The Latins: Rome's Cousins? (Rome and Romans) 

​​@@heofonfyr6000 Well, Roman propaganda was good. They made a theory that a Prince of Throy created Rome and would mean that Roman Republic gained revenge over the Greeks. Obviously false, as we know today much more about the history of Rome's founding and the history before that compared to a 200-100 BC Roman

True true

Very good point. As you guessed, both of those things will be covered more extensively in later episodes! So, stick around for those if you'd like!

😂😂😂😂 Romans were white Latin dosen't mean latin america

@@MaestroZod “White” is a modern term that Romans didn’t see themselves as. We know this because they wrote how they saw themselves. They called Northern Europeans blondes, pale, unintelligent barbarians but fierce fighters (who we would today call “whíte” people). They called the people to their South, dark skin, very intelligent but not good fighters. They saw themselves as in between in appearance but the best of all overall.

Glad you enjoy it!

I always forget about the Vatican! Thanks for reminding me! There will be definitely be a standalone video on Latin. I honestly think it's just too important in Roman/history in general to ignore. Thanks for watching, my friend!

@@idiottalkshistory of course! Thanks for producing great content!

Those are still not native speakers of Latin. Of course the language exists today, but no native speaker thus extinct just as Langa Dalmata

@@InAeternumRomaMater correct, but not extinct. It is a dead language because it has no native speakers.

@@lucius_cursor Yeah, calling it extinct is wrong

I would probably agree with you to be honest. I think a lot of the reason why they are viewed as separate languages today has to do with the rise of nationalism and such in the modern and pre-modern periods. Thanks for watching!

I feel like that theory falls apart somewhat when you look at the varying degrees of mutual intelligibility between modern romance languages. For instance, while it is true that a middle italian speaker and a romanian speaker would enjoy a fairly high degree of mutual intelligibility if they were to engage in a conversation with eachother, it is also equally true that a french speaker and a sicilian speaker doing the same would struggle to understand eachother.

@@cossacks_vodka_enjoyer What you just described is called a dialect continuum. This is true of all the languages. There are Dialects of English that I don't understand and I'm a native English speaker. I'm also a native Spanish speaker and there's dialects of Spanish I don't understand. I understand standard Italian more than some Dialects of Spanish. Dialect continuer can also be found in languages such as Thai. An Isan Thai speaker cannot understand Southern Thai speakers, but they're both equally Thai.

@@sonsofyngve Right, but where the line is drawn is a tricky subject. While politics have a profound impact on what is considered a language as opposed to just a dialect, mutual intelligibility does play an important role also. For instance, just because a modern swedish speaker understands standard norwegian better than he does Elfdalian, that doesn't mean all north germanic language are all actually just dialects of old norse. Equally, just because there are dialects of english that may have morphed into something more closely resembling a separate language, that doesn't mean german an english should be considered dialects of the same language. Mutual intelligibility matters. That is my opinion at least.

@@cossacks_vodka_enjoyer I would argue the North Germanic languages are MODERN dialect of Old Norse, Just as Old English is still English or Dutch is still Frankish. There is an un broken line of speakers.

That is so cool! Cicero is one of my favorite Romans to be honest. Thanks for watching!

I am always happy to entertain new historical theories! But I have to ask if that is the case then how do you explain the evidence of habitation on the seven hills of Rome that predate 575 BCE? Further, how do you explain Livy's account of the time of the kings? I certainly wouldn't dispute that Rome wasn't founded by Romulus, firstly the city was already inhabited by the time of his rule and secondly he likely didn't exist as a real person, but I struggle to believe that the founding of the city could be pushed that far back when we look at archeological/written records of the time. Certainly, would love to hear what you have to say!

Licinius Tarquinius Priscus wasn't the founder of Roma, and he wasn't fully Etrusci but half Greek as well from his paternal side, from the city of Corinth. Archeology and literal sources tells us Roma was founded much earlier. If Romulus was indeed a Roman King who did found the city and named it after himself is something we cannot prove either wrong nor right. I would argue a King did in fact rule over the city, from whom we get the legendary founder Romulus. During this King, pre-753 BC Roma was centralised and expanded certainly from a town to a city with a government body ruled by rege.

My Latin is not so great either but I think that's correct! A Latin video will definitely be in the works, it's a fascinating subject and something that really interests me so definitely will be examined! Thanks for watching!

I would use “pellicula”, and its not super necessary, but I would slightly change the order. Note: I’m using macrons which denote vowel length Pelliculam dē linguā latīnā vidēre volō. But keeping your order is fine too: Volō vidēre pelliculam dē linguā latīnā.

@@lucius_cursor thanks. I definitely tend towards English word order too much.

Honestly, I'm not too sure. This is definitely something I'll look into during my research for the upcoming video on Latin itself so hopefully I can find something!

I forgot to mention that, made a note in the script and everything and still forgot! Normally, you would be correct but, and I didn't actually know this until I did my research for this video, prior to Roman expansion outside of Italy Transalpine Gaul was actually the name for most of the Alps proper! Of course, minus the portions of Liguria and Venetia. It was only after the beginning of the Roman expansion outside of Italy and into France that Transalpine Gaul morphed into the traditional province of Transalpine Gaul of modern France! Sorry, I'm an idiot and just forgot to mention my findings there! Thanks for watching and keeping me on my toes though!

Let me preface this by saying I am no where near an expert on European colonization. Most of my understanding is going to come from the Roman side of this question but hopefully I can at least try to answer your question! To be honest, Rome and the other Italian cultures were extremely similar in terms of warfare, technology, culture, etc. So for many of the cultures inside of Italy it was more like being taken over by your cousins, I guess sort of like if the Norwegians were to take over the Swedish today. In terms of cultures outside of Italy, there were certainly some peoples who were closer to the dynamic between Europeans and the Native Americans but again most of the time, the technological gap really wasn't all that different. When Rome turned it's attention outside of Italy, it was more a game of culture conversion and assimilation rather than technological superiority. I think the most prominent theme in the conquest of Native Americans was the disease brought by the Europeans into America. While the Romans did spread diseases, especially the army, it wasn't in the same way that the Europeans did. For Rome they were encountering groups that had already developed some level of immunity to the diseases that would rip through America during colonization. So Roman conquests were no where near the level of devastating that the European conquests of America were (unless of course you factor in the loss of life due to the battles/plundering). And that brings us to the most important part. A lot of people today like to envision the conquests of Rome as bringing "civilization" to the newly conquered areas. This is simply false. Rome encountered rich cultures who already had their own thriving pollical systems. This is actually one of the ways Roman conquests mirrors that of European conquest. Many of Rome's enemies were vibrant culture groups who had their own political systems, religions, and pretty much any other "civilized" thing you can think of. Rome and the Europeans were similar in the way that they treated some of these conquered peoples (brutal enslavement, repression, devasting miliary campaigns, and of course force labor for resource extraction). That being said, I would venture to say that Rome still saw many of these "barbarians" as closer to themselves than the Europeans did for Native Americans. We have records of "barbarian tribes" in Gaul and Iberia negotiating with Rome as equals. Sometimes, a native group in Europe could peacefully come under Roman control as long as they agreed to Roman hegemony and Rome would leave them alone. These peaceful conquests often even involved allowing native peoples to retain control over their land and other possessions, something that was not very common at all during European colonization. I guess, overall I would say that Roman conquests and European conquests do have some similarities but there are also some key differences. I honestly think that the main difference is that a lot of the time "barbarians" were viewed as closer to the Romans when compared with how the Europeans viewed Native Americans. Hopefully that answers your question! This isn't something I have a lot of experience in thinking about so this is just my rough thoughts. I do think this could be an interesting video so I will look further into it! Thanks for watching!

Yes, it makes dating a whole lot easier!

@@idiottalkshistory I know right? There's a reason why the correct use is AD and BC, not "BCE/CE"

@@idiottalkshistory Not trying to be rude

I’m not going to get into that debate. I really don’t care which is used. I got used to saying BCE in high school and college and I’m not really inclined to change it. In the end we’re saying the same thing just with different acronyms!

Sorry for the late response! We kind of don't know. We don't really have much we can rely on at this point in history but we think that the Etruscans were probably more established, in terms of wealth and culture, than the Latins were when the Indo Europeans arrived. So that difference meant that the Etruscans were able to hold onto their non-Indo European roots while the Latins were subsumed so to speak by the Indo Europeans. But this is an area of active study and I really think that a lot of what we know or think we know may get turned on its head in the decades to come!

Latins and Etruscans do share the same ancestral lineage, DNA testing has already shown this. The question of their language is an interesting one and still a mystery today.

Actually extremely interesting point of history here! Both groups, from what we know and remember this is an area of active study, were indigenous Italians meaning that before the Indo-European migration they were present in Italy. The Etruscans were able to retain their language and culture following the Indo-European arrival in Italy while the Latins ended up being influenced far more heavily by the newly arrived peoples. If you want to read more then check out some books on the Proto-Villanovan culture as it was that culture that likely originally sired both the Latins and the Etruscans.

There's nothing to show Trojans of Ilios city were Greeks. They could've been native Anatolians, or part of an Anatolian Indo-European group like Hittietes, maybe of a Thracian migratory tribe. But for certainty, the Trojans before getting this name from one of their kings, lived there before the arrival of the Greeks on their coast. And the legendary myth that Trojans had any connection to Roma was created hundreds of years after such an event, by Roman writer's who wanted to give Roma a political legitimacy over their conquest of the Greeks.

Why? Etruscans were from the same genetic lineage as the Italic tribes.

Thank you for you comments my friend! To be honest with you the goal of the name isn't to be charming, it's just the vibe I want for the channel. I don't want people to take this too seriously, history is intimidating and I think and hope that a name like mine tones that intimidation down a little bit! Thanks for watching and I hope you continue to enjoy!

Not everyone wants to be a big channel like K&G or Invicta. Let him be

@@cristhianramirez6939 All I'm saying is his videos sound more like lectures given by a professor than some regular dude with an interest in history, so the name doesn't fit that well. I'm not forcing anyone to do anything, just giving my opinion.

Portions of Southern Italy did, mostly along the coast! The inland portions of Southern Italy were typically occupied by native Italic peoples who would speak their own Italic languages (Oscan and Messapic) but they may very well have had a working understanding of Greek as it would have been the language of trade! Thanks for watching!

Fair point but what about the Latins that the Romans fought against during the Roman Kingdom? They were Latins but still separate from the Romans. I think there needs to be some separation between the Romans and the Latins, at least this early in history, and the term cousins kind of fits in my opinion!

@@idiottalkshistory Are you referring to who we today call the Byzantines?

No I am referring to city-states such as Tusculum or Tibur or Alba Longa and so on. These were other Latin polities that rose along with Rome. They were still distinctly Latin but not distinctly Roman. The Byzantines are what modern historians refer to when talking about the Eastern Roman Empire, something that occurs hundreds of years later not sure what the connection there is.

@@idiottalkshistory Yes, I know the Byzantines is a modern term but they simply saw themselves as Roman. However, I don’t think what you said is any different than the different Etruscan city states fighting each other, that doesn’t mean one city was Etruscan and the other wasn’t. It’s much the same for Rome, they were Latins who fought other Latin city states on occasion. Now it is true that Rome had a very long history and others were intermingled with the Latins/Romans over time. However, this is also true pretty much every group of people on the planet (unless they were a very isolated group, like on a remote island for example).

Ah I see! That's a fair point, I really only made the distinction because I think some sort of distinction has to be made. The Romans themselves made that same distinction. And in the end I think the Romans did functionally become different than the Latins, especially after the 1st Latin War where we see the Romans take on essentially every other Latin city-state.

Sorry for replying so late, somehow this comment got lost in the list! I will readily admit that I don't know enough about the Myceneans to argue against that point but I would certainly push back against the claim that the Etruscans were Anatolians. All of the available evidence points towards the Etruscans as native to the Italian peninsula. That same evidence points towards the origins of the peoples that would eventually become Etruscan as being from continental Europe (urns, burial practices, etc.) While it was a fairly popular historical belief that the Etruscans were migrants or descendants of a population from the Eastern Mediterranean, our archeological evidence has proven that to be likely false. I would encourage you to read some of the work by people like Dominique Briquel who have routinely rejected the idea of the Etruscans as Anatolians or Pelasgians. Thanks for watching!

@@idiottalkshistory isn't "majority " of etuscans belongs to J2a paternal haplo group? Wich is neolithic Anatolians

From what I have read about DNA evidence from Etruscans, there is some J2A in the DNA profile but that also exists in the same level all the way from India to England. The percentages we are talking about (2-5 percent) indicates a small intermixing occurred (likely by sea), not that the people themselves descended from the J2A group. Instead, the DNA evidence indicated a deep rooted local origin. Most archologists and geneticists agree that the Etruscans are the result of a mixture of Indo-European migration, which occurred in around 1800 BCE which is 900 years before the start of the Villanovan Culture and a about 600 years before the Proto-Villanovan Culture, and the native neolithic farmers left over in Italy. Now, there might be an argument for those Neolithic farmers to be Anatolian or at least descended from Anatolians. I haven't gone too deep into that research, though from that I do understand they likely originated in Syria/Mesopotamia (as did most Neolithic populations in Europe). But to call the Etruscans the same as the Neolithic farmers is simply untrue, they were genetically and culturally influenced by the influx of Indo-Europeans into Italy in, again, 1800 BCE. There are multiple studies which illustrate this point and I'll leave the links to a few of those studies if you are interested. Grugni, Viola (2018). "Reconstructing the genetic history of Italians: new insights from a male (Y-chromosome) perspective". Kron, Geof (2013). "Fleshing out the demography of Etruria". In Macintosh Turfa, Jean (ed.). The Etruscan World. London; New York: Routledge (actually a book that compiles several studies, is really good!) Tassi F, Ghirotto S, Caramelli D, Barbujani G, et al. (2013). "Genetic evidence does not support an Etruscan origin in Anatolia" Ghirotto S, Tassi F, Fumagalli E, Colonna V, Sandionigi A, Lari M, et al. (2013). "Origins and Evolution of the Etruscans' mtDNA" Vernesi C, Caramelli D, Dupanloup I, et al. (April 2004). "The Etruscans: a population-genetic study" Perkins, Phil (2017). "DNA and Etruscan identity" I don't have links for these as I downloaded most of them from JSTOR but I'm sure you can just google search their titles and find links to them. Also just as an aside in case you didn't know JSTOR now lets you download something like 100 free articles a month since COVID happened as long as you have an account!

@@idiottalkshistory however Etruscans is not only Proto Indo European/Indo European R1a and R1b in genetics... Etruscans is also not Indo European in linguistics

@@idiottalkshistory ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-8cs1CyO5B0g.htmlsi=roLpPct3Qp4Qxl6G

You are Hispanic though you can’t reject that heritage you speak Spanish and I bet you have Spanish surnames Mexican culture is mix of Spaniard and indigenous

It's like calling black people britannics just because they speak English, are members of Christian denominations that came from Britain, and live under a legal system derived from Britain. That's how absurd it is to say Mexicans are Hispanic or Latin.

No the real Latin🇮🇹

Latinos≠Latins

fredatcarate 1.Long before the immigration of indoeuropean Latins the region of hodiern Roma was occupied by preindoeuropean autochtone Ligurs, who founded the palatial megalithic town of Alba longa (1050 BC). 2.Around 800 BC appeared the neolithic Etruscan immigrants .King Tarquinius priscus founded Rome around 575 BC after having drained the paludes of the spot of the 7 hills ( the cloaca maxima still functions since 2800 years) 3. Finally arrived the indoeuropean Latins who settled in a very limited territory of the Campania, obtained by massacrating the autochtones. Later these Latins refounded Rome "etrusco ritu" with the help of the Ligurian kings of Alba longa ( Romulus and Remus were the bastards of Rhea Silvia ,the daughter of the Ligurian King of Alba longa). The Roman historians completely changed the narrative, cancelling the memory of the previous founders, and propagating exclusively the Latin myth. Numerous toponyms ( oro-, hydro- phyto- zoonyms down to the name of insects,) attest the cultural imprinting left by the Ligurs ( Λιγυς pl. Λιγυες; lat. Ligur pl.Ligures ) The Tévere was called Albula (white) by the Ligurs.This name was later changed into Tíber -Tíberis > it Tevere.An important citizen called Tíber drowned into the torrentuous river in the spring. The Ligurs and the Etruscan both used the primitive phenician alphabet but if they would have left any inscriptions on stone or metallic objects, these were probably destroyed by the Latin triumphators. I repeatedly dream that a ◇History of the Ligurs ◇ has been found under the Coliseum !.

Firstly, throughout both this video as well as any video I have made concerning the Latins and the Romans I have repeatedly stated that the Romans were Latins. I have never attempted to say otherwise. Every native Roman was a Latin, as I say in the video. However, the Romans themselves wrote their history as if they were a separate people. (myth of Aeneas, etc.) Latium was also not colonized by Roman citizens, that is simply factually incorrect. I'm not exactly sure what you are attempting to claim in this comment, are you trying to say that the Latins originated in Rome? If that is the case I suggest you look at cities such as Alba Longa, Tusculum, and quite a few more as well as the general population migrations into Italy during the 12th century BCE. There are multiple Latin cities which show habitation before or roughly around the same time as Rome itself. As to your claim of Rome as the leaders of Latium, that would certainly be true in the latter half of the period of Roman monarchy and the start of the Republic. But at the time of Rome's traditional founding (753 BCE)? Certainly not. Respectfully, I would say that maybe you should listen to the video again as I think you'll find that I am not claiming the things you think I am.

@@idiottalkshistory Nice try but not at did state that Latins came from Rome. What I stated Rome was the leading city state of The Latin League. As for the rest of your statement, much of Ligurian origins are still in dispute. Since many genetic testing seems indicate a Proto-Indo-European origin. However I leave the dispute to linguist, geneticist, and archeologist to resolved the issue.

@@idiottalkshistory And by the way the proper dating is B.C. A.D. not BCE/ACE. That is strictly Jewish religious dating system. I am sorry, I do not practice Judaism. I stick to old proper classical dating system. No pun intended.

@@idiottalkshistory what You don't seem to know is that Alba longa was founded around 1050 BC by the LIGURIANS, the preindoeuropean people that survived the last glaciation and repopulated nord west Europa from the Rhine to Iberia, including the Baltic shores, the British Isles, future Gaule, Italy.They where skilled navigators and exchanged amber they had discovered on the Baltic shores, with the Minoans, the Phenicians, the Greeks of the Cyclades. Around 900-850 BC the Etruscan were colonizing Umbria,Corsica,hodiern Latium, Campania, and northern Italy.The indoeuropean Latins immigrated centuries later, and were the last to be admitted by Roma . Romulus and Remus were the bastards of a Ligurian Princess. The dudes who later asked to be admitted by the Romans came from all possible horizonts, and were fugitives, criminals, slaves .They were admitted to increase at any costs the population of Roma. So claiming that the Romans were latins is an erroneous pretension of modern semi ignorant teachers.