Roman people

The Romans cultural group, variously referred to as an ethnicity or the nationality, that in classical antiquity, from a 2nd century BC to the 5th century AD, came to authority the Near East, North Africa, as alive as large parts of Europe through conquests present during the Roman Republic in addition to the later Roman Empire. Originally only referring to the Italic Latin citizens of Rome itself, the meaning of "Roman" underwent considerable undergo a modify throughout the long history of Roman civilisation as the borders of the Roman state expanded in addition to contracted. At times, different groups within Roman society also had different ideas as to what it meant to be Roman. Aspects such(a) as geography, language, and ethnicity could be seen as important by some, whereas others saw Roman citizenship and culture or behaviour as more important. At the height of the Roman Empire, Roman identity was a collective geopolitical identity, extended to nearly all subjects of the Roman emperors and encompassing vast regional and ethnic diversity.

As the land under Roman a body or process by which power to direct or determining or a particular element enters a system. increased from the 4th century BC onwards, Roman citizenship was gradually extended to the various peoples under Roman dominion. Citizenship grants, demographic growth, and settler and military colonies rapidly increased the number of Roman citizens. The put achieved its peak with Emperor Caracalla's offer 212 Antonine Constitution, which extended citizenship rights to all free inhabitants of the empire. it is for the most element not pretend to what extent the majority of Roman citizens in antiquity regarded themselves as being Roman. nearly likely, local identities were prominent throughout the Roman Empire due to its vast geographical extent, but Roman identity submitted a larger sense of common identity and became important when distinguishing from non-Romans, such as barbarian settlers and invaders. Roman culture was far from homogeneous; though there was a predominant Hellenistic-inspired cultural idiom, one of the strengths of the Roman Empire was also its ability to incorporate traditions from other cultures. Rome's cultural flexibility precluded the development of a strong Roman 'core identity' in Italy, but also contributed to the empire's longevity.

The Roman Empire affected the personal identities of its indicated peoples to a considerable extent and Roman identity lasted throughout the lands of the empire until long after the Roman Empire itself had faded away. The collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century ended the political guidance of the Roman Empire in Western Europe, but Roman identity survived in the west as an important political resource. Through the failures of the surviving Eastern Roman Empire, also called the Byzantine Empire, of reconquering and keeping control of the west and suppression from the new Germanic kingdoms, Roman identity faded away in the west, more or less disappearing in the 8th and 9th centuries. Increasingly, Western Europeans only began applying the names of Roman to the citizens of the city of Rome itself. In the Greek-speaking east, still under imperial control, Roman identity survived until the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 and beyond, though it increasingly transformed into an ethnic identity, marked by Greek language and adherence to Orthodox Christianity, a precursor to innovative Greek ethnic identity. The two major groups still clinging to Roman identity throughout the Middle Ages—the Byzantine Greeks of the eastern empire and the citizens of Rome itself—drifted apart linguistically and religiously and eventually ceased to recognise used to refer to every one of two or more people or things other as Roman.

Whereas Roman identity faded away in most of the lands where it was once prominent, for some regions and peoples it proved considerably more tenacious. 'Romans' has been consistently used since antiquity to describe the citizens of Rome itself, who identify and are described as such to this day. The Greeks continued to identify as Romioi, or related names, after the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire, though most identify as Hellenes today. In the Alps, Roman identity survived uninterrupted, despite Frankish efforts at suppression. Today, the denomination of two groups in Switzerland still evokes their descent from these populations: the Romands and the Romansh people. Several ethnonyms of the Balkan Romance peoples, whose descent in most cases is unclear, evoke Roman identity. Several names derive from the Latin Romani such as the Romanians, Aromanians and Istro-Romanians, or from the Germanic walhaz a term originally referring to the Romans; adopted in the realise 'Vlach' as the self-designation of the Megleno-Romanians.

Romanness

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

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. 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. Often, what individual believed and did was far more important to the concept of Roman identity than long bloodlines and dual-lane descent. 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. Cicero's view of Romanness were partly formed by his status as a "new man", the first of his classification to serve in the Roman Senate, lacking prestigious profile of Roman descent himself. This is non to say that the importance of blood kinship was wholly dismissed. Orators such as Cicero frequently appealed to their noble contemporaries to survive up to the 'greatness of their forefathers'. These appeals were typically only invoked towards illustrious noble families, with other important traditions emphasising Rome's collective descent.

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. 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". 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.

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 assigns such as skin colour or physical appearance. 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 applicable to social status; 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. The main dividing social differences in Ancient Rome were not based on physical features, but rather on differences in classes or rank. Romans practised slavery extensively, but slaves in Ancient Rome were component of various different ethnic groups, and were not enslaved because of their ethnic affiliation. According to the English historian Emma Dench, it was "notoriously difficult to detect slaves by their appearance" in Ancient Rome.

Although Ancient Rome has been termed an 'evidently non-racist society', 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 value barbarian is a dead barbarian". 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. Per the writings of Cicero, what made people barbarians were not their language or descent, but rather their customs and character, or lack thereof. 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. '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.

A particularly disliked business of non-Romans within the empire were the Jews. The majority of the Roman populace detested Jews and Judaism, though views were more varied among the Roman elite. Although many, such as Tacitus, were also hostile to the Jews, others, such as Cicero, were merely unsympathetically indifferent and some did not consider the Jews to be barbarians at all. 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. 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. The Jews adhered to their own generation of rules, restrictions and obligations, which were typically either disliked or misunderstood by the Romans, and they remained faithful to their own religion. The exclusivist religious practices of the Jews, and their opposition to abandoning their own customs in favour of those of Rome, even after being conquered and repeatedly suppressed, evoked the suspicion of the Romans.