity in the west diverged into groups that no longer identify as Romans. In the Alpine regions north of Italy however, Roman identity showed considerable tenacity.^[15] The Romansh people of Switzerland are descended from these populations,^[15][161] which in turn were descended from Romanised Rhaetians.^[161] Though most of the Romans of the region were assimilated by the Germanic tribes that settled there during the 5th and 6th centuries, the people who resisted assimilation became the Romansh people. In their own, Romansh language, they are called rumantsch or romontsch, which derives from the Latin romanice ("Romance").^[161] Roman identity also survives in the Romands, the French-speaking community of Switzerland, and their homeland, Romandy, which covers the western part of the country.^[162]

In some regions, the Germanic word for the Romans (also used for western neighbours in general), walhaz, became an ethnonym, although it is in many cases only attested centuries after the end of Roman rule in said regions. The term walhaz is the origin of the modern term 'Welsh', i.e. the people of Wales, and of the historical exonym 'Vlach', which was used through the Middle Ages and the Modern Period for various Balkan Romance peoples.^[13] As endonyms, Roman identification was maintained by several Balkan Romance peoples. Prominently, the Romanians call themselves români and their nation România.^[163] How and when the Romanians came to adopt these names is not entirely clear,^[ac] but one theory is the idea of Daco-Roman continuity, that the modern Romanians are descended from Daco-Romans that came about as a result of Roman colonisation following the conquest of Dacia by Trajan (r. 98–117).^[165] The Aromanians, also of unclear origin, refer to themselves by various names, including arumani, armani, aromani and rumani, all of which are etymologically derived from the Latin Rōmānī.^[166] The Istro-Romanians sometimes identify as rumeri or similar terms, though these names have lost strength and Istro-Romanians often identify with their native villages instead.^[167] The Megleno-Romanians also identified as rumâni in the past, though this name was mostly replaced in favour of the term vlasi centuries ago.^[168] Vlasi is derived from "Vlach",^[168] in turn deriving from walhaz.^[13]

Discover more about Modern identity related topics

Legacy of the Roman Empire

Legacy of the Roman Empire

The legacy of the Roman Empire has been varied and significant, comparable to that of other hegemonic polities of world history.

Piazza del Popolo

Piazza del Popolo

Piazza del Popolo is a large urban square in Rome. The name in modern Italian literally means "People's Square", but historically it derives from the poplars after which the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, in the northeast corner of the piazza, takes its name.

Italians

Italians

Italians are a Romance ethnic group native to the Italian geographical region and its neighboring insular territories. Italians share a common culture, history, ancestry and language. Their predecessors differ regionally, but include the ancient Greeks in Magna Graecia, the Etruscans in northern Italy and, most notably, the Romans in central Italy, who helped create and evolved into the modern Italian identity. Legally, Italian nationals are citizens of Italy, regardless of ancestry or nation of residence and may be distinguished from ethnic Italians in general or from people of Italian descent without Italian citizenship and ethnic Italians living in territories adjacent to the Italian peninsula without Italian citizenship. The Latin equivalent of the term Italian had been in use for natives of the geographical region since antiquity.

Commune of Rome

Commune of Rome

The Commune of Rome was established in 1144 after a rebellion led by Giordano Pierleoni. Pierleoni led a people's revolt due to the increasing powers of the Pope and the entrenched powers of the nobility. The goal of the rebellion was to organize the government of Rome in a similar fashion to that of the previous Roman Republic. Pierleoni was named the "first Patrician of the Roman Commune", but was deposed in 1145.

Cola di Rienzo

Cola di Rienzo

Nicola Gabrini, commonly known as Cola di Rienzo or Rienzi, was an Italian politician and leader, who styled himself as the "tribune of the Roman people".

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity, that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically related city-states and other territories. Most of these regions were officially unified only once, for 13 years, under Alexander the Great's empire from 336 to 323 BC. In Western history, the era of classical antiquity was immediately followed by the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine period.

Philhellenism

Philhellenism

Philhellenism was an intellectual movement prominent mostly at the turn of the 19th century. It contributed to the sentiments that led Europeans such as Lord Byron and Charles Nicolas Fabvier to advocate for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire.

First Serbian Uprising

First Serbian Uprising

The First Serbian Uprising was an uprising of Serbs in Orašac against the Ottoman Empire from 14 February 1804 to 7 October 1813. Initially, a local revolt against renegade janissaries who had seized power through a coup, it evolved into a war for independence after more than three centuries of Ottoman rule and short-lasting Austrian occupations.

Greeks

Greeks

The Greeks or Hellenes are an ethnic group and nation native to Greece, Cyprus, southern Albania, Anatolia, parts of Italy and Egypt, and to a lesser extent, other countries surrounding the Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea. They also form a significant diaspora, with many Greek communities established around the world.

Modern Greek

Modern Greek

Modern Greek, generally referred to by speakers simply as Greek, refers collectively to the dialects of the Greek language spoken in the modern era, including the official standardized form of the languages sometimes referred to as Standard Modern Greek. The end of the Medieval Greek period and the beginning of Modern Greek is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic features of the modern language arose centuries earlier, beginning around the fourth century AD.

Catherine the Great

Catherine the Great

Catherine II, most commonly known as Catherine the Great, was the reigning empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796. She came to power after overthrowing her husband, Peter III. Under her long reign, inspired by the ideas of the Enlightenment, Russia experienced a renaissance of culture and sciences, which led to the founding of many new cities, universities, and theatres, along with large-scale immigration from the rest of Europe and the recognition of Russia as one of the great powers of Europe.

Greek Plan

Greek Plan

The Greek Plan or Greek Project was an early solution to the Eastern Question which was advanced by Catherine the Great in the early 1780s. It envisaged the partition of the Ottoman Empire between the Russian and Habsburg Empires followed by the restoration of the Eastern Roman Empire centered in Constantinople.