1. We shall name Greek-speaking peoples those of ancient Greek cultures and dialects, and we shall name them Greeks as an ethnic group. Among them were the Romans, whose Latin language was still a recognizable Greek dialect during the time of Augustus Caesar (27 BC-14 AD). The rhetorician Quintilian (c. AD 35-95) regards “Aeolic” Greek as closest to Latin.[5] This was mentioned during the time of Augustus Caesar by the Greek historian of “Roman Antiquities,” Dionysius of Halicarnassus (c. 60 or 55 BC-c. 21 AD). He writes : “The language spoken by the Romans is neither utterly foreign (βάρβαρον) nor perfectly Greek, but a mixture, as it were, the greater part of which is Aeolic ; the only disadvantage of this intermingling of various nations is that they fail to pronounce their vowels and sounds correctly. However, they preserve beyond any doubt their true Greek origin.”[6] Further, the Latin alphabet, is an utter copy of the alphabet used in the city of Chalkis, on Euboia, in Greece.
2. Primitive Greek Latins, whose capital was Alba Longa, were conquered by the Romans and were thus absorbed into the Roman nation. Then, in 85 BC, all Italiote tribes allied to Rome and serving in the Roman army were called Latin. These Italiotes had revolted demanding Roman citizenship. Instead of becoming Roman citizens, they had to settle with being called Latins. Later, in 212 A.D. during the reign of Emperor Caracalla (211-217), these Italiote Latins became Romans.
3. Οriginally, after the Trojan War, the Latins were a Greek-speaking tribe that lived South of the Tiber River, and whose capital was Alba Longa, the citizens of whom were called Albanians (Αλβανοί). These primitive Latins were composed of the following tribes:
- a) Arcadian Greeks, called Aborigines by those who arrived later in the area.
- b) Pelasgian Greeks who were evidently expelled from Greece by Dorian Greeks; a group of Dorians settled in Italy also.
- c) The Sabines who migrated to Italy from Lacedaemonia, Greece.
- d) The Trojans who finally settled South of the Tiber River lived together with the Aborigines.
These Greek-speaking Arcadians, Pelasgians, Lacedaemonians, Dorians and Trojans constituted what became the Latin Nation of Alba Longa and Rome. The Trojans were refugees from the Trojan War headed by Aeneas. King Latinos of the Aborigines accepted these refugee Trojans into his tribe and gave his daughter Lavinia in marriage to Aeneas. Those tribes who united through marriage, called their land Λάτιον/Latium, in honour of Latinos, and called themselves Latins. Their capital was Alba Longa. According to one mythological tradition, Rome was founded by the twin Albanian brothers, Romulus and Romos (Remus); during the same period, some of the Lacedaemonian Sabines joined this new Roman nation.[7]
4. “Historians” seem to obliterate the very existence of these five primitive Greek-speaking tribes who united and branched off into Albanians and Romans. These erudites maintain that the Roman language is non Greek Latin. This is so in spite of the Roman sources that describe Greek as the first language of the Latins and the Romans. It seems that Charlemagne’s Lie of 794 was based on Western clergy hearsay and the need to cut off West Romans, enslaved to the Franco-Teutons, from the free East Romans. Frankish Emperor Louis II (855-875) clearly upholds Charlemagne’s Lie of 794 with the following words: In 871, he writes to the Emperor of the Romans at Constantinople, Basil I (867-885) that “…we arrogate the Government of the Roman Empire according to our Orthodoxy. The Greeks have ceased to be Emperors of the Romans due to their cacodoxy. Not only have they deserted the city (of Rome) and the Capital of the Empire, but they have also abandoned Roman Nationality, including the Latin language. They have migrated to another capital city and taken up a completely different nationality and language.”[8]
5. A sophisticated version of Charlemagne’s Lie is based on the finds of modern archaeology according to which the origin of the Romans remains unknown simply because the Romans themselves had forgotten who their ancestors were. In a subchapter “2. The Early History of Latium” The inhabitants of ancient Latium, so goes this thesis, had no recollection of their immigration to the country. Roman writers, in a vain endeavour, reconcile this native tradition[9] with random speculations of Greek historians, turned the Latins into a conglomerate of Aborigines, Ligurians and Sicels. Under the light of modern research, they appear to be one of the youngest of Italian peoples.”[10]
6. Let us contrast this claim with Roman historical reality and the process through which Rome became the ruler of the whole Greek speaking world. The primitive Greek Romans were the result of the union of all the Greek speaking Italiotes. These Greek tribes are the following: The Aborigines[11] who settled in the area later known as Rome came from Achaia, Greece, many generations before the Trojan War.[12] The Aborigines had settled together with the Greek Pelasgians of Italy, who had been partially decimated by a mysterious sickness.[13] Porcius Cato’s mentions the history of the Pelasgians in Italy, and their union with the Aborigines, in his “De Origines”; and later, Dionysius adduces the same. These Aborigines, Pelasgians, Trojans and Dorians constitute the ancient Greek-speaking Latins whose capital was Alba Longa. A branch of these Greek speaking Latins of Alba Longa, led by the brothers Romulus and Romus, founded Rome, on the Palatine and Capitoline Hills. They were joined by some of the Greek Sabines of Italy who had settled on the adjacent Quirinal Hill. As we know, the Sabines had migrated to Italy from Lacedaemonia in Southern Greece.[ 14 ] The Romans slowly subdued the rest of the Greek Latins and Sabines and absorbed them into their political system.
7. Some of the Danubian Celts entered Northern Italy, and began pressing upon the Etruscans, who turned to Rome for help. The Celts, however, overran the Roman forces who tried to stop them, defeated the main Roman army in battle, and entered Rome in 390 BC. They occupied the whole of the city except the steep Capitoline Hill. The Romans had placed there all of their youth, treasures and records. The older population remained in their homes. After receiving a substantial ransom of gold, the Celts withdrew. In order to better protect Rome, the Romans subdued the rest of Northern Italy. The Romans also incorporated into their dominion the Greek Italians of Magna Graecia, Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica. These were the Roman territories in 218 BC.
8. The Punic Wars under the leadership of Hamilcar, and especially of Hannibal, became the biggest threat to Rome since the Celtic occupation. Hannibal invaded Italy itself with his famous elephants, with Macedon as an ally. Macedon had conquered Rome’s traditional Greek allies. Rome went as far as Spain to uproot the Punic strongholds there, and finally burned Carthage itself. The Romans crossed over into Greece to liberate her Greek allies from Macedon, and ended up conquering the Macedonian Empire and incorporating it into the Roman Empire. The Romans turned Greek democracies into oligarchies. They also helped Galatian and Cappadocian allies of the Greeks and liberated them from King Mithridates VI of Pontus (121/120-63 BC). This resulted in the incorporation of Armenia, Assyria and Mesopotamia into the Roman Empire. Consequently, the Mediterranean Sea became the central lake of the Roman Empire.
9. It was the Greek Romans of Italy who finally united all Greek and Latin speaking tribes into one nation.
Notes :
[ 5 ] Institutio Oratoria, 1, 6, 31
[ 6 ] Roman Antiquities I, XC.1.
[ 7 ] Plutarch’s Lives, Romulus, XVI, “Now the Sabines were a numerous and war like people, and dwelt in unwalled villages, thinking that it behooved them, since they were Lacedaemonian colonists, to be bold and fearless.”
[ 8 ] John S. Romanides, “Franks, Romans, Feudalism and Doctrine,” Holy Cross Orthodox Press 1981, p. 18.
[ 9 ] Could refer to anything in the preceding pages 1-30.
[ 10 ] M. Cary, A History of Rome, London 1963, p. 30.
[ 11 ] Evidently called “the original dwellers” by those who arrived later in the area of what became known as the seven hills of Rome which area had been uninhabitable because volcanic.
[ 12 ] “But the most learned of Roman historians, among whom is Porcius Cato, who compiled with the greatest care the genealogies of the Italian cities, Gaius Semporonis and many others, say they are Greeks, part of those who once dwelt in Achaia, and migrated many generations before the Trojan war.” as quoted by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, I, XI. It is in the light of this that we read Livy’s remarks about the Aborigines in his “From the Founding of the City,” I, 5-II, 6.
[ 13 ] Dionysius, Ibid I, xvii-xxx, 5.
[ 14 ] Plutarch’s Lives, Romulus, XVI.
[ 15 ] Dionysius of Halicarnassus, RA I.LXXIII, 1. These “hierais deltois”(sacred tablets) are usually understood to be the annales maximi kept each year by the Pontifex Maximus. The foundation narratives about Rome’s beginnings do not vary substantially from the final tradition. The names involved in the final Roman foundation tradition are basically the same as in the earliest 3 traditions quoted by Dionysius as follows: 1) “Some of these say that Romulus and Romos, the founders of Rome, were the sons of Aeneas, 2) others say that they were the sons of a daughter of Aeneas, without going on to determine who was the father; they were delivered as hostages to Latinus, the king of the Aborigines, when the treaty as made between the inhabitants and the new comers, and that Latinus, after giving them a kindly welcome, not only did them many other offices, but, upon dying without male issue, left them his successors to some part of his kingdom. 3) Others say that after the death of Aeneas, Ascanius, having succeeded to the entire sovereignty of the Latins, divided both the country and the forces into three parts, two of which he gave to his brothers, Romulus and Romos. He himself, they say, built Alba Longa; Romos built cities which he named Capua, after Capys, his great-grandfather, Anchisa, after his grandfather Anchises, Aeneia (which was afterwards called Janiculum), after his father, and Rome after himself. This last city was for some time deserted, but upon the arrival of an other colony, which the Albanians (Αλβανοί) sent out under leadership Romulus and Romos, it received again its ancient name.”
[ 16 ] In preparation for the convocation of representatives of the clerical and lay nobility and of the middle class the king ordered a counting of the total population of about 26,000,000 which resulted in the following breakdown: nobility 2%, middle class 13% and villains and serfs 85%. For these population figures see the edition of Germaine de Stahl’s book, Considérations sur La Révolution Française, par Tallandier, Paris 1881, p. 610. Jacques Godechot who prepared the reedition of this book cites J. Dupaquier, La population français aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, Paris (Que sais-je?) 1979. Madame de Stahl (1766-1817) was the daughter of Louis XVI’s Finance Minister Jacques Necker (1732-1804). This total is also taken from DICTIONNAIRE GENERAL de la POLITIQUE par M. MAURICE BLOCK, NOUVELLE EDITION, TOME PREMIER, PARIS 1873, p. 1023