No Spoilers Perhaps odd historical question about Italians

[StonedLemur]

@Bacco you have any insight here sir?

 

[TheTickG]

Maybe this isn't the best place to do historical research, but I'll give it a try anyway. A lot of you guys are smart, right? And some of you are probably actually from Italy; so maybe a good place after all!

I listen to a lot of audiobooks on a range of topics. (I pretty much compel Audible to let me "return" audiobooks periodically due to being such a good customer.) Well one of the topics I like hearing about is Ancient Rome. I like to come at them from various angles: conquests, interactions with barbarians, interactions with religious groups, Romanization of the provinces, etc. And oh, did I mention CONQUESTS?

Another topic I'm interested in is World War II, including the interwar period. And, as everybody knows, Italy played a significant role in that war. Not a terribly distinguished role, mind you, but a significant one nonetheless. [History buffs might be guessing where I'm headed.]

Now, it may be my imagination, but I do believe the Roman Republic-Empire originated in Italy. And indeed, Rome is still there to this day! Well, by the application of GeographyMath™ we can deduce that

Romans = Italians

Okay, now finally I present my question:

Why the hell are Italians so unlike their old selves, the Romans?

The Romans were practically the definition of disciplined power with the destiny to conquer. But present day Italians don't appear to have that quality. Obviously their World War II endeavor for empire was a fiasco. So, why are they so different?

Are they truly ethnically identical as I have imagined? Or could it be something as bland as that they burnt themselves out during their Roman run?

What say, Shermanos?

Climate.

Areas with seasonal climate have a stronger understanding of time, deadlines, and discipline. Due to global warming, Italy's population living with proper climate has dwindled, while the population living in consistently warm weather has increased, this ruining the country's overall discipline and abilities.

This is why Northern Italians view Southern Italians as lazy. And Southern Italians view Northern Italians as Germans.

 

[lsa]

I wanna know what @Slobodan thinks.
Since his middle name is Roman

 

[Quadtavius Tuck]

Man, some of the replies in here.

Romans from Italia were still called Italian back then, just it was a secondary identity to being a citizen of an empire/republic with a name thats a relic from the city state era. Fun fact, when the Turks conquered the last vestiges of the empire, the last emperor transfered his imperial titles to the King of Spain. So modern Spanish citizens are kinda sorta Roman citizens.

Italians are still badass just they had a huge tech advantage back then and now they are on a level playing field with the rest of Europe.

Username checks out

Sorry bro you're not a Roman, you're a Sicilian plumber

 

[avenue94]

Are they truly ethnically identical as I have imagined? Or could it be something as bland as that they burnt themselves out during their Roman run?

Because ethnicity doesn't magically make a country a superpower? That's like nazi brain.

 

[Slobodan]

I wanna know what @Slobodan thinks.
Since his middle name is Roman

I blame you, you caused the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

 

[Busgosu]

lol, People nowadays are nothing like they were in the 50s....you know +1500 years have passed since the fall of the Roman empire, right?

 

[lsa]

I blame you, you caused the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

They had it coming

 

[Prutfis]

 

[Fox by the Sea]

Italians were invented by Dante when he wrote La Vita Nuova because he was thirsting about a girl he never banged.

 

[Bacco]

@Bacco you have any insight here sir?

That's an argument i would like do gigantic post about, but kinda busy day at work, so will just drop some random points


Tricky part is give a single answer to a question that cover 2000 years with different situations, so essentially are bunch of answers

Beside the fact on reality it's not like modern italian "lost" these values... more like ancient romans themselves lost these values
You can bet your own ass early romans would have been horrofied (and for good reason history will proof) by the way late romans allowed the barbarization of the army (from northern people while at it), but wealth, entitlement and comforts are hell of a drug

But skipping after Rome's fall wich would take a thread itself

Most interesting point imho it's probably jump to medieval/Renaissance times and notice how Rome's inheritance generated both the fortune and the curse of italy
Rome gave us lot of "big" cities... these cities created LOT of wealth, but at same time gave italians a culture of consider their city the main centre of power
Watch this shit lol


Back in these days if you could magically turn that shit into one single country ruled by one single strong hand, you would have got an immense force under basically any measurable value of that time
I'm not even debate what could have achieved, but just to drop something Venice alone at some point was like


But tricky part is WE would think something like this with the concept of "Italy" in mind, italians back then did not
It's false there was'nt the concept of "italians" or better italic people in ancient world, in fact at some point of Rome's expansion it was used to declare who could join roman legions, but there was'nt the concept that they should unify and have one King/Emperor (after Rome days)

Actually most of times italians were at war... with italians, usually the ones of closest big city that today we would reach in 30min of car lol

There's popular historical fact of Holy Roman Emperor Barbarossa coming down from Germany to destroy Milan and exile it's people, then milanese people rebuilding the city and with other local minor cities winning as underdogs the second war, kicking the emperor back home (Rocky1 and Rocky2 basically)

This is true and all, but key funny part is italian cities close to Milan were the ones who asked the german emperor to come and destroy Milan (fighting at his side), actually were very same cities who got the duty of actually destroy the city

Then (and here come best part lol) same italian cities realized they did'nt liked Milan (biggest bully of the neighborhood) but liked even less the Emperor
So they went like
"yo Milan whatsupp"
"Eh exiled, life sucks"
"about that sorry for calling germany emperor to destroy your city, HE's an asshole"
"..."
"what if i help you build back the city and then we ally (will not backstab you i promise) if emperor come back?"
"ok, totally reasonable plan"

And for some reason it even worked lol
Ironically cities even after making war and winning against the Emperor did'nt even splitted from HRE, just obtained an agreement where basically they had full autonomy and on return would swear refreshed loyalty to the Emperor (basically same kind of shit declining Rome had with local rulers in "roman" areas could no longer truly control)

This had simple reason, wich is greed
Local italian rulers would have lost everything (or a lot anyway) with a single big kingdom, so it's born a culture of divide the power as much as possible with lasted for centuries

Modern days would take another post again, but just to add some things that may not be much known
Italy went decadent at some point
When unification happened all the wealth and potential of previous centuries was gone
New commercial routes in the oceans made Mediterranean sea ever less relevant, and we were very late on industrialization process when became main factor for euro countries/war potential
To give perspective not only Italy was considered the lowest of euro big powers, but second worse Austria would still be able to produce 3 tons of steel for each 1 we did

For reasons of military fails beside weak industry and cheap equipment you can point that at high levels (the organization structure of power, officials etc) we had the absolute worst war culture and mindset.
Since unification whole late 800 up to 900, almost zero meritocracy, war was handled by bunch of rich cunts usually with aristocratic blood that had no skills, super antiquated "tactics" and who saw war as some sort of game to gain personal political prestige.
So you would have shit like WW1 where some young rich cunt with zero experience would order thousands and thousands of italian soldier to "chaarge!" up an useless hill where far inferior number of austrians had lot machine guns and turrets, with the result at the end of the day if the rich cunt was lucky he had more italian soldiers to sacrify than austrians had bullets and he could triumphally write a letter to his superiors to saying "i conquered the hill! (15k men died)"... and would get congratulations, if not promoted lol

WW2 for 99 reasons was that and much more

Most sad part is that under the meme style perspective that history ever take in common culture, italian soldiers are the ones that took most shame for all these fails, when on reality if was'nt for their effort Italy military fails would have been even bigger and faster

 

[ferrisjso]

There were no industrial era Europeans to compete with like the British,Germans and French. The Romans were the star of the show and were dominating the Med not industrialized Europe. Opposed to being a side character in the concert of Europe.

Also Hitler got the Italians involved in a war with 1940s USA they would not have gotten involved in independently. Before that the Italians were putting up a decent fight against the British especially at sea. 1941 is referred to as the worst year in the history of the Royal Navy and the Italians deserve a bit of the credit for that.

 

[wwkirk]

Well the church weren't stupid

There are actually contemporary writers who view Italian unification as a mistake. Are you in agreement with them?

 

[wwkirk]

Because ethnicity doesn't magically make a country a superpower? That's like nazi brain.

I'm not relating groups merely because of an ethnic connection. I'm asking about the very same people at a different period of time asking how or why they changed. - But if they are in truth NOT the very same people, I concede my question may be moot.

 

[wwkirk]

Man, some of the replies in here.

Romans from Italia were still called Italian back then, just it was a secondary identity to being a citizen of an empire/republic with a name thats a relic from the city state era. Fun fact, when the Turks conquered the last vestiges of the empire, the last emperor transfered his imperial titles to the King of Spain. So modern Spanish citizens are kinda sorta Roman citizens.

Italians are still badass just they had a huge tech advantage back then and now they are on a level playing field with the rest of Europe.

One of the best answers so far.

 

[wwkirk]

lol, People nowadays are nothing like they were in the 50s....you know +1500 years have passed since the fall of the Roman empire, right?

I hear you. But I'm going to have to double down..sorta.
In contrast to the Italians and, as you note, the huge time gap separating them from the Romans, we have the much closer in time case of the Japanese.

To me, its quite stark to look at how the Japanese appear nowadays (I admit, I've never been over there) and how they were from the time of the Russo-Japanese War up to the Big One. Those pre-war Japs were unbelievably HARD. I mean, Alpha-Nation Hard! But now, it's almost like they are the reverse of what they were.

You might blow that off as an unremarkable inter-generational transformation, but to me it's a stunning change in national character which ought to be explicable.

Admittedly, the Japanese transformation may be stranger since it happened more rapidly. But Italy and the Roman Empire have been more of a focus of attention for me recently. And despite the temporal distance, a valid explanation of the historical change should possible, and for some at least, interesting.

 

[Bacco]

There are actually contemporary writers who view Italian unification as a mistake. Are you in agreement with them?

They're idiots and often the loudest are ones who come from an area that actually is currently saved by unification

"South was rich before unification" is some sort of mantra for people that want pretend somebody else (the north in this case) is guilty of all their misfortunes, without address there are multiple cultural problems that lot of them refuse to point at let alone fix

Reality historians (real ones, not wannabe political figures) would tell you as general rule if the north was late and very slowly moving toward industrialization, still was much faster and ahead than the south at it.
If keept separated the north (both for efforts made and for geographic position) was destined to slowly allign/get closer with rest of euro powers standards, while south was on a decline that would have keept going as we know importance of industrialization in the western economy was not going to decrease in importance.

It's like people complaining about north south "unfair" difference don't realize the gap would be much larger if unification did'nt happened or happened later (i say it as guy with half family from the south)

 

[kimocomplex]

Well there is this warrior

But then he got skinny and lost his chin

 

[Patrick Jane]

G*rmans be like

 

[PG29 red0 Jr]

This video taught me everything I know about Italy.