Did Italians exist as an ethnic entity while the Roman empire existed?

Did Italians exist as an ethnic entity while the Roman empire existed?

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no

Nope

Latins did. But Italians are a descendant group of Latins so its impossible for them to exist simultaneously.

No, also Southern and Northern Italians are very different people

>Italians
No. Just like you don't call a frenchman a celt or a frank, you shouldn't call the ancient italics italian, because you're straining the concept of ethnicity.
The main ancestry of modern italians were the italics, a group of strongly related tribes descending from a same population, speaking related languages, sharing a similar gene pool, and they had a pretty good idea of their cultural closeness and mutual belonging. They could be considered an ethnic entity more or less on the same level as the gauls, and populated Italy between the second and the first millennium BC.
During roman times, the italics were seen as romans by outsiders (in the same vein as all europeans being franks to the arabs during the crusades), and by the time of the empire, the whole italian peninsula had melded into one ethnic group (aside from some greek cities in the south, that pretty much stayed greek until the middle ages). Romans from Italy were seen as pretty much their own thing during the empire, compared to iberians, gauls, germans, greeks, etc.
After the fall of the empire, the concept of Italy persisted, but political fragmentation created distance between the regions, large enough that you could argue they went back to being a group of strongly related people (with pretty much no relation to the previous tribal divisions, mind you).

That map makes no sense desu.
>Did Italians exist as an ethnic entity while the Roman empire existed?
"Italics" was a term, but one that described tribes that were considered different. Which is to say, it wasn't an identity.

Etruscans, Osciana, Sicels, Siceliots, Elimi, Veneti, Piceni, Latini, Dauni, Celts, Sardi, Liguri, Umbri, Raeti.

Yeah no

...

Italians do not even exist today. Only the terroni are "italian" so to say.

Italics are to this day a group like Slavs or Germanics i.e. several ethnic groups under one larger ethno-lingustic and cultural umbrella. Look how far apart Northern Italians are from Southern Italians. Italy just did a good job uniting most Italics into the Italian nation-state.

>Only the terroni are "italian" so to say.
>Italian unification came from Piedmont in the North while the South was conquered by force and kept rebelling years after

What did self-hating Italians mean by this?

I don't think Italians exist as an ethnic entity today.

I am Roman, I spreak Roman, my religion is Roman

I am Greek.

So why do Italians claim to be Romans?

No

>Italians claim to be Romans
[citation needed]
Italians claim to be the most direct descendants of the romans, which is essentially true.

The Roman empire existed for centuries. Identity was constantly changing but in general more and more people took a Roman/Latin identity. First only people from and around Rome were considered Romans, then descendants of the Italian tribes (Samnites, Etruscans etc.), then romanized people from the first provinces etc.

No. There were Italic people, but they spoke diffrent languages, also North Italy was more Celtic and South Italy was Greek.

>I don't think Italians exist as an ethnic entity today.
If you can say Germans exist as an ethnic entity, then so can Italians.
D'Azeglio was right when he said that, but in the 150 years that followed the government went for the extirpation of local languages and culture, and largely succeeded. We might not like it, but the truth is that we're all italians larping as pre-unitarian cultures as much as we can. Kids learn italian first, and local languages a bit from their grandparents.

Some Italians are natives of Rome.

South Italy was Italic and Greek, Central Italy had Italics and Etruscans, North Italy had Italics (Veneti), Celts, Liguri (maybe Italics) and Raeti who were pre and spoke a language akin to Etruscan

Sicily had Sicels and Elimi (Italics), Sicani (Pre IE) and Siceliots (Greeks)

Sardinians spoke Punic and their pre IE language

This was the situation before the Roman republic absorbed all of them

>Sardinians spoke Punic
You mean Sardinia had a few punic colonies. They certainly weren't more than a small minority on the island.

Sardinia had a dozen Phoenician cities

>"cities"
Considering the time period and the levels of urbanization implied, that basically means they had a sub 5% presence on the island.

Italian are a meme people

Northern Italians are more related to French and Swiss, while Southern Italians are more related to Greeks.

Considering Greek colonists were able to Hellenize the Island, I can't see why Carthegenians wouldn't be able to do the same with Sardinia.

They were certainly cities

Greeks actually colonized the island extensively over more than 600 years and in various waves.
Carthaginians only set up trade posts to barter with the already established locals, and their presence lasted less than 300 years.
When the romans conquered both island they also threw the carths the fuck out, whereas they tolerated the greeks.

Cities by the standards of the period. It just deosn't mean much when you have a rate of urbanization around 5%.

>less than 300 years

The first colony in the island (Sulci) was set up in the late 9th century bc, the inhabitants might have been mostly locals but the culture and language they spoke were Phoenician

Romans never threw Carthaginian out of the island, the massacred the inland populations who were rebellious but most of the cities didn't fight against them and were left alone

"Italian culture" (ie: pasta, mafia, ostentation, graseness, yelling, etc) is a south-of-the-Po stuff

What about opera, Roman Catholicism, literature, philosophy, classical music, exports?

Kek

""""Italian""""" amerishits are not italian and should all be exterminated

The phoenicians never left much of a genetic landmark on the island, also, while the Iliens were genocided in mass by the romans, they still managed to reproduce and rebelling well into imperial period

The culture was a synchretism between nuragic and phoenician, the language spoken was punic but only in those cities

I don't know if the italians existed, but sardinians did and still exist today
Take that roman homos we outlived both you and carthage

Because their ancestors built the Roman civilization

no
>ethnic entities in antiquity
a thing maybe, but not in the modern way you're thinking

>you are born and raised in the city of Rome
>Durr what should they call you?

You know Rome isn't just a ruin right?

Italy is largely a geographic concept. Kinda like if Spain and France shared a single country, if the capital was Paris, would that make Spanish a type of French?

That itself is a meme. The difference between southern and northern Italians is smaller than the difference between southern and northern Germans, genetically. They're far closer to being one people than just about any other group on the continent.

>Italy is largely a geographic concept.
No more than Spain or France are.

Dunno about France but "Spanish" is also a meme nationality
Castilian isn't

Absolutely. In Africa.

>Outlived Carthage

Everyone outlived Cartage, senpai

French is a meme nationality, it was a genuine one before the """""""French""""""" Revolution; but now it just mean someone holding a French citizenship, so half of Africa is French.

Sed nunc Italiam magnam Gryneus Apollo,
Italiam Lyciae iussere capessere sortes;
hic amor, haec patria est.

Apart from ancient iranians and punics and non jewish semites

>which is essentially true.
Not really. They're not any any more directly descendant than any other Romance speaking European country and there's an argument that could be made for former Byzantine provinces to have an even more direct descent.

what do you mean?

Kek, WE WUZ (TUSCANS, VENETIANS, NEAPOLITANS, GENOVESE, etc) N SHIET!!!

all those ancient people that died?

This. The Earth is missing so many NPCs compared to when it started.

oh ok and askhenazis arent semitic
what NPC mean?

NPCs = non-playable characters
Twas' a joke.

ok, thanks

Italy was a special region in the Empire, the aristocratic class of the Empire hailed disproportionately from Italy and was at least of Italian descent, Italian dialects are the closest to Latin of all the Roman languages. Italian ethnic composition is the closest to the same ancient Italian people that composed the backbone of the imperial power.

>In b4 Caracalla meme argument

my city is in that map :D

there wasnt such thing as italy back then
>Italian ethnic composition is the closest to the same ancient Italian
not after germanic invasion

>impying germanics influenced the italian genetic pool that much

wrong and wrong.

>Italian dialects are the closest to Latin of all the Roman languages
No.

Yes.

No. You can't even properly measure such a thing. No actual linguist backs you up on this.

Nonsensical. There is phonological comparisons, vocabulary and grammar. There are studies about it.

The province of Italia was definitely a thing and no, there was never enough germanics in Italy to make any meaningful change to the genepool.

Stop talking out of your ass.

>There are studies about it.
No. It's completely nonsensical and retarded to claim that any one romance language is closer to Latin than any of the others.

The closest language (grammatically) to Latin is Romanian, phonetically it is Sardinian. Italo-Dalmatian languages are not that close from Latin.

Feudally or imperially based nationalities are memes. Even modern constructed nationalism carries more weight than that shit like Italian or Spanish.

Wrong
Romanian has cases, that's it.
I suppose you are confirming my claim with the rest of your post.

France was memed into nationhood during the revolution. Before that only ~30% of the population actually spoke french.

The Roman state existed for over 1000 years. How romans, latins, and italians saw themselves ethnically changed dramatically over its existance. /thread

>France was memed into nationhood during the revolution
Extremely wrong

The Kike Revolution killed our nation


>Before that only ~30% of the population actually spoke french
Wrong

French was spoken by 60-70% of the population, and that's because only French spoke it, and not lowly Basques, Bregnoules, Occitans, and so on

These are dumbest posts on Veeky Forums right now.

This. Italy is the worst of the European blobs.
Germany, Spain, France and the UK are all empires full of different european peoples, but Italy is the most diverse and pretends the most to be one whole and is the most centralized.

What the fuck is Italo-Dalmatian?

>Italics (Veneti)

Central Italian aka Italo-Dalmatian
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italo-Dalmatian_languages

Idk, why do American niggers claim to be Egyptians?

that is thanks to a white man that said ancient egyptians were black

...

Romans are Latins, so people from Latina are the same as the Romans.
Hold on are Italian-Americans = Latin-American?

Are you one of those dumbass slovenians peddling the veneti=wends idiocy?
Everything about venetic culture points to them being italics. Even their contemporaries, the romans, considered them a related people.
Slavs only have Herodotus naming the eneti (no v) among illyrian tribes and the naming similarity, but hey pro tip: the IE word *wen is the single most commonly used root for tribe names, used in literally every single offshoot of the IE language family. You're gonna have a hard time justifying them being all the same in spite of gigantic differences in temporal/geographic location and no common culture beyond general IE stuff.

I don't know why there are so many of them. What is their purpose? What are they trying to achieve? Is it just being delusional?

>Romanian has cases, that's it.
Languages change at pretty much the same speed, just not in the same areas. modern Romanian is just as removed from Latin as modern Italian is.

Considering it's mostly slovenians, it's likely just their best shot at wewuzzism. They can't really wewuz Austria or Croatia because it invalidates them as a separate country, but Venetians are relatively up for grabs.