Roman History

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Only uncultured Barbarians bathed at home with soap!

I never said there wasn’t a Roman legacy in Britain. I just stated it didn’t really trickle down much to the “common folk.”

Roman ways were embraced by some of the “elite.” But not after they left, for the most part. The clergy embraced Christian learning, which both Roman and not Roman.

The Celtic peoples resented Rome more than they were influenced by them.

Thanks for your post, yes I agree the timeline makes sense but I was alluding to latin permeating Old English well before 1066...Christian priests were well ensconced with Romanised locals before the arrival of the Saxons, it also only took the Saxons around hundred years to be converted to christianity (around 600AD) Rather than the Norman elite the priests were introducing Latin words through the bible and latin catholic mass. My understanding is the French speaking Normans hardly interacted with the local peasantry so it had to be the christian priests sent from Rome...Even Alfred the great spoke Latin and spent part of his childhood in Rome...

I think they used their roads as an ancient "super highway" to transport goods/services. It was also a messaging service whereby a fast chariot could send messages from Londinium to Rome within a matter of weeks or even faster using signal lamps along their roads....

Yes, the elites, scholars, and clergy had the Roman terms, and some of them are in use today. But the common people didn’t use them.

The French borrowings, from 1066 on, and especially from around Chaucer’s time, were much more numerous....and the common people adopted them. They are so much a part of our language that many of them are recognized as “pure English” today.

Touch'e Kraftie! and Bon Voyage!

Austria Hungary was attacked first. Germany only came in after Russia and France declared on Austria. So how exactly did Germany throw the first punch? Reality is the central powers were the good guys in ww1, and if as the USA suggested the allies hadn’t punished Germany so harshly for defending their ally against Russia and France, we’d probably never gotten hitler or the Nazis and neber had a ww2.

It is also may be surprising for some to learn that Japan was actually with the allies and attacked German colonies in WWI.

Of course, French came from Latin, so that could mean an indirect Roman influence

How am I wrong to infer that French borrowings were more influential than Latin borrowings when it came to the formation of Modern English?

Saying “Bon Voyage” implies you think my notions are sort of like an absurd “trip,” and that you don’t feel my notions have much merit....and that my mind is not open to other possible explanations. I am going on a cruise in April.

Of course, Rome left its mark on the British Isles....but the common people didn’t embrace Roman ways. They were stubborn in maintaining their own culture.

No I don't think they are absurd. I was enjoying dabbling in some Je peux parler français.


The problem is people of British ancestry have virtually zero knowledge of their pre-Roman culture, everything is largely conjecture

Have you ever been to the Azores, Cyberdad?

In some discussions, saying “Bon Voyage” is akin to saying “I give up” lol

One fascinating world entity: the Wallace Line.

One characteristic (a very successful one) in Roman empire/republic - that they were "culture-assimilating conquerors" , in other term, they didn't really destroy the local cultures/religions of the culture they conquered (like Egypt, Greece and Canaan) but instead they 'romanized' them while even adopting things from these cultures - hence increasing their citizenship body and hence their military manpower. This lessened rebellions and increased loyalty to the empire.

Their main rival, Carthage, had a different way of expansion, which was basically expansion through trading treaties with local tribes, founding phoenician settlements here and there, and hiring more mercenaries for wars. It was also a successful expansion way, but it was way more costly than the Roman one to maintain it.

While Romans weren't really nice guys (they enslaved people and threw slaves to lions for fun...etc )but their conquest ways was pretty opposite to Fascism, Islamic, and Mongol which are basically 'Destroy everything and rebuild'.
In the fictive Dune universe, Romans are Atreides, Carthaginians are Ordos, and Huns are the Harkonnens.

I think it's irrelevant to compare modern fascism (which is an ideological political movement) with Rome which was an empire built on economic and military expansion

The Romans were an elitist warrior society that gave special privileges to it's citizens and treated slaves worse than animals. One rather disturbing thing was that a wealthy Roman senator wrote was after watching a magic trick where a magician took his slave and cut his hand off, he uttered some magic words and the hand (apparently) walked back to it's owner then a sheet was thrown and miraculously the hand was re-attached.

The wealthy Roman wanted to learn the trick so took all his house slaves to the magician and asked him to do it again. Of course the magician couldn't replicate the trick and every slave painfully lost their hands. After putting his poor slaves through this torture the furious Roman had the magician executed.

I think it illustrates that even though Romans were taking the first infant steps of civilisation the aristocracy were psychopaths, a characteristic probably nurtured over thousand years of warrior tribalism

That's something I've noticed all throughout history, and in even parts of the modern world. People behaving in ways that we would attribute to violent psychopaths, or severely mentally ill individuals. I have to wonder if the development of a conscience is in large part a product of the modern world.

Are the modern elite aristocrats less psychopaths though? look at Bachar el Assad and Kim jong example.

Let's say that common, everyday people behave better for the most part.