Feyokien wrote:
Fnord wrote:
kraftiekortie wrote:
There was no unified Italy until about 1870.
1861 C.E., to be exact. Imperial Rome fell about 1385 years earlier, in 476 C.E. Italy re-formed as a Republic in 1946. Thus, there is no overlap between Imperial Rome and the Republic of Italy.
Some Italians may trace their ancestry back to the Roman Empire, but Imperial Romans were not Italians.Imperial Rome (well by that point a rump state) persisted until 1453 C.E. when it finally fell to the Ottomans. Orthodox Christians from the former Roman Empire under the Ottomans continued to refer to themselves as 'Roman' until the Roman/Greek independence movement when they opted for the Greek identity so they could receive Western European support (who also claimed the Roman identity).

Exactly.
Obviously its absurd to blame either modern Italians or modern Jews for the death of Christ. No living person of either , or of any, ethnic group, was responsible for killing anyone 2000 years ago.
A few years ago there was a lawyer from Africa who actually tried to sue for the "wrongful death of Christ" in the Hague, and he tried to sue both the modern state of Israel and the modern Italian republic. As you said-there is more actual legal and political continuity between ancient Rome and modern Greece (via the Byzantine Empire) than there is between ancient Rome and the modern state of Italy. So ...he might as well have sued Greece too!
Pretty much all modern Italians are descended from ancient Romans, but so are most modern Frenchmen, and modern Spaniards, probably most Jews, and most everybody else in the Mediterranean basin.
And Roman citizenship was expanded to include conquered peoples. So even non Romans identified as "Romans",
The point is that "Roman" doesnt exactly equal " Italian". But even if it did its still absurd to talk about modern Italians, and modern Jews, competing for the title of being "the worst Christ-killers"!