I don't understand the need to differentiate between barbarians. You are either a citizen of Rome or you're not.
this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2025
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Most Romans weren’t citizens though.
Yes, yes. Quite the sad state of affairs. However, loyalty to Rome is non-negotiable.
you mean they're either 漢人 or not
有没有匈奴？
本人
There’s not really anything resembling an organized Japan until way after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. You have petty kingdoms that send some tribute to China.
While Caesar was getting ganked Han China had plumbing.
I mean, the cloaca maxima dates back to before the historical record starts, so plumbing's not the fight you want to pick with Rome. Ceaser did get good and dead, though.
Rice Rome is cool too. I wish I could find a good English-language introduction that doesn't feel like a copy-paste of whatever chronicle.
Well there are the non-citizens who are allies, the non-citizens who you might want to conquer someday but not right now, and the non-citizens who delenda est.
Yes, barbarians the whole lot of them.
The best part of the enemy of Rome idea is that she's actually of Italian descent
Well, often Romans were Romans' worst enemies.
Romans killed the Republic and then lost the Empire by inventing racism, and then Italians killed Best Rome, this checks out.
Which thing are you thinking of with the inventing racism? You can find claims to the contrary, but usually it's thought skin colour wasn't what mattered, and they certainly weren't first with more general bigotry.
I'm being slightly facetious about the reasons they fucked Alaric over to their immense regret. If you think there wasn't some proto-racism going on there, maybe ask yourselves why modern-type racists have obsessed over it for five hundred years.
Further, racism isn't just about skin color, and it's just not honest to pretend otherwise.
See the English attitudes towards basically everyone but the French and Frisians for further details. Or American attitudes towards anyone not English bred.
I did mention other kinds of bigotry there. If you dislike someone because their food is funny and they have a dumb accent that counts, and is probably as old as humanity.
When ancient writers thought about the physical and supposed mental differences between people groups, they tended to gravitate towards the supposed effect of climate, rather than "they're a heritably different (sub)species", which is I think the central idea of raceism.
Yes yes it's not racism unless it's from the Kent region of England, etc. It's just broadly applying stereotypes to large groups of "them" with terms modern scholars almost always translate as "race" because it's the closest modern concept.
Further, this belief system definitely didn't contribute to the collapse of the Empire as the rulers divided historical classes of citizens into sub-classes with less rights and privileges. Definitely nothing familiar about that that you could joke about the invention of racism with.
I don't think there's an actual disagreement here, but I will object to your tone. I don't think I did anything to deserve it.
She was probably descended from a Samnite so it tracks. Still the wrong kind of Italian 😆
Dacian. It is how they beat old Cornelius Fuscus
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