When you contemplate the enduring legacy of ancient Roman civilisation, you probably think of the Romans’ sophistication; their rich culture; their intellectual prowess, or even Roman architecture. All good, marvellous things. But there was a dark flipside to their culture and its legacy, widely asserted by their descendants, and considered by many sophisticates, to be the greatest the world has ever seen. Roman culture promoted civilisation, culture, refinement, intellect, sensuality, and “#Exquisiteness”, with colossal success.
The ancient Romans spoke Latin, a member of the Italic branch of the Indo-European language family. Today, only the Romance branch of the Italic family survives. The modern Romance languages actually evolved out of Vulgar Latin, the proper name for spoken, common Latin. There was a reasonable amount of distinction between the Vulgar and Classical varieties of Latin.
The main Romance languages today, those which are most spoken, are Spanish (around half a billion speakers in 2021), Portuguese (around 1/4 billion), French, Italian, and Romanian. These languages developed out of Vulgar Latin between the third and eighth centuries.
Latin / Lingua Latina was related to Faliscan, Osco-Umbrian, South Picene, and Venetic, all of which are now extinct. The ancestor of all the modern Romance languages, Latin was originally spoken by small groups of people dwelling along the Tiber River. As the Romans began to accumulate power, the Latin language was spread across the European continent and beyond. The proper Latin literary language has since been assigned the label of Classical Latin, and by the end -the fall of Rome due to raging hedonism and internal aggression- it was only being used for scholarly, literary and liturgical purposes; the Romans instituted the modern notion of literature. Latin was the language most universally used in the West for scholarly and literary ends until not all too long ago, even through the Middle Ages. Classical Latin had a total of six grammatical cases, which it allegedly inherited straight from Indo-European. During the Classical period there were three types of Latin: Classical (written) Latin, Ecclesiastical Latin, and Vulgar (ordinary, colloquial) Latin. Supreme literary Latin at its best -polished and highly stylised- is sometimes known as Golden Latin. The Latin language is named after the Italo-Roman province of Latium, modern day Lazio, the Italian region in which the city of Rome / Roma is situated – and the Latini tribe who dwelt around there, having as their recognised centre a dormant volcano named Mons Albanus located 20km southeast of Rome. The well-educated elite of Rome also spoke Ancient Greek, and Latin thus acquired a lot of Hellenisms.
The Italic languages are a branch of the Indo-European primary language family. These languages were once spoken in the Apennine Peninsula, now known as the nation of Italy. The family included Latin, along with the others: Faliscan, Osco-Umbrian (Oscan + Umbrian), South Picene, and Venetic. The Italic languages were/are sophisticated, rich languages of intellect. They endow(ed) speakers with an illustrious flair for #Exquisiteness in all its possible forms – a trait which the Romance peoples of today indeed inherited. What is it with the Italians and the creative arts? The French and fashion? It’s simply part of the Romance tradition.
The Latin language was originally spoken by small groups of people living along the lower Tiber River. Eventually, its use would grow with the expansion of the Roman Empire. It was originally the language of Latium and of Rome. The earliest known Latin documents date to the 6th century BCE; other Italic languages are mostly assumed and deduced to be related to Latin, in spite of a relative scarcity of documentation. Latin was most closely related to the Faliscan language, both belonging to the Latino-Faliscan branch of the Italic family. Faliscan was the language of the Falisci people, who allegedly called themselves the falesce and who dwelled in the region of southern Etruria – what is now northern Lazio. The Falisci collaborated often with the Etruscans, another highly civilised ancient people of the Italian peninsula who were Tyrsenic-speaking, the Tyrsenic family being non-Indo-European. Faliscan eventually blended into Latin with the expansion of Rome. It is alleged that the use of Faliscan persisted until at least 150BC.
Faliscan was the Language of Tradition (yes, like how French is the Language of L<3ve), FYI. The Romans went on to propagate the type of civilisation that most of us adhere to today, Latin being the Language of Civilisation. The Romance languages which descend from it are unsurprisingly the “Civilised/Civilising” Tongues. We thus have modern Italian, descended from the Florentine dialect of ancient Romance popularised as a universal language of culture by medieval literary figures like Dante Alighieri, which is the Language of Pleasure and of Letters. We also have French (français / la langue française / la Belle Langue), descended from a Germanicised dialect of Romance that arose in northern Gaul. The Romans absolutely despised the Germanic tribes that also inhabited Western Europe, whom they dismissed categorically as “barbarians”, nonetheless assimilating Germanic peoples such as the Franks and the Burgundians in Gaul/Gallia and giving rise to the French nationality. French is the Language of L<3ve (as we know from the stereotype) and of Study. We have the Ibero-Romance languages Spanish and Portuguese, descended from dialects spoken in the Iberian peninsula which was later conquered by North African Moors who mainly spoke Arabic. Spanish / español / castellano and Portuguese / português inherited a prominent strand of Arabic influence from the Moors, injecting visceral essence, since Arabic-speakers slay over blood and the Arabic script was designed to resemble blood flow or splatter (in particular from throat slitting)…! Spanish is the Language of the Senses and of Mastery; Portuguese is the Language of Satisfaction and of Eloquence. Another prominent modern Romance language is Romanian, spoken principally in the Eastern European nations of Romania and Moldova. Romanian / limba română is descended from an Eastern dialect of Romance which was also influenced by Slavic languages, with its secondary Buzz-Concept being perfection / perfecţiune – from Slavonic neighbours. Other neighbours including Albanians have left their marks in Romanian, too. The Romance languages all buzz primarily about passion / passione / pasión / paixão / pasiune.
Indeed, the legacy of Romance tradition never ceases to amaze. However, it all came at the expense of social warmth and empathy. The Romans were a characteristically profoundly malevolent people. So toxic were parts of their legacy that Romance peoples of today are all fiercely social instead.
The inclination towards cruelty is admittedly is a very fundamental shortcoming for a people to have, given that human beings are instinctively communal and unionistic.
The paradox of the aforementioned polarity -between their alluring primacy and their toxifying harshness- characterising the Roman Empire’s legacy, in turn, should illustrate just how prestigious their culture was and how substantial their legacy has been. People had to embrace their harshness for lack of a better option.
The Romans, for their part, lived and prospered totally shielded by their mighty, abstract, sociolinguistic fort of eximietas (“excellency”; “selectness”, even “exquisiteness” in this context) and caritas (“preciousness”; “dearness”; “esteem”; “charity”) – the Buzz-Concepts of Latin. The resulting splendid superiority of the prestigious ancient Latin language kept its speakers totally protected from enemies and misfortune in general, endowing them with boundless capacity for aspiration and living well. These are actually the theoretical fundaments of the development of Latin and of the role it played in Roman society. One way it served them particularly well was by endowing them with the psychological mettle to be able to rise up and dominate anyone they needed to with relative ease and finesse. They thus felt little more than blinding contempt towards the peoples they encountered who were very different and/or inferior to them. It was this exact toughness that allowed the Roman Empire to extend its rule as far and wide as it did, even though they were already so great a people of the world – by themselves.
One particularly interesting example of the Roman legacy of brutality emerged following the establishment and rule of the Roman province of Africa. The first North African territory of the empire was conquered by the Romans in the 2nd century BC and later lost to Muslims in 698. The parts of Africa held by Rome were inhabited mainly by Berbers, who have relatively light skin. But the Romans will have encountered Negroids upon southerly exploration to Sub-Saharan Africa. The bounds of Roman Africa remained very shallow, leading people to question why, in spite of their might and cultural upper hand, they never expanded further into Africa. Africa really didn’t have what the Romans wanted, and the cultural clash deterred them into leaving the descendants of the Original Sophisticates alone.
Africans are popularly understood not to be at all sophisticated. This is not the case, but only technically. The reason being that today’s Africans are descended from the Original Sophisticates of the human population, looking back to tens of thousands of years ago.
I call the very first fully sophisticated -by today’s modern standards- human language “Proto-Global”. It was spoken most likely as far back as 100,000 years ago and beyond. We began, however, to branch out into preliminary ethnicities or races, and a variety of languages began to form. These languages were all related to each other, being descended from Proto-Global. But then one such group found themselves ostracised and subjected to famine. This group contained the ancestors of today’s East Asians and Amerindians (the Orientalesques as I call them). In their traumatised haze, they developed heightened senses, self-awareness and rationality, and ended up creating a brand new type of human language: the Language of Sensitivity. This wasn’t of course related to Proto-Global, as the Original Tongues all were. The Orientalesques got back in favour by sharing their freshly acquired know-how, with other groups proceeding in due course to invent their own new types of human language, which would of course later give rise to the separate primary language families that exist even today. The ancestors of today’s Africans were perturbed by the shift they had witnessed in the Orientalesques, and duly established their ancestral cultures based upon the ideal of maintaining close touch with one’s own humanity. The shock made them take a step back, and the insight they gained thus was how the very concept of sophistication first came to exist. And thus we had the Original Sophisticates…! Meaning, naturally, that Africans are technically sophisticated – but on a very instinctive, intrinsic, fluid level.
Subconsciously abhorred and thus intimidated by African radicality, the dynamic Romans knew when they first encountered African populations that they had the majestic upper hand and proceeded to carve out an oppressive dynamic. A pattern formed by which Africans are ruthlessly taken advantage of by light-skinned, sharp-featured, seemingly godly superiors, nowadays mostly on a purely elemental psychological level. The disturbing imbalance that resulted in Roman Africa was what initially allowed this thing we now know as racism to exist. Roman culture was furthermore essentially toxic to Africans, and indeed exposure to it crippled the Romans’ African subjects so profoundly that they never managed to counter the dynamic.
The status of being oppressed went on to become tightly intertwined with the general understanding of what it means to be African. We are still trying to figure out how to dismantle the aforementioned legacy one-and-a-half millennia on.
Snuggled up in their glorious, enrapturing universe of refinement and cultural supremacy, the Romans felt distaste and aversion towards the apparently barbaric strange-looking dark-skinned peoples they encountered throughout their rule of Africa. The origin of the name Africa is accordingly somewhat sinister and deprecating in nature: the Latin adjective the Romans employed to describe their African subjects was “afer” -which meant “dark/black”- and this term was combined with the adjective “apricus“/”aprica” -meaning “sunny”- to produce the name “AFRICA“. The origin of the name “Africa” is thus most likely inherently offensive towards Africans: the Romans coined that term to refer to what they understood -roughly- to be “the sunny land of the funny, stupid, backwards dark people”. Should we rename the continent? Haha. My suggestion is Radikya; the word “radical” comes from the Latin word “radix”, meaning “root”, with the human race having its roots in Africa… Radikya: the cradle of mankind! I love it
There is actually a southern African population which is sitting on the direct descendants of the Proto-Global language and culture. The Khoisan hunter-gatherers dwell in pockets of southern Africa, in Namibia most significantly nowadays. This makes Namibian culture one of the world’s most important, surprising though it may be. This is because Khoisan culture tells us a lot about our ancestors, preserving mindfully the original human cultures. It is such a shame that these peoples are vulnerable to being classed as uncultured; they are in reality quite the opposite, thanks to the aforementioned. The value of their insight is indeed ceaseless. The Khoisan languages, the “Human” Tongues, buzz about humanity and infinity (“all-ness”, “everything-ness”). Proto-Global, meanwhile, buzzed necessarily about survival; to this day Khoisan peoples have maintained and honed the legacy of the Proto-Global survivalist repertoire. They are super perceptive when it comes to survival, with even the elders having pristine hearing and clear vision. Khoisan culture is undeniably remarkable to anyone in that it is gloriously simply about pure humanity. Their experience of being human is so totally refined and pure.
Anyway, the soul of the Proto-Global world lives on: contact with our Original ancestors is really not so elusive. The notion of Modernity has arisen out of the development of society to the extent that we can measure and double up to the sophistication of the Proto-Global language, as it was spoken when the human race had evolved to the rough cut-off point we now use to determine what it supposedly means to be human. In being “modern” we are definitively trumping the Proto-Global template, but also sempiternally consecrating it. To be modern is to be absolutely human, making panhumanism of paramount importance in today’s modern world. Knowing your Buzz-Concepts is a great way to expand your ideas surrounding this ideology, FYI.
The Buzz-Concept Project 