Romani people

“ Although it is very probable that the historic population of Rome was the result of a fusion of several racial elements—Latin, Sabine, Etruscan, and even pre-Italian, nevertheless the Romans were essentially a Latin people. ”

“ Not only were its great public buildings and lavish homes Roman—its Procurator’s Palace, its immense hippodrome for athletic sports and gladiatorial combats, its theater, its gleaming marble temples to pagan gods—but Roman, too, were many of its people. Its population actually was of varied nationalities—Roman, 84 Greek, Syrian, Idumaean, Ethiopian, and many others; there were countless slaves from conquered provinces—Germania, Gaul, Dalmatia, even here and there one from Britannia—a motley multitude from every region on the rim of the Great Sea and even from lands farther away. ”

“ Every one knows, that in the modern principality of Roumania and in the adjoining parts of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, there is to be seen that phenomenon so unique in the East, a people who not only, as the Greeks did till lately, still keep the Roman name, but who speak neither Greek nor Turkish, neither Slav nor Skipetar, but a dialect of Latin, a tongue akin, not to the tongues of any of their neighbors, but to the tongues of Gaul, Italy, and Spain. ”

“ The earliest inhabitants of Rumania are tall, dark brachycephs—the Cevenoles of Deniker’s classification. This original element has been repeatedly diluted by Slavic and Tatar percolation. The Roman conquest, which together with the “pax Romana” brought civilization to the land, was not an ethnical victory. The Romans, a mere minority of leaders, ruled in the land much after the fashion in which the British govern India at present. But this occupation of the land by men representing a superior civilization sufficed to stamp the speech of Rome upon Rumania. ”

“ But the Greeks did not venture on the Roman coast for fear of the Etruscans. Except the city of Cumæ the Greek colonies down to the third century had almost no relations with the Romans.
The Latins.—The Latins dwelt in the country of hills and ravines to the south of the Tiber, called today the Roman Campagna. They were a small people, their territory comprising no more than one hundred square miles. They were of the same race as the other Italians, similar to them in language, religion, and manners, but slightly more advanced in civilization. They cultivated the soil and built strong cities. ”

“ If, as there is good reason to believe, the modern Roumans represent the old Thracians, that nation came under the general law, exactly like the Western nations. The Thracians became thoroughly Roman in speech, as they have ever since kept the Roman name. They form in fact one of the Romance nations, just as much as the people of Gaul or Spain. ... In short, the existence of a highly civilized people like the Greeks hindered in every way the influence of Rome from being so thorough in the East as it was in the West. ”

“ All divisions of the race prefer to style themselves Romani, Romeni, Rumeni or Aromani; and it is from the native pronunciation of this name that we have the equivalent expression Ruman, a word which must by no means be confined to that part of the Vlach race inhabiting the present kingdom of Rumania. ”

“ More than two thousand years ago, at a time when the people in the British Isles and in most parts of Western Europe were living the lives of savages, occupied in fighting, hunting, and fishing, dwelling in rude huts, clad in skins, ignorant of everything that we call civilization, Rome was the centre of a world in many ways as civilized as ours is now, over which the Roman people ruled. ”

“ The ruined Roman sits among the ruins; he flies to no green garden; he does not look to heaven; if his intent is defeated, if he is less than he meant to be, he lives no more. The names which end in “us,” seem to speak with lyric cadence. That measured cadence, — that tramp and march, — which are not stilted, because they indicate real force, yet which seem so when compared with any other language, — make Latin a study in itself of mighty influence. The language alone, without the literature, would give one the thought of Rome. ”

“ RUMANIAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. Rumanian Language. A Romance tongue spoken in three dialects, the Daco-Rumanian, in Rumania, Transylvania, Bessarabia, the Hungarian Banat, and Bukowina—that is, in old Dacia, by about 9,000,000 people; the Macedo-Rumanian, in Macedonia, Albania, Thessaly, and Epirus, by several hundred thousand people; and the Istro-Rumanian, in Istria, by about 3000 people. The Daco-Rumanian dialect comprises the Wallachian, Moldavian, Transylvanian, and Banatian sub-dialects. ”

“ Post magnitudinem nominis Romani. “I know not why interpreters should find any difficulty in this passage. I understand it to signify simply since the Romans became so great as they were in the time of Hannibal; for, before that period, they had suffered even heavier calamities, especially from the Gauls.” ”

“ The intellectual development of Rumania has never until modern times been affected by Latin culture, but it has been profoundly influenced first by Slavonic literature, then by the Greek or Byzantine literature, and last, by the Western, notably French and Italian novels. The history of Rumanian literature can be divided into three distinct periods: the Slavonic, from the beginnings of Rumanian literature in the middle of the 16th century down to 1710 ”

“ But the Latin Empire of Romania was not the only Empire which arose out of the break-up of the old East-Roman power. Two, for a time three, Greek princes bore the Imperial title; there was also a Latin king. It will be convenient for a while to leave out of sight both Asia and southern Greece, and to look to the revolutions of Thrace, Macedonia, northern Greece, and what we may now begin to call Albania. The immediate result of the Latin conquest was to divide these lands between three powers, two Latin and one Greek. ♦Kingdom of Thessalonikê. ”

“ Nineteen centuries ago, a large but dispersed society inhabited not only the territory of the present-day Roumania, but also the whole Balkan Peninsula, the islands of the Archipelago and Asia Minor: the Thracians, neighbours of the Illyrians who dwelt on the shores of the Adriatic Sea. After a century or two, however, they had disappeared; with the single exception of the Greeks on the shores of all seas in this south-east corner of Europe, Latin-speaking subjects of the Roman Empire alone led a life in which all the traditions of the apparently completed past were to be recognised. ”

“ The composite character of the Rumanian language—fundamentally Neo-Latin or rather early Italian, with strong Illyrian (Albanian) and Slav affinities—would almost imply that Dacia had never been Romanised under the empire, and that in fact this region was for the first time occupied by its present Romance speaking inhabitants in the 13th century [1285] . The nomadic life of the Rumanians is in itself, as Peisker points out [1286] , a refutation of their descent from settled Roman colonists, and indicates a Central Asiatic origin. ”

“ Roman society under the Principate exhibits in general the same characteristics as during the last century of the Republic. Rome itself was a thoroughly cosmopolitan city, where the concentration of wealth and political power attracted the ambitious, the adventurous and the curious from all lands. Whole quarters were occupied by various nationalities, most prominent among whom were the Greeks, the Syrians, and the Jews, speaking their own languages and plying their native trades. With the freeborn foreign population mingled the thousands of slaves and freedmen of every race and tongue. ”

“ Such was the pomp of Marius, but so closed not the line of the procession, for every soul of Rome’s vast population swelled it for miles in length; old tottering grandsires, men in the prime of manhood, youths in the flush of spring-time, boys, children, infants at the breast, matrons and brides and maidens—all ranks, all classes, all conditions—the proud, luxurious patrician, the turbulent democracy, mechanics from the suburbs and farmers from the colonies, and slaves and freedmen, all thronged exultingly the via Sacra, all swelled the shout for Marius. ”

“ The air of Rome inspires lassitude, and renders the inhabitants inert. The Romans who live in the healthy parts of the city are all inclined to grow fat; their language, unidiomatic, and, so to speak, long-winded in its expressions, is pronounced with a grace of accent, a slow and melodious emphasis, that renders it more agreeable than any other Italian to the ears of strangers, and is strangely in harmony with the dreamy contentment of their minds. ”

“ The germ of the old Roman race which civilized the world is still alive, and is quickly rising to a new life—lifting itself, after twenty centuries of burial, from the tomb of ignorance and oppression. Here is the centre of art and of the world's past recollections; here is spoken in its purity the most beautiful of languages; here are a fine climate and a fine country; and here are being strengthened the power and the splendour of united Italy.
THE WALLS OF ROME. FIRST WALL—ROMA QUADRATA.
The city of Romulus, upon the Palatine Hill, was called from its shape Roma Quadrata. ”

“ We know that the traces of the more purely Roman empire, which embraced the old Dacia, Pannonia, and Illyricum, have not entirely perished, for its language lives still among the Roumans of the Carpathian and Danubian plains, among the Tzintzars of Mount Pindus, and never died out in the coast cities of Dalmatia. The [24] Latin population, though reduced to the condition of shepherds, may yet have prevailed to introduce some of their arts among their Sclavonic conquerors. ”

“ As their conquests were confined to countries in which the natives of Italy could at that time live and thrive, the rapid extension of their empire, language, and forms of civilization, need not be wondered at. Thus Rome successively became mistress of many nations and races, but these were races with whom the Romans could freely amalgamate; at no period of her history were they called on to contend with the two great questions, the one social the other physical, involved in the attempt to occupy by a white race a tropical country, and a land inhabited by a purely savage race of coloured men ”

“ Yet surely, if anything of dead Rome be still left in the living city, it should be found in the Roman people. In the Mystères du Peuple of Eugêne Sue, there is a story, that to the Proletarian people, the sons of toil and labour, belong genealogies of their own, pedigrees of families, who from remote times have lived and died among the ranks of industry. ”

“ The new scale of living. In the course of their campaigns in Sicily, Africa, Greece, and Asia Minor, the Romans came into close contact with a civilization older and higher than their own, where the art of living was practised with a refinement and elegance unknown in Latium. In this respect the conquerors showed themselves only too ready to learn from the conquered, and all the luxurious externals of culture were transplanted to Rome. ”

“ The oldest democracy of Europe was alone able to create a State of its own which preserved the name of «Roman Country» — «Țara Românească».
Another characteristic of Roumanian history is the way in which, thanks to geographical conditions, it was able to combine all currents of Art, and, to a lesser degree, all tendencies of thought, Eastern and Western alike, in an ethnographical synthesis. Before the Slavs of the 7th century altogether disappeared as an ethnical component, such tendencies as could form a corresponding synthesis in the moral field of artistic creation were retained. ”

“ The contact with French civilization, at an epoch when the Rumanians were striving to free themselves from Turkish, Greek, and Russian political influence, roused in them the sleeping Latin spirit, and the younger generation, in constantly increasing numbers, flocked to Paris in search of new forms of civilization and political life. ”

“ Far back in time as it was when this took place, Italy seems to have already possessed numerous cities, many of which were to become enemies of Rome in later days. The most civilized of the Italian peoples were the Etruscans, a nation dwelling north of the Tiber, and whose many cities [Pg 12] displayed a higher degree of civilization than those around them. From these the Romans in later days borrowed many of their religious customs, and to them Romulus sent to learn what were the proper ceremonies to use in founding a city. ”

“ The times called for new forces capable of adapting themselves to a new culture pattern extending over a greatly enlarged world. The Romans, with their Greek associates, were in a position to fill the gap.
Romans lived originally in Latium, a small land area in southern Italy on the Tiber River far enough inland to be protected against pirates. They built a city which finally covered seven adjacent hills and developed a community of working farmers, merchants, craftsmen and professionals. ”

“ The Roumans of Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transsilvania, are isolated from the scattered Rouman remnant on Pindos and elsewhere. They represent that part of the inhabitants of the peninsula which became Latin, while the Greeks remained Greek, and the Illyrians remained barbarian. Their lands, Mossia, Thrace specially so called, and Dacia, were added to the empire at various times from Augustus to Trajan. That they should gradually adopt the Latin language is in no sort wonderful. Their position with regard to Rome was exactly the same as that of Gaul and Spain. ”