Did Romans look like modern day Italians?

Factual Questions
41

As for the “Shakespeare had patricians speaking in BBC english, and lower classes speaking in Cockney”, well, that’s just wrong. There was no Cockney then, of course. And there are no stage directions in Shakespeare’s plays.

It is true that British dramas often use accent to show class distinctions, just watch the BBC’s “I, Claudius”. The Roman aristocracy had a different accent than Roman plebes. So having the actors playing aristocrats use aristocratic English accents, and the actors playing plebes use downscale accents is justified.

In Hollywood movies, we usually give the aristocrats English accents, and the plebes American accents. Except if the hero is an aristocrat then he gets an American accent too, even if the actor is really Australian.

The point of all this is, in many parts of the world it is easy to tell someone’s social origin by the way they talk. And Rome was no different. If you grew up in the gutters in the city of Rome, or on the Palatine Hill, your accent will betray your social class.

42

No brain?

43

All true, but my post addressed the claim that “Romans, when referring to themselves, used the -o ending.”

44

Whah? It’s not even called “China” now, in China. Zhong Guo, or “middle kingdom” is the more traditional name that has been in use for centuries/millenia. The various dynasties used different formal names, and what constitutes “China” has shifted many times over the years. There is no “Chinese” ethnicity, but Han is the most common among dozens of others.

45

Brains are meat, dear.

Brrraaaaaaiiiiiins!

46

There were a group of related languages spoken on the peninsula, which modern scholars class as Italic. Since the peninsula was termed Italia, probably “lingua Italiana” would have been clear in meaning “speech of Italia”, but would comprise a group of related languages, like Slavic or Celtic, not one individual language.

47

The women were mostly unattractive. Around Roman clubs in those days you hardly ever saw an VIII or a IX.

48

Bravo, sir. Bravo.

49

There are several points to be made about the linguistic questions here, but the key point to resolving the question is in the physical ethnography of Italy then and now.

By Roman times, Sicily and the coastal areas of southern Italy were largely Greek in ethnic origin, admixed with indigenous tribes. The Etruscans had been absorbed into the Italic population occupying the middle and north of the peninsula proper. The area around modern Venice was occupied by the Veneti, which were historically considered an outgroup of the Italic people. The Alpine areas and neighboring lowlands were Rhaetians, an ancient group whose affinities are debated. In the northwest, roughly the Piedmont, Celts predominated.

The modern population is largely but not totally descended from these people. Three waves of Germanic invaders descended on Italy: the Gepids, the Ostrogoths, and the Lombards. While they were a ruling minority, and their languages vanished, their genes remained. Likewise, Sicily was for several centuries held by the Arabs. Both immigration to Rome as metropolis of the Empire and a variety of small groups also modified the populace: Albanians in Apulia, Catalans and Savoyards in Sardinia, Savoyards in Piedmont, etc.

Language wise, the points above are valid but incomplete. First, in Classical Latin the vocative outside second declension -us and -ius nouns was identical to the nominative. While Marcus might be addressed as Marce, Julia would be Julia, Clemens Clemens.

However, it must be remembered that what we know as Classic Latin was the formal written register of the language. There was also a colloquial register, which became the dominant form in Late Latin and its Romance descendants, and forms like Marco, Clemente and caballo for the nominative were typical of its use. It coexisted with the formal register in much the same way as formal written English and colloquial and dialectal forms do today. It would no more show up in the ornate prose or poetry of Cicero or Virgil than “I haven’t got a lot of that junk” would show up in a formal business context – but would be as common as English colloquialisms.

50

Along the same lines, Google Translate yields: “Frater, abstinete meus ‘junk’.”

51

It seems their brains are made of meat.

52

Back by popular demand, I will address some of the comments.

First, someone above made the good point that I may have lessened the impact of my original post with 9 valid points and 1 dog. Or 8 valid points and 2 dogs. If that is so, I apologize to the Truth. Because the Truth ought to come out, regardless of me screwing up a point or two. The rest of my points, however, remain valid.

The bottom line is: to believe the Nordicist’s conception of Ancient Greeks and Romans, one has to believe the following:

  1. Ancient Greeks (i.e., say 1000 BC to 1 BC) were blonde, blue-eyed, and fair before historical miscegenation events (i.e., the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire, which lasted until 1918 A.D. and ruled Greece for quite some time).

  2. Ancient Romans (i.e., say 500 BC to 400 A.D., using very round numbers) were blonde, blue-eyed, and fair, before they imported so darn many Greek slaves.

Do you see the inherent invalidity in those statements? The very people who claim Ancient Romans were fair and Nordic looking also claim that Ancient Greeks were fair and Nordic looking. The explanation those people give for why the Romans no longer look as fair as they used to is that the Romans mixed with large number of Greeks, i.e., Ancient Greeks, the same people that these uh, not so bright people claim were also fair and Nordic looking.

Think about it. The theory is simply untenable.

Next!

I always laugh at those who talk about how statutes of Romans “look.” First of all, you cannot tell coloring from a statue. Statutes of Augustus make him look like any Caucasian. A long face and a big nose. Some people purport he looks Nordic. Yet the sources that describe him also state that his eyebrows met above his nose, i.e., that he had a unibrow. Know any blondes with unibrows? Didn’t think so.

You can’t tell coloring from a statue.

Secondly, and here is the biggest point: Roman statues were IDEALIZED. That is, they made folks look like they had more regular features than they had. Now I’m not saying that Italians are ugly or anything. But by and large, they have bigger noses and bigger jaws than more Northern populations. The statues tend to reduce these things to go for a more uniform, idealized look. If you don’t know this, you’ve never studied Art History. Ah well.

Finally, I challenge folks to Google statues of “pure” Romans such as Portius Cato and Marcus Agrippa. They are indistinguishable from any average Southern Italian you might see, today when it comes to facial shape and facial features. Imagine the statutes with brown hair. You have a modern Italian. Plain and simple.

Next!

On to the Latin point. One poster above made the excellent point about slang and how that would result in people to start calling Marcus “Marco” and Julius “Julio.” Another poster explicated on my point. Thanks. In case I wasn’t clear, my point was simple: we in America and Britain are raised on movies where Romans are called by English names, i.e. not their proper Latin or Latin slang or Latin informal or Italian pronunciation. We get used to “Ju-Lee-Uss See-Zer” played by an old British guy with an English accent.

This tends to make people picture Romans in their minds eye differently from who they were: an Italian culture, speaking the forerunner of Romance languages. I repeat: Augustus was “short, with a unibrow.” Caesar had “eyes so dark they were like the sea at night.” And they didn’t speak in British accents, for God’s sake!

All genetic evidence indicates that modern Italians have no more of the stereotypical admixture than other populations. Indeed, the percentage of Sicilian mitochondrial DNA from Africa is less than the percentage of British mitochondrial DNA from Africa. (Both numbers or trivial).

Someone also asked about Italian towns escaping invasion. Sorry, but I thought that was a lame question. Need I really explain (to use modern America as an imperfect analogy) that nuclear weapons might be pointed at New York and Los Angeles, but that Podunk, Kansas might escape a war if there was one?

There are TONS of examples of towns in Italy that were:

(1) Founded by Romans during the late Republic (during “pure” times)
(2) Never invaded
(3) Never repopulated in a large scale

In these towns, you can see for yourself the descendants of the Romans. (I’m guessing that the ones who asked this question have never been to Europe.)

Now, some of these might have been RULED over by a foreign sovereign at some point, but were SO backwater, that there was not mass migration. How about Venosa/Venusia, Rossano, the small towns around Benevento, etc. There are thousands. If a town was founded by Roman colonists but remained a backwater two-mule town with c. 3000 residents, it wasn’t a center of the slave trade, immigration, or a plumb that foreigners coveted. Visit those towns. You’ll see they have brown hair and brown eyes.

Back by popular demand, I will address some of the comments.

First, someone above made the good point that I may have lessened the impact of my original post with 9 valid points and 1 dog. Or 8 valid points and 2 dogs. If that is so, I apologize to the Truth. Because the Truth ought to come out, regardless of me screwing up a point or two. The rest of my points, however, remain valid.

The bottom line is: to believe the Nordicist’s conception of Ancient Greeks and Romans, one has to believe the following:

  1. Ancient Greeks (i.e., say 1000 BC to 1 BC) were blonde, blue-eyed, and fair before historical miscegenation events (i.e., the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire, which lasted until 1918 A.D. and ruled Greece for quite some time).

  2. Ancient Romans (i.e., say 500 BC to 400 A.D., using very round numbers) were blonde, blue-eyed, and fair, before they imported so darn many Greek slaves.

Do you see the inherent invalidity in those statements? The very people who claim Ancient Romans were fair and Nordic looking also claim that Ancient Greeks were fair and Nordic looking. The explanation those people give for why the Romans no longer look as fair as they used to is that the Romans mixed with large number of Greeks, i.e., Ancient Greeks, the same people that these uh, not so bright people claim were also fair and Nordic looking.

Think about it. The theory is simply untenable.

Next!

I always laugh at those who talk about how statutes of Romans “look.” First of all, you cannot tell coloring from a statue. Statutes of Augustus make him look like any Caucasian. A long face and a big nose. Some people purport he looks Nordic. Yet the sources that describe him also state that his eyebrows met above his nose, i.e., that he had a unibrow. Know any blondes with unibrows? Didn’t think so.

You can’t tell coloring from a statue.

Secondly, and here is the biggest point: Roman statues were IDEALIZED. That is, they made folks look like they had more regular features than they had. Now I’m not saying that Italians are ugly or anything. But by and large, they have bigger noses and bigger jaws than more Northern populations. The statues tend to reduce these things to go for a more uniform, idealized look. If you don’t know this, you’ve never studied Art History. Ah well.

Finally, I challenge folks to Google statues of “pure” Romans such as Portius Cato and Marcus Agrippa. They are indistinguishable from any average Southern Italian you might see, today when it comes to facial shape and facial features. Imagine the statutes with brown hair. You have a modern Italian. Plain and simple.

53

:dubious: My understanding of Roman sculpture is that it was the opposite of what you assert. Roman sculpture was known for its more realistic approach, especially compared to Greek sculpture.

Take a look at this bust of Cato the elder, it doesn’t look very idealized.

I think that the ancient Romans were very similar in appearance to the modern Italians once you take clothing, hair styles and other such matters into account.

I would point out that you see quite a few blondes in Italy and light colored eyes weren’t uncommon either then or now.

54

You want a couple of tissues after all that?