Roman Empire Questions

>>2992990
towards the end of the empire rome wasn't roman anymore

it obviously brought it to its knees

>>2992998

something else that was brought to its knees last night was your mom just like rome

>>2992990
Very to all three but many regions were "whiter" because of the lack of Arab, Celtic and Mongol influence yet.
There was a lot of movement of peoples from all over; African skeletons in Southern England for example.

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>>2993004
halp I'm being bullied

>>2992990
Rome was entirely the opposite of multi-cultural. Yes the Empire had many people of many cultures but Latin and Greek were the only ones that got you any respect.

Rome was very ethnically diverse (it controlled huge areas of land), however unless you were Roman or Greek culturally you were basically trash. This doesn't mean that there were large Chinese, Indian and sub-Saharan communities living inside it however, something lots of people consider diverse. The Romans considered the various tribes of Western Europe diverse for example. The same for people living in the East.

Romans were chill about religion mostly unless you were Jewish (understandable why they disliked them) or Christian. However they did consider their Roman Gods to be superior, Emperors have died because they preferred the Eastern Gods over the traditional Roman ones.

Western Rome fell because of constant civil wars, the multi-ethnic, cultural and religions (Arian Christian) immigrants only solidified the loss of territories. Those populations while they respected Rome didn't want to be entirely Roman and saw no benefit of restoring it once it fell.

A similar thing happened in Egypt and the Levant, the Greek Christians were dickbags to the Egyptian and Levant Christians (different Christian denominations) so when the Muslims rolled in they were seen as not as bad as the Romans so there wasn't much resistance.

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>>2993048
>Romans were chill about religion mostly unless you were Jewish (understandable why they disliked them) or Christian. However they did consider their Roman Gods to be superior, Emperors have died because they preferred the Eastern Gods over the traditional Roman ones.
What happened when Christianity took over? Did they allow other religions or did they enforce Christianity unto the population?

>>2993048
>Rome was the opposite of multicultural
????

>>2993056
they went about replacing the gods with saints and martyrs and they took pagan holidays and made them into Christians ones

they cracked down on the pagans naturally

>>2993075
I think he means that while there were other cultures, if you wanted to be respected you needed to be Roman (or Greek). You were pretty much inferior if you didn't accept Roman culture into your life.

>>2993048
>Yes the Empire had many people of many cultures but Latin and Greek were the only ones that got you any respect.
>Latin and Greek
So it was multicultural?

Multiculturalism simply means a single state has multiple cultures other than the one understood as "native." Rome checks out.

>>2993123
That's not what multiculturalism is

>>2993056
During the reign of Theodosius I, the emperor who made Christianity the official religion of the empire, there were mobs all across the empire going around tearing down as many temples and smashing as many monuments as they could get their hands on. The only ones that survived were the ones so big they couldn't figure out how to tear them down, so they converted them to churches instead, like the Parthenon (which was later destroyed by the venetians).

>>2993048

> Latin and Greek

> 2 Lingua Franca

> Not multicultural

Daily reminder the Romans had no concept of racial purity.

I hate stealth /pol/ threads.

There were Roman emperors from Syria, Spain, Pannonia and North Africa. That says all that you need to know.

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If everything is dialectically related to everything else, does objective knowledge of something require objective knowledge of everything?

>>2993663
Shit wrong thread

>>2993659

And they were all white as snow and spoke Latin, which says even more.

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>>2993681

> this is the face of a white man

>>2993689

well marble is always white

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>>2992990
From the beginning what made Rome powerful was its process of Romanization: new peoples constantly being integrated into the dominant culture through a multi-generational pathway to citizenship

Yesterday's conquered (or voluntarily absorbed) peoples were today's servants and freedmen, and tomorrows citizens and legionaries. The armies of Scipio Africanus had as many non-citizen auxiliaries as the armies of Aetius Flavius, and the primary reason why Hannibal found Rome to be too tough of a nut to crack was due almost entirely to the fact that the allies were so heavily invested in the process of Romanizing that they stuck it out, even in the fact of brutal military defeats

In an age before the concept of race or ethno-nationalism people looked down on anyone who wasn't from their own city-state, and the only way for a city-state to make new citizens was for two citizens to have a baby. Contrary to this instinct Romans were not jealous with their citizenship, and any peoples could eventually be integrated if they played the game long enough

This process broke down in the late Republic when aristocrats stoked fears of foreigners among the plebs in a bid to establish a permanent hegemony and marginalize those trying to reform the system. During the Empire, Roman citizenship had devolved into a farce, when Caracalla made everyone in the empire citizens quality of life actually declined as they were now all subject to the taxes and legal requirements of being a citizen (like Christians being made to get their trade license by sacrificing at a pagan temple) without any of the political enfranchisement which made it so coveted in the first place

By the time of Aetius Flavius, Rome had been bailed out many times before by its satellite peoples, but the Germanics had been kept as permanent second class citizens for so long that they had nothing but resentment for the Roman state, and no real reason to preserve it when it was their turn to bail their country out

>>2993659
That says nothing whatsoever. Every single one of them was Roman, and considered themselves as such.

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>>2993143
Rome had a very serious policy of Romanisation from its early expansion right up until the 5th century.

It was initially multicultural simply because it had expanded to conquer a vast number of tribes, city-states and kingdoms across the Mediterranean, but within centuries these various peoples began to speak Latin/Greek, dress like Romans, live like Romans, join the Roman military, and eventually gain Roman citizenship. Because Rome did its utmost to make the empire monocultural, it's not accurate at all to call the Roman empire "multicultural", which gives the impression that the Romans were tolerant of other cultures and co-existed with them, when in fact all they did was subjugate foreign cultures and impose their own on conquered peoples.

>>2993851
Is that Persian Cataphracts? damn thats awesome

>>2993689
Looks Caucasian to me

>>2992990
Very multicultural, with Romans adopting local customs wherever they settled, worshiping different Gods, etc. A bit like the British in pre-1857 India.

However, loyalty to the state was paramount. Not like today where people arrive in the West, and are indoctrinated by the natives to feel aggrieved and entitled.

>>2993143
>Multiculturalism simply means a single state has multiple cultures other than the one understood as "native."

That's true for almost every powerful state in history. What is this term useful at all if that's the case?

>>2992990

I'll take the /pol/ thread bait.

Romans used to incorporate the Gods of those they conquered into their own Pantheon. The degree ofc varies: the greeks were admired by the romans while the celts were usually looked down upon. The Roman Empire was obviously multiethnic because look at a fucking map but the core of power remained in the hands of the roman elites, except at the end of the period when the WRE, in a fucked up state, used to have germanics magister militum in addition to germanic mercenary which was indeed one of the reasons for their decline and fall.
Roman culture was high culture and it was somewhat present all over the empire but to a varied degree: some areas, the wealthiest and urbanized, were highly romanized, and in the case of the WRE, the less relevant provinces (northern Hispania, northwest Gaul, all of Britannia) were rural shitholes and thus less romanized.

>>2993880
I think better definition for multiculti would be that a multiculti state doesn't have dominant culture. They're all vying for control. Rome clearly had utterly dominant Greco-Roman culture.

>>2992990
>How multi-cultural was the Roman Empire?
>How multi-ethnic was the Roman Empire?
>How multi-religious was the Roman Empire?
>How much did each of these contribute to its fall?
look around right now and you'll get your answers

>>2993889

We might consider Greco-Roman to be one culture, but they remained very much distinct.

The former Hellenic world never stopped speaking Greek, and commoners speaking Latin only happened in Rome's western conquests. Bring together a commoner from Rome and a commoner from Tyre, and they won't be able to understand each other. How can two people be of the same culture when they can't even communicate in a common language?

If applying the "modern" criteria for "multi-cultural", then Rome most certainly was a multi-cultural state.

>>2992998
Are you making the claim that culture is not a fluid, ever changing phenomena?

>>2993910
No, they got enriched by G*rmanics

What did they speak in North Africa and the Levant?

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>>2993851
>empire monocultural
except for the small detail that imperial culture was not, strictly speaking, Roman, but in fact Greco-Roman. Many Romans, including powerful, affluent ones, openly admired cultures not their own. Mark Anthony went so far as to start dressing like an Egyptian pharaoh, a point Augustus Caesar played up for propagandist purposes.

The dominant culture was whatever the ruling family said it was. For the Julio-Claudian dynasty it was state-mandated worship of a deified Julius Caesar, and worship of the traditional gods was already in decline. By the 3rd century their entire society was beset with imported Eastern religions: Mithraism, monotheistic sun worship, and of course Judaism and Christianity, but these were the stand-outs in a vast sea of competing mystery cults. Pax Romana allowed for an unprecedented peaceful exchange of ideas, and even once Christianity was legalized there were still huge theological gulfs between competing sects which didn't completely disappear until the migratory era.

And compared to virtually every single one of their peers, Rome was probably the most tolerant place on the planet. As long as you paid your taxes and kept the peace, they didn't care which god you prayed too. Even women exhibited a far greater degree of autonomy in Roman society than anywhere else (except maybe Sparta), what with their founding myth being a peace treaty brokered when the women threw themselves between warring tribes of Romans and Sabines, and was a place where nobody actually cared if a woman worked or owned a business.

That's a fucking amazingly well painted picture, btw. Good taste.

>>2993834
The Severans were culturally Punic and Syrian

>>2993048
>This doesn't mean that there were large Chinese, Indian and sub-Saharan communities living inside it however, something lots of people consider diverse.
Well yeah no shit. It's literally New Worlders that threw away any semblance of European diversity to assimilate all of the early different European groups into the American way of life.
That's the reason most multi-racial places are considered 'diverse' with the three you listed unlike before and in a way it's true now.

>>2992990
>How multi-cultural was the Roman Empire?
The Roman Empire did not have an outright agenda of culturally assimilating its inhabitants. Even people who had gained Roman citizenship weren't necessarily romanized.
Hellenism played a huge role in the cultural fabric of the empire however, and particularly to its eastern parts.

>How multi-ethnic was the Roman Empire?
Extremely so. Any empire is always composed of a myriad of different ethnicities.

>How multi-religious was the Roman Empire?,
Before the christianisation very much so. The Romans embraced the notion of Interpretatio romana which meant that they viewed other people's gods as the same entities as their own, but with a different, local name. IIRC, the only religions pagan Rome tried to purge was christianity and druidism, allthough they forbid certain "foreign superstitions" such as various Egyptian mystery religions from establishing themselves in Rome.

>How much did each of these contribute to its fall?
By themselves? Not one bit. The WRE empire fell due to the combination of a myriad various things such as foreign invasions, corruption, terrible monetary system, giving to much power to the military and disastrous foreign policies.
The ERE fell due to the military superiority of their enemies.

>>2993681
Are you literally retarded?

Go back to /pol/.

>>2993919
And before that they got enriched by hellenics which were enriched by persians which were enriched by babylonians.
Before that they got enriched by etruscans.

What makes the germanic influences stand out?

>>2993920
There were alot of different languages of varying sizes around.
In north Africa I believe that the dominat language was punic with latin as Lingua Franca while in the Levant I suppose syriac languages and arameic were the most common ones with greek as Lingua Franca.

>>2994181
Forgot to add to
>How multi-cultural was the Roman Empire?
that with this in mind the romanization of the Empire was quite successful allthough far from omnipresent. The most striking example of this is probably Elagabalus who on his ascent to the imperial throne was pretty much the spitting image of an eastern monarch, which was a concept that was absolutely disdainful to the roman spirit/culture.

>>2993056
Kind of like the reverse.
Christians were persecuted, then tolerated, then accepted, then made the official religion of Rome
After this, Pagans were accepted, then just tolerated, then persecuted out of existence.

>>2993900
There are romance language speakers living in greece today. I have no idea why you are on about it

>>2993056
The christians generally saw the other worshipped deities as demons masquerading as gods. Due to this they tended to not have an overly accepting approach to other religions as according to the christians these worshippers were literally in league with the devil, albeit unknowingly.

>>2992990

The Roman Empire lasted roughly 500 years (Byzantineboos shoo). Just like the modern USA, if at any point in time you go backwards 100 years the culture is completely different

>>2995052
What's your justification for not counting the ERE as Roman Empire?

>>2992990

Multi ethnic and religious is indisputable. Muti cultural? There were many cultures allowed to live and sometimes thrive under roman rule.

Ultimately only people of roman citizenship held official power. Although they often had to rely upon the local regional warlords for help.

>>2995893

>
>
>

Itt: poltard fantasy projections onto the past get btfo by real history

>>2993286

The only ones that survived were the ones so big they couldn't figure out how to tear them down, so they converted them to churches instead, like the Parthenon (which was later destroyed by the venetians)

Fucking Venice man

>>2993056
When the catholic faith was made the state religion in 380 AD by then pretty much 50% of the eastern Roman Empire was catholic and 20% of the western Roman Empire was catholic. After that more conversions were slow until after the Germanic tribes conquered the remnant of the western empire and converted. Then roman paganism went extinct in the west between 5th-6th centuries. In the east it went mostly extinct from 4rth-5th centuries. Then after the council of Chalcedon in 451 the Egyptians and some Syrians went heresy mode and split from the church(which is why they were annoyed by the melkites)