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Ancient Greece Ancient Rome Caesar Augustus Christendom Constantine Constantinople Destruction of Greco-Roman world Evil Evropa Soberana (webzine) Judea v. Rome (masthead of this site)

Apocalypse for whites • XXXI

by Evropa Soberana

The destruction of the Greco-Roman World – 1

(Fourth century)

After the Council of Nicaea, Christianity reaches a doctrinal uniformity that unifies the diverse factions, and acquires a legal administrative character, like a state within the State. Nicaea, incidentally, is a city in the province of Bithynia, Asia Minor (now Turkey). Constantine brings together 318 bishops, each elected by their community, to debate and establish a ‘Christian normalization’, in view of the many factions and discrepancies within the religion. The result is the so-called ‘Nicene creed’: the Christianity to preach.
By this time, the emperor needs a force of union for the melting pot of races that has been imposed in Rome. There were many ‘salvation cults’ with rites practiced in secret, mostly of the underground type of cults that always arise in times of decadence and degeneration.
There is the cult of Mithras (a cult of Iranian origin and military character, already corrupted by the masses, although during an ascending era it was popular in the Roman legions), and the cult of Cybele. The emperor chose Christianity for his empire, not because of its value as a religion, but because of its Semitic intolerance; its fanaticism—famous throughout the empire—, its centuries-old experience as a tool of intrigue, its intelligence networks and its equalizing, proselytising and globalising ethos make it the perfect ‘emergency religion’.
The other religions, lacking of intolerance, will not impose themselves by violence on reluctant people with that unifying effect of flock of sheep that Christianity will provide. And what the unwise Constantine needs is precisely a flock, not a combination of different people each with its own identity. Christianity, therefore, slightly prolongs the agony of the Roman Empire. People begin to convert to Christianity by snobbishness and climbing eagerness, to reach high positions: that is, to make a career.
After a thousand intrigues, conspiracies, factional fights, poisonings, manipulations and blackmail, the Edict of Milan gives Christianity the consideration of ‘respectable’ religion, giving it clearance. Its former creeping humility disappears and the most unpleasant Christian face arises: Christians immediately demand that the ‘idol-worshipers’ be prescribed the bestial punishments described in the Old Testament.
324
Throughout Italy, with the exception of Rome, the temples of Jupiter are closed. In Didyma, Asia Minor, the sanctuary of the Oracle of Apollo is sacked. Priests are sadistically tortured to death. Constantine expelled the Hellenists from Mount Athos (a mystical zone of classical Greece that later became an important Christian-Orthodox centre), destroying all the Hellenic temples in the area. In 324, Constantine, brainwashed by his mother Helena, ordered to destroy the temple of the god Asclepius in Cilicia, as well as numerous temples of the goddess Aphrodite in Jerusalem, Afak (Lebanon), Mamre, Phoenicia, Baalbek, and other places.
326
Constantine changes the capital of his empire to Byzantium, which he renames with the name Nuova Roma. This, together with the adoption of Christianity, means a radical change within the Roman Empire. From then on, the Roman focus of cultural attention changes from its origin in northern Europe and Greece, to Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine and North Africa (the Eastern Mediterranean, from which most of the inhabitants of the Empire now come): importing models of dark Semitic beauty unthinkable for the ancient Romans who, like the Greeks, had the Nordic beauty in high esteem as a sign of noble and divine origin.
330
Constantine steals statues and treasures from Greece to decorate Nuova Roma (later Constantinople), the new capital of his empire. At this same time, a bishop from Caesarea, Asia Minor, later known as St. Basil who is credited with grandiose phrases such as ‘I wept for my miserable life’, laid the foundations of what would later become the Orthodox Church.
337
On his deathbed, Emperor Constantine I is baptized a Christian, becoming the first Christian Roman emperor. The Judeo-Christian sycophants, wanting to make clear what example of emperor he was, will call him Constantine I ‘the Great’ and ‘Saint Constantine’.
341
Emperor Flavius Julius Constantius (reigned 337 to 361), another fanatical Christian, proclaims his intention to persecute ‘all fortune-tellers and pagans’. Thus, many Greek Hellenists are imprisoned, tortured and executed. Around this time, famous Christian leaders such as Marcus of Arethusa or Cyril of Heliopolis do their way, particularly demolishing temples, burning important writings and persecuting the Hellenists who, in some way, threaten the expansion of the incipient Church.
We cannot doubt that, at least in part, Christianity used its repugnance for Roman decadence to persecute any Greco-Roman cult, just as Islam today rejects the decline of Western Civilization. This was just the perfect excuse how Christianity justified its deeds and exterminated classical culture. That which Christianity systematically persecuted with shameful excuses, was something pure and aristocratic: luminous Hellenism, love of gnosis, art, philosophy, free debate and the natural sciences. It was Egyptian, Greek and Persian knowledge. What Christianity was doing with its persecution and extermination was literally erasing the traces of the gods.
346
Another great anti-Hellenistic persecution in Constantinople. The famous anti-Christian author and speaker Libanius[1] is accused of being a ‘magician’ and is banished. At this point, what was once the Roman Empire has gone crazy, chaotic and unrecognisable. The patriotic Romans must take their hands to their heads when they see how ignorant crowds snatch from their heirs all the harvest of the classic cultures, not only of Rome itself, but also of Egypt, Persia and Greece.
353-354
The Decree of Constantius establishes the death penalty for anyone who practices a religion with ‘idols’. Another decree, in 354, orders to close all the Greco-Roman temples. Many of them are assaulted by fanatical crowds, who torture and murder the priests, loot the treasures, burn the writings, destroy works of art that today would be considered sublime and destroy everything in general.
Most of the temples that fall in this era are desecrated, being converted into stables, brothels and gambling halls. The first lime factories are installed next to these closed temples, from which they extract their raw material—in such a way that a large part of classical sculpture and architecture is transformed into lime!
In this same year of 354, a new edict plainly orders destruction of all Greco-Roman temples and the extermination of all ‘idolaters’. The killings of the adepts of Greco-Roman culture, the demolitions of their temples, the destructions of statues and the fires of libraries throughout the empire follow each other.

This statue of Emperor Augustus—the first Roman emperor,
who was obviously pagan—was disfigured by the Christians,
who engraved a cross on the forehead.

Let us not make the mistake of blaming the Christianised Roman emperors. They were ridiculous and weak men, but they were in the hands of their educators. The instructors, who respond to the type of vampiric and parasitic priest so hated by Nietzsche, were the true leaders of the meticulous and massive destruction that was taking place.
The numerous bishops and saints to whom we have referred were ‘cosmopolitan’ men of Jewish education, many of whom had been born in Judea, or came from essentially Jewish areas. They were transformed Jews who, having come in contact with their enemies, studying them carefully and hatefully, knew how to destroy them.
They had a broad rabbinical education and knew in depth the teachings of classical culture, dominating the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Syrian and Egyptian languages. Such characters, of an intelligence and a cunning as outstanding as their resentment, were convinced that they were building a new order, and that to do so it was necessary to erase a hundred percent every trace of any previous civilisation, and any thought that was not of Jewish origin. We must recognise that their psychological knowledge and their mastery of propaganda were of a very high level.
356
All the rituals of classical culture are placed outside the law and punished by death. A year later, all methods of divination, including astrology, are also proscribed.
359
In the very Jewish city of Scythopolis, (province of Syria, today corresponds to Beit She’an, in Israel), Christian leaders organise nothing more and nothing less than a concentration camp for the Hellenists detained throughout the empire. In this field those who profess classical beliefs, or who simply opposed the Church, are imprisoned, tortured and executed.
Over time, Scythopolis becomes a whole infrastructure of camps, dungeons, torture cells and execution rooms, where thousands of Hellenists would go. The most intense horrors of the time take place here. It was the gulag that the communism of the time used to suppress the dissidents.[2]
 
________________
[1] Note of the Editor: Libanius is a kind of hero in Gore Vidal’s historical novel, Julian.
[2] Note of the Editor: Unlike Karlheinz Deschner, who uses thousands of footnotes in his books about the criminal history of Christianity, Evropa Soberana does not reference most of what he writes. I guess his source for the Judaeo-Christian death camp in Scythopolis was Ammianus Marcellinus, but the Wikipedia article on Ammianus does not mention the camps because the wiki is run by Jews and philo-Semite whites.
Scholars of the 14 words really need to start building a library in Greek and Latin that includes the collection of the Loeb Classical Library to properly reference these historical tragedies so difficult to find without a proper bibliographical guide.

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Caesar Augustus Evropa Soberana (webzine) Josephus Judea v. Rome (masthead of this site) Tiberius

Apocalypse for whites • XI

by Evropa Soberana

 
Herod the Great
Augustus (born Gaius Octavius), successor of Julius Caesar at the head of the Roman Empire, appointed Herod, son of Antipater, as king of Judea, and financed his army with Roman money. Herod was a capable, brutal, competent and unscrupulous leader (he practically dispatched his entire family), as well as an excellent warrior, hunter and archer. He expelled the Judean Parthians; protected Jerusalem from pillage, persecuted the bandits and highwaymen and executed the Jews who had supported the Parthian marionette regime, consolidating himself in 37 BCE as king of Judea.
Although Herod is portrayed by history as a ruthless, cruel and selfish king, the reality is that, as hard as it may seem to believe, as a sovereign he was one of the best that this land ever had. Even in 25 BCE he sacrificed important personal wealth to import large quantities of grain from Egypt, with the aim of fighting a famine that was spreading misery in his country.
Despite this and everything he did for Israel, Herod is viewed with antipathy by the Jews, for having been a pro-Roman, pro-Greek sovereign and, above all, because his Jewishness was questioned: Herod descended from his father’s side of Antipater (the one who supported Cassius), who in turn descended from those Idumeans (or Edomites) forced to convert to Judaism when John Hyrcanus, a Hasmonean king, conquered Idumea (or Edom) around 135 BCE.
On the maternal side Herod descended from the Arabs, and the transmission of the Jewish condition is matrilineal. Therefore, although Herod identified himself as a Jew and was considered a Jew by most authorities, the masses of the Jewish people, especially the most orthodox, systematically distrusted the king: especially in view of the opulent and luxurious life he imposed on his court, and held for him a contempt perhaps comparable to the one that the Spaniards of the 16th century felt by the Marranos or Jews converted to Christianity.
For his education and Greco-Roman inclinations, it is more likely that this king felt less Jewish, although he certainly wanted to please Jewry and be an effective sovereign by the prosperity that he brought to them. More rational than his fundamentalist subjects, Herod understood that enraging Rome was not good business.
Herod gave Israel a splendour that it had never known, not even under David or Solomon. He embellished Jerusalem with Hellenistic architecture and sculpture; carried out an ambitious program of public works, and in 19 BCE demolished and rebuilt the very Temple in Jerusalem, considering it too small and mediocre.
This angered the Jews, who hated Herod for being a protégée of the Romans, whom cordially they hated even more. Undoubtedly, the most orthodox sectors of the Jewish quarter were happy with the Temple as it was, and they must have seen as bad its conversion in a more Roman-looking building, especially when the king ordered to decorate the entrance with a golden imperial eagle. (Paradoxically, the Jews would later mourn the destruction of this same Temple at the hands of the Romans.)
Herod was continually involved in conspiracies by his family, much of which, including his own wife and two of his children, was executed at his request. As he was getting old, he developed ulcers and convulsions. He died in 4 BCE, at the age of 69. Eventually it was said that he had ‘ascended to the throne like a fox; ruled like a tiger, and died like a dog’.

The first temple in Jerusalem was a very shabby building, as we have seen in a previous chapter. The second, similar to the first, was built under the protection of the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great in 515 BCE. In the year 19 BCE Herod proposed to renovate and enlarge it, for which he demolished the old temple; erecting, under Roman protection, a much grander one, although it continued to be called ‘Second Temple’ (or Temple of Herod). Although Jewry would abhor Herod, the truth is that he gave the temple a size and splendour that neither Solomon nor Zerubbabel could have imagined.

In that same year of 4 BCE, two Jewish Pharisees called Zadok (or Tsadoq) and Judas the Galilee (also called John of Gamala) called for not paying tribute to Rome. There was a Pharisee uprising, and the rabbis ordered to destroy the ‘idolatrous’ image of the imperial eagle that Herod had placed at the entrance to the Temple in Jerusalem. Herod Archelaus, the son of Herod, and Varus, a Roman commander, stifled the revolt harshly, and had nearly 3,000 Jews crucified.
It is thought that perhaps this first revolt is the origin of the Zealot movement, about which we will talk in the next section. Archelaus, despite having been proclaimed king by his army, did not assume the title until he had presented his respects, in Rome, to Augustus. He was made the Roman client king of Judea, Samaria and Idumea, despite of the sentiments of the Roman Jews, who feared him for the cruelty with which he had repressed the Pharisee uprising.
Archelaus is mentioned in the gospel of Matthew, since Yosef, Miriam and Yeshua—known as Joseph, Mary and Jesus—had escaped to Egypt to avoid the massacre of the innocents. (Supposedly, that year Herod Archelaus ordered the execution of all the firstborn of Bethlehem.) [1]
 
The Zealots
In the year 6 CE, after the complaints of the Jews, Augustus dismisses Archelaus, sending him to Gaul. Samaria, Judea and Idumea are formally annexed as a province of the Roman Empire, with the name of Judea. The Jews become governed by Roman ‘procurators’: a kind of governors who had to maintain peace, Romanize the area and exercise the fiscal policy of Rome by collecting taxes. They also arrogated to themselves the right to appoint the high priest of their choice.
The Jews hated the puppet kings despite the fact that they imposed order, developed the area and, in short, civilised the country. Paradoxically, from the beginning the Jewish quarter was also highly hostile to the Romans, whose intervention they had practically begged! Now, in addition to the Temple tribute, they also had to pay tribute to Caesar—and, by tradition, money was not something the Jews happily lavished.
That same year, the consul Publius Sulpicius Quirinius arrived in Syria to make a census in the name of Rome with the objective of establishing taxes. Since Judea had been annexed to Syria, Quirinius included the Jews in the census. As a result of this and of the new irruption of European culture in the area, the fundamentalist terrorist movement of the Zealots flourished.
Flavius Josephus considers the Zealots as the fourth Jewish sect together with—from least to greatest religious extremism—the Essenes, the Sadducees and the Pharisees. The Zealots were the most fundamentalists of all: they refused to pay taxes to the Roman Empire. For them, all other Jewish factions were heretical; any Jew who collaborated minimally with the Roman authorities was guilty of treason and should be executed. The armed struggle, the militarization of the Jewish people and the expulsion of the Romans, were the only way to achieve the redemption of Zion. According to the New Testament, the apostle Simon, one of the disciples of Jesus, belonged to this faction (Luke, 6:15).
Among the Zealots the Sicarii stood out, a faction even more fanatized, sectarian and radicalised, so called by the sica: a dagger that could be easily hidden and used to kill their enemies. The Zealots and Sicarii would form the hard core of the Great Jewish Revolt which we will see in another section. They were also the most active element of Judaism of the time, since at that time it is probable that most Jews, although they detested both Greeks and Romans cordially, would simply like to live and enrich themselves in peace, agreeing with whom it was necessary for it.
As it could not be otherwise, the Sicarii and zealots also fought among themselves. There were a total of twenty-four Jewish factions that generally fought against each other, in a very representative frame of what the rabbis called Sinat chinam, that is, ‘groundless hatred’ from Jew to Jew (maybe because hating non-Jews does make sense): an attitude that perhaps has been better caricatured in the movie Life of Brian.
In year 19, with Jewry in process of climbing to acquire influence at Rome itself, Tiberius expelled the Jews from the city, instigated by the Senate. Concerned about the popularity of Judaism among freed slaves, he forbids Jewish rites in the capital of the Empire, considering Jewry ‘a danger to Rome’ and ‘unworthy to remain within the walls of the City of the Legions’ according to Suetonius. That year, on the occasion of a famine in the province of Egypt, Tiberius denies to the Alexandrian Jews grain reserves, since he does not consider them his citizens.

Tiberius set in motion anti-Jewish measures during his reign, during which Jesus was executed.
___________________
[1] Note of the Ed.: An obviously fictional gospel tale, as no Roman historian mentions it, not even the Jew Flavius Josephus.

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Ancient Rome Arthur Schopenhauer Caesar Augustus Caligula Claudius Hadrian Judaism Julius Caesar Karlheinz Deschner Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (books) Nero Old Testament

Kriminalgeschichte, 9

Below, a translated passage from the first volume of Karlheinz
Deschner’s Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums
(“Criminal History of Christianity”)

 
The Jewish religion, tolerated by the pagan state

But even the masters of Rome were tolerant of the Jews (in whom they found peasants, artisans, workers—at that time they were not yet characterised as merchants), and in some cases showed some sympathy for them. They enjoyed some special privileges, especially in the East, such as Sabbath observance. They had their own jurisdiction and were not obliged to submit to Roman jurisdiction.

Caesar supported them in many ways. Augustus generously endowed the Temple of Jerusalem. According to the terms of the imperial donation, a bull and two lambs were sacrificed there every day “to the highest God.” Agrippa, an intimate friend of Augustus, also favoured the Jews.

On the other hand, Emperor Caligula (37-41)—somewhat eccentric and aspiring to have his own temple, appeared in public clothed with the attributes of various divinities, even female, and lived married to his sister Drusilla and intended that an image of him be erected even in the Holy of Holies of Jerusalem—expelled the Jews of the main cities of Parthia, where they were especially numerous.

But even the emperor Claudius, before persecuting the Jews of Rome, had issued a decree in their favour, in the year 42, granting them a special jurisdiction valid throughout the empire, but at the same time warned them not to abuse imperial magnanimity and that they did not despise the customs of other peoples. Nero’s wife, Poppaea Sabina, was a great protector of Judaism. In general terms, the Roman administration was always ready “to accommodate as much as possible, and even more, with all the demands of the Jews, justified or not” (Mommsen).

Not even after the conquest of Jerusalem did the emperors harass the Jewish faith, which for them was religio licita. Vespasian and his successors corroborated the privileges already granted by Caesar and Augustus. Jews could marry, sign contracts, acquire property, hold public office, possess slaves, and many other things, like any Roman citizen. Jewish communities could manage their own goods and had their own, albeit limited, jurisdiction.

Even after Bar Kokhba’s insurrection, Emperor Hadrian and his successors consented to the public celebration of Jewish cults, and granted the dispensation of common obligations which were incompatible with their religion. Even in the provinces there were almost no restrictions against them; they built synagogues, appointed their trustees, and were exempt from military service in accordance with their beliefs.

And all this because, just as today the primitive peoples do not know, in their beliefs, the claim of exclusiveness of a “superior being,” also the old Hellenism was characteristically tolerant. In polytheism, no deity can claim the exclusive. The native cults amalgamated without problems with the imported ones. In the ancient pantheon prevailed a kind of collegiality or friendly companionship; the faithful could pray to the god they preferred, believed to recognize their own gods under the appearances of others, and certainly did not bother trying to “convert” anyone. Schopenhauer says that intolerance is an essential characteristic of monotheism, that only the one God is

by its nature, a jealous god, that does not want to consent the subsistence of any other. On the other hand, the gods of polytheism are by nature tolerant; Live and let live, and in principle tolerate their colleagues, the gods of the same religion. Later on, that tolerance extends equally to foreign deities.

To the pagans, the belief in a unique God seems to them a poverty of concepts; uniformity, un-sacralisation of the universe, atheism. Nothing more foreign to their way of thinking than the idea that the foreigners’ gods are idols. Nothing sounds to them as incomprehensible as the “thou shalt have no other God but Me” of the Jews; “I am the Lord,” “I am the Lord your God,” an expression that is repeated up to sixteen times in the 19th chapter of Leviticus, to give but one example and not the longest. Paganism knows nothing comparable to the covenant of blood between Yahweh and his “chosen people.” And nothing excited more the antipathy against the Jews than their behaviour on account of their beliefs.

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Ancient Rome Caesar Augustus Caligula Claudius Emigration / immigration Evropa Soberana (webzine) Indo-European heritage Miscegenation Nero Nordicism Patriarchy Plutarch Racial studies Real men Suetonius Tacitus Tiberius Trajan Vespasian and Titus

The face of Classical Europe (II)

Were the Romans blond and blue-eyed?

 

Translated from Evropa Soberana

 

Recently I was called names on VNN forum as a result of my criticism of anti-Nordicism in my previous post. Isn’t it ironic that the signature-legend of VNN’s admin states that the Jews must be exterminated while, at the same time, some of the forum’s senior members want to grant amnesty to the mudbloods in Europe?

Hopefully this abridged translation from the Spanish blogsite Evropa Soberana, which could be read together with the first installment about the phenotype of Greeks in Classical Europe, will throw more light on why anti-Nordicists are deluding themselves.



 

Were the Romans blond and blue-eyed?

The Latin malus [“bad”] (beside which I place mélas, Greek for “black”) might designate the common man as dark, especially black-haired (hic niger est), as the pre-Aryan settler of the Italian soil, notably distinguished from the new blond conqueror race by his color.

—Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals

 
The Roman case is virtually identical to the Greek case. This YouTube clip contains the first minutes from the series Rome, where fighting between Gauls and Romans is recreated. The series had tremendous blunders, great nonsense, and several lies and BS in abundance. But the atmosphere was curious, as was the march of historical events, the legions in action, the splendor of the imperial palaces, the goings-on in the alleys of Rome, etc. One of the protagonists of the series was a centurion, the one with the whistle.

He was blond.

But how can you be so fascists so Nordicists, so Nazis so anti-Teresa-de-Calcutta, as Eurocentric and racists as these media? If you had a minimum of culture (like me) you should know that the Romans were of Mediterranean phenotype (like me)—and so on.

Things like these I have heard more times than you can imagine. And similar poppycock we continue to hear even by people who, by their admiration of Rome, obviously have read something written by these sober and tough soldiers who were the Romans, right?

In this article the testimonies from the handwriting of the real Romans are presented. Forget the movies and the illiterate pundits and let the sources explain us how Romans saw themselves.


The first Roman emperors as an example of patrician racial types

We will examine the phenotype of the first Roman emperors, who were representative of the race of patricians, the Roman nobilitas, i.e., the ruling aristocracy. What interests me is not so much to demonstrate the presence of Nordic blood in the upper Roman class (which is easy), but mainly to show that the Nordic blood in Rome was also inextricably linked to the notion of divinity and of noble descent. Some passages are originally in Greek. This is because Greek had great prestige as a cultured, poetic and philosophical language, and there were many Romans educated in that language.

• Augustus, the first Roman emperor, was “blond” (subflavum) according to Suetonius (De Vita Caesarum: Divus Augustus), and had “blue eyes” (glauci) according to Pliny (Naturalis Historia, XI, CXLIII):

roma-octavio

He had clear, bright eyes, in which he liked to have it thought that there was a kind of divine power, and it greatly pleased him, whenever he looked keenly at anyone, if he let his face fall as if before the radiance of the sun (Suetonius, De Vita Caesarum: Divus Augustus, LXXIX).

• Tiberius had “gray-blue” (caesii) eyes according to Pliny (Naturalis Historia, XI, CXLII).

• Caligula had a “blonde beard” (aurea barba) according to Suetonius (De Vita Caesarum: Caligula, LII).

• Claudius had “gray-white hair” (canitieque) according to Suetonius (De Vita Caesarum: Divus Claudius, XXX), and “gray eyes” (γλαυκόφθαλμος) according to Ioannes Malelas (Chronographia, X, CCXLVI).

• Nero was “blond or redhead” (subflavo); had “gray-blue eyes” (caesis) according to Suetonius (De Vita Caesarum: Nero, LI), and descended from a family named after their light pigmentation.

Of the Domitian family two branches have acquired distinction, the Calvini and the Ahenobarbi. The latter have as the founder of their race and the origin of their surname Lucius Domitius, to whom, as he was returning from the country, there once appeared twin youths of more than mortal majesty, so it is said, and bade him carry to the senate and people the news of a victory, which was as yet unknown. And as a token of their divinity it is said that they stroked his cheeks and turned his black beard to a ruddy hue, like that of bronze. This sign was perpetuated in his descendants, a great part of whom had red beards. (Suetonius, De Vita Caesarum: Nero, I.)

• Galba had gray-white (μιξοπόλιος) hair according to Malelas (Chronographia, X, CCLVIII) and blue eyes (caeruleis) according to Suetonius (De Vita Caesarum: Galba, XXI).

• Vitellius was “redhead” (πυρράκης) and had “gray” or “blue” eyes (γλαυκός) according to Malelas (Chronographia, X, CCLIX).

• Vespasian had “gray-white hair” (πολιός) and “wine-colored eyes” (οινοπαης τους οφθαλμούς), although it is unclear whether this refers to red wine (brown) or white wine (green) according to Malelas (Chronographia, X, CCLIX).

• Titus, according to Wilhelm Sieglin (1855-1935) in Die blonden Haare der indogermanischen Völker des Altertums, 109, was “blonde”.

• Domitian was “blond” (ξανθός) and had “gray or blue eyes” (γλαυκός) according Malelas (Chronographia, X, CCLXII).

• Nerva was “gray-haired” according to John V. Day (Indo-European Origins).

• Trajan had “golden hair” (caesaries) according to Sieglin (Die blonden Haare der indogermanischen Völker des Altertums, 109). But let us not forget that Trajan was not Roman but a Spanish with Celtic blood, and therefore we should not take this into account when trying to define the phenotype of the Roman patrician aristocracy.

• Adriano, from a noble Roman family established in Hispania, was “dark-haired” (κυανοχαιτα) according Sieglin (Die blonden Haare der indogermanischen Völker des Altertums, 112), and of “gray or blue eyes” (γλαυκόφθαλμος) according to Malelas (Chronographia XI, CCLXXVII).

Interestingly, despite being described as “dark-haired,” on his statue there are traces of gold paint on his hair and beard. Formerly, the statues were painted according to the colors of the original “model”. His facial features correspond to the Nordic type.

• Antoninus Pius had “gray-white hair” (πολιός) and eyes “the color of wine” (οινοπαης τους οφθαλμούς) according Malelas (Chronographia, XI, CCLXXX).

• Lucius Verus had “blond hair” (flaventium) according Sieglin (Die blonden Haare der indogermanischen Völker des Altertums, 110).

• Commodus had “blond hair” (ουλόξανθος) and “blue or gray eyes” (υπόγλαυκος) according Malelas (Chronographia, XII, CCLXXXIII).

Therefore, we find that:

• Of the 18 emperors from Augustus to Commodus, 9 had blond or red hair, 5 had gray or white hair, of 3 we have no way of knowing the hair color, and only one (Adriano) was described as dark-haired.

• Of the 18 emperors from Augustus to Commodus, 9 had blue or gray eyes, 2 had eyes of “the color of wine” (whatever that means, let us take it as brown), and of 7 we have no record as to the color of their eyes.

Many emperors came to power in their advanced years, with already gray or white hair. However, many were even so described with light eyes. If we had records of their appearance when they were young, it is likely that a significant proportion of them had light hair. Of the 9 Emperors with light hair, we know that at least 5 had clear eyes, and of the other 4 we know nothing about the color of their eyes. Of Tiberius, for example, we know nothing about his hair, maybe because he was bald when he came to power. And the same applies to Otto, who shaved his head and wore a wig. Nor do we know anything about the physical aspect of the “philosopher emperor” Marcus Aurelius, father of Commodus and a first-class sovereign. Many other emperors (as Julius Caesar), without being blond, were tall and had a very fair complexion, ruddy, or rosy.

From Commodus on I renounce to provide more emperor descriptions because:

1 – those individuals who began ascending to power were not of Roman origin, and therefore their phenotype cannot tell us anything about the genetic legacy of the nobilitas of Italian and patrician origin.

2 – miscegenation was already quite advanced; lineages of patrician origin having lost their meaning. At that time it was common that women of Roman high society should shave the manes of Germanic slaves to fix their blond-hair wigs.


The gods, the Italici, the patricians and the origins of Rome

Let us go back around 1200 BCE and transport ourselves to Italy. At that time, Central Europe was a buzzing propagating zone for the Indo-European stock. From what is now Germany, of a semi-barbarous proto-civilization of the iron age, flowed migrant groups in all directions. These waves were of the Celts, the Hellenes, the Illyrians and the Italici (also called italos or italiotas).

At that time, the Italici, probably with some confederate Illyrian groups as in the case of the Dorians, broke into Italy.

They were a people who, in contrast to the native inhabitants of Italy, were patriarchal rather than matriarchal; ruddy rather than swarthy; that cremated their dead instead of burying them; that brought with them a whole pantheon of gods and heroic warriors, spoke an Indo-European language, yielded a war cult and whose symbology was a lot more oriented to heavenly than earthly symbols.

Italici were the settlers of sites such as the Villanovan Culture. Subsequent “civilian” conflicts that feminist history has termed as “matriarchy vs. patriarchy,” and what is left in mythology regarding the heroic struggle of the Indo-Europeans against the native, telluric bodies (like snakes) actually refer to a spiritual confrontation triggered by the arrival of a small, aggressive and martial people that did not mix with the native population and struggled to dominate the area.

Under a rigid religious ritualism, on April 21, 753 BCE the heads of some Italic clans founded the city of Rome. For two centuries, Rome lived under the despotism and tyranny of the Etruscan kings, heads of a degenerate civilization that practiced sacrificial rituals, orgies, matriarchy, homosexuality, luxurious opulence, pedophilia, decadent entertainments, etc. The Etruscans came from Asia Minor, styling themselves as rasena (“chosen,” as the Jews) yet their legacy, which only represented the decline of something greater than themselves, meant that they were a doomed people.

The situation of the Roman tribute to Etruria lasted until, in 509 BCE, the Romans rose against the Etruscans and expelled the Etruscan king, Tarquinius Superbus, from the lands. Legends want to portray that this Italic insurrection—a “holy rebellion” against the pre-Indo-European; of patriarchy against matriarchy—was motivated by the rape of Lucretia, a beautiful and virtuous woman of Roman family at the hands of Sextus Tarquinius, son of the Etruscan king and raunchy as all his people, as opposed to the Puritan morality of the Latins.

Lucretia committed suicide by honor and, this being the straw that broke the camel of the Roman patience, the patriarchs began a rebellion against the Etruscans that led to the overthrowing of the Etruscan kings, the founding of the Roman Republic and the systematic eradication of almost all Etruscan memory. (Comparable only to the “genocide” and the complete destruction of Carthage, the mortal enemy of Rome, considered as the reincarnation of Etruscan and oriental spirit, whose fields were cast in salt so that nothing would grow there.)

decopianr

Recreation of Rome during the Republic. Pay attention to the shape of the boats, so reminiscent of the Scandinavian drakkar.

With the expulsion of the Etruscan power two praetors (later consuls) who held the vacuum of power were named. It was therefore founded the Roman Republic, marked by social struggles between patricians (nobles) and plebeians.

At that time, the original Populus Romanus was divided into 30 curiae (tribes or clans), whose origin was lost among the Italic peoples before the invasion. The curiae were headed by patres (parents) of the gens (family), that is, the founding fathers of the clan and of each family that composed it. Each gens or family was considered descendant of a genius or semi-divine patriarch, who was worshiped on the household as protector idol of the house and their descendants.

If we assimilate the fact that to the Romans a gens or family was a whole social, state, military and religious institution, we may understand the importance of the geniuses and patres as leaders of this small imperial cell, that corresponded to social, political and military leadership as well as leading positions in the characteristic Roman religious worship, where Jupiter is confused with the State, the patriarch, the Senate, the Legion and the family. No wonder, then, that they were regarded as semi-divine and of very high wisdom.

The patres were those who gave their name to the breed of the patricians, namely those belonging to the system of families and clans: the aristocracy, the first nobilitas, which differed from the plebs or plebeians—the people outside the Italic clans. At first, the male patricians were the only Roman citizens, the members of the Legion, the only ones who could be senators and enjoyed all the rights and duties traditionally associated with Roman citizenship.

Later, after the “universalization” and “cosmopolitanization” of Rome during the Empire, the patricians came to form an aristocracy over the other peoples of Italy, encompassed by the plebs. The patricians as social class, and among them the patres as heads of households, are probably the most exalted expression of patriarchy and patriotism itself of the Indo-European, in opposition to the narcotic matriarchy of the pre-Indo-European peoples of Europe, already decadents and altogether “civilized”.
 

♣

 
We now turn to the patricians and Roman gods from the point of view of the phenotype, after seeing the first Roman emperors, mostly patrician.

• Lucius Cornelius Sulla (138-78 BCE), Roman consul and dictator, of patrician descent, had blond hair, blue eyes and a ruddy complexion:

…for his golden head of hair gave him a singular appearance, and as for bravery, he was not ashamed to testify in his own behalf, after such great and noble deeds as he had performed. So much, then, regarding his attitude towards the divine powers. (Plutarch, De Vita: Sulla.)

What was the rest of his figure appears in his statues, but that fierce and unpleasant look of his blue eyes was still more terrible to stare at because the color of his face, being noted at intervals so ruddy and red mixed with his whiteness, and it is even said that he took his name from that, coming to be a nickname for the designated color. Thus, a teller of Athens taunted him with these lines: “If you knead a blackberry with flour, you have the portrait of Sulla.”

Marcus Porcius Cato the “Censor”, better known as Cato the Elder (234-149 BCE), the pronouncer of the famous saying Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam (“Furthermore, I think Carthage must be destroyed”) in every speech, had reddish hair according to Plutarch:

As for his outward appearance, he had reddish hair, and keen grey eyes, as the author of the well-known epigram ill-naturedly gives us to understand: “Red-haired, snapper and biter, his grey eyes flashing defiance, Porcius, come to the shades, back will be thrust by their Queen.” (Plutarch, Cato the Elder.)

• Poppaea Sabina (30-65 CE), the wife of Nero, famous for her beauty all over Rome, was very white and redhead.

We note that the Romans, like the Greeks, saw light pigmentation as a sign of the “divine” or “supernatural”. Some may interpret this that light pigmentation was rare among the Romans. But considering naming conventions, it is clear that the light features were quite common among the patricians. According to Karl Earlson:

Once they had reached a certain stage in their lives, the patricians earned their additional name (cognomina), which was often based on their physical appearance. The name Albus indicated light skin; Ravilla, gray eyes; Caesar, blue eyes; Flavius, blonde hair; Rufus, red hair; Longus, tall; Macer, a slender constitution. All these names were common among the patricians.

Thus, the Latin author Quintilian, in Institutio Oratoria (I, IV, XXV), notes that a man named Rufus or Longo has that name for his body characteristics: he is high or redhead. Plutarch (Coriolanus XI) states that two men, one redhead and one swarthy, could be distinguished because the first would be called Rufus and the second Niger. Aelius Spartianus, in Historia Augusta (II, IV), suggests that the Caesars earned their name from the fact that the founder of his gens had blue eyes (oculis caesiis). The lexicographer Sextus Pompeius Festus, in De verborum significatu (CCCLXXVI ff) states that the name Ravilia derives from “gray eyes” (ravis oculis), and the name Caesulla from blue eyes (oculis caesiis). Julius Paris, in De nominibus Epitome, VII, provides examples of names of women that, he says, have their origin in the pigmentation of those who held them: Rutila (red hair), Caesellia (blue eyes), Rodacilla (pink complexion), Murrula and Burra (red hair or ruddy complexion).

I have provided all these quotations to show that these names were not purely arbitrary but were, in fact, based on physical characteristics; and that these features were not uncommon among certain strata of Roman society.

Even where the patricians had almost disappeared, the Romans had memories of the old patres as the semi-divine beings who arrived to Italy, founded Rome, “Romanized” the peninsula and bequeathed the patriarchate to those lands, together with a strong mentality and a durable and effective political system that lasted for centuries. The ancient ancestors of the patricians were still considered in Rome as a common heritage to be proud of.

Karl Earlson summarizes how he follows Sieglin’s findings as to the pigmentation of the patricians and their identity as a breed:

Wilhelm Sieglin [in Die blonden Haare der indogermanischen Völker des Altertums, 1935] compiled the list of the Roman patricians whose names indicate light hair. He provided the following list: 7 Flavi, 20 Flaviani, 10 Fulvi, 121 Fulvii, 27 Rubrii, 26 Rufi, 24 Rufii, 36 Rufini, 45 Rutilii and 13 Ahenobarbi. This completely disrupts Sergi’s claim that: “The Romans also had their Flavi, indicating that people with fair complexion were rare and required a special name, but does not indicate that the Germanic type was considered aristocratic or dominant” (Sergi: 1901, 20). In fact, such people were not scarce.

Sieglin also determined that among the families Iulii, Licinii, Lucretii, Sergii and Virginii, the name Flavius was very common; Rufi was often seen among the families Antonii, Caecilii, Coelii, Cornelii, Geminii, Iunii, Licinii families (often also the Flavii), Minucii, Octavii, Pinarii, Pompei, Rutilii, Sempronii, Trebonii, Valgii and Vibii; Rufini was common among the gens Antonia, Cornelia, Iunia, Licinian, Trebonia and Vibia. Sieglin notes that this list could certainly be increased in the light of further research.

Besides all this, Sieglin also compiled a list of 63 blond or red-haired Romans. Many of these individuals were patricians. He also found references to 27 blond divinities (including Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, Diana, etc.) and 10 blondes in heroic personalities.

Man makes the gods in their own image. These blond gods speak of the racial nature of the early Romans. (In the Aeneid, Virgil refers to Mercury, Lavinia, Turnus and Camilla as “golden-haired.”) His list of blonds includes Aeneas, the mythical ancestor of the Latins (also blond was his son Julo or Ascanius), Romulus and Remus, the twin founders of Rome; Augustus, the first Roman emperor, and even Roma: which symbolized the city of Rome.

While most of Sieglin’s historical figures of light hair were patricians, most the 17 swarthy Romans in his references were commoners or freedmen.

On the disappearance of the patricians and the mestization of the original Romans

What happened to the patricians? They faded with time. In the numerous conspiracies and intrigues of the Empire, it was common that after the formation of two opposing parties and the victory of one over the other, the winner assassinated the head of the enemy party, his family and all the families related to him. (The strong destroy each other and the weak continue to live, as George Bernard Shaw maintained.) These calamities greatly decimated the patrician class. If we add the ongoing miscegenation in the majority of plebeian population, the immigration of slaves from Syria and the provinces of Asia Minor, Egypt and Africa, as well as the bleeding of the patrician stock over the battlefield, we may realize why the patricians did not last too long during the Empire, given the dysgenic situation. John V. Day wrote:

In a journal about the West and its future, it is fitting to end this article by briefly recounting the fate of the Roman upper class. Among Indo-European peoples, the Romans offer an especially useful example because they left masses of records, enabling later historians to determine what became of them. The evidence found in ancient texts implies that this class descended largely from Indo-Europeans who had a decidedly northern European physical type, although that isn’t something one reads in modern books about Roman history [emphasis added]. In Rome, though, the upper class was always a tiny minority. Instead of protecting its interests, it allowed itself to wither away. Consider a bleak statistic. We know of about fifty patrician clans in the fifth century B.C., but by the time of Caesar, in the later first century B.C., only fourteen of these had survived. The decay continued in imperial times. We know of the families of nearly four hundred Roman senators in A.D. sixty five, but, just one generation later, all trace of half of these families had vanished.

If we in the West want to avoid a similar fate, we must learn from Indo-European history. (*)

In the time of Julius Caesar we know 45 patricians, of which only one is represented by posterity when Hadrian rises to power. The Aemilsi, Fabii, Claudii. Manlii, Valerii and everyone else, except the Comelii have disappeared. Augustus and Claudius ascended 25 families to the Patriciate, and by the reign of Nerva all but 6 have disappeared. Of the families of nearly 400 senators registered under Nero in 65 CE, trace has been lost about half of them in times of Nerva. And the records are so complete that it can be assumed that these statistics represent quite accurately the disappearance of the male lineage of the families concerned. (Cf. Tenney Frank, “Race Mixture in the Roman Empire,” American Historical Review, Vol. XI, 1916).

Conclusion

Were the Romans, then, blond?

ancient_romanIt all depends on what you mean by “Romans”. The original Romans did not descend from the original inhabitants of the Italian soil, but of the Italici (italios or italiotas or as you please to call them) and probably also of Illyrian groups, namely, Indo-European invaders who entered Italy from the North, what is now southern Germany. These early invaders—from whom the Latins descended (considered the most influential and who eventually gave their language to the Empire), the Sabines (considered by Plutarch “a colony of the Lacedaemonians,” i.e., Spartans), the Umbrians, Samnites and all patrician clans that founded Rome and the Republic—were indeed mostly Nordic, and also formed the basis of the political and military elite of the Empire.

However, in the later Rome these groups formed an aristocratic minority ruling over a mob of pre-Indo-European origin and, later, even Semites and black slaves. This ended up in interbreeding between all these groups. Over time, the numbers of the dominant Nordic caste withered, and with them their strong patriarchal, sober and authoritative influence in favor of the dissolution of the Empire: expressed in its cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism and proliferation of slaves.

The rest of the history of the post-Roman imperial splendor and their great men, we already know. It is set in a decadent agony, punctuated by binges, parties, orgies, wine snobbery, false sophistication, acrobats, gays, stupid fads, obesity, blond wigs made from hair stolen from Germanics, mongrels, pacifists, emboldened slaves, “liberated” women, Christian zealots and a corrupt bourgeois which reneged of their homeland.

The ghost of ancient Etruria, killed by the ancient Latin Patriarchs, had reborn. Before these decaying monsters, which had nothing to do with the demigod patricians or their rude peasants and patriotic soldiers, the Germanic “barbarian” was really an authentic, pure, hard, strong, noble, idealistic, simple and brave hero, in whose blood awaited the hidden forces of the Indo-European humanity, ready to give birth and germinate in the next millennia of European power.

In short, it has not been argued that all Romans were of Nordic type. It has been argued that the Nordic blood prevailed among the Italic invaders, the ancestors of the posterior dominant Roman aristocracy, the authentic Roman citizens, who imposed their ethos throughout the Empire and spread their spirit, marking the “Roman style” with a distinctly Nordic stamp.

“Are the Germanics a healthy and natural people that will overcome the decadence of the Romans?” —Tacitus, Germania.

_________________

See also a previous article about the subject of:

“Saying the truth about race throws even white nationalists into fits.”

(*) John V. Day, Ph.D., is the author of Indo-European Origins: The Anthropological Evidence (The Institute for the Study of Man, 2001).

Categories
Ancient Rome Caesar Augustus Degeneracy Demography Juvenal March of the Titans (book) Miscegenation Nero Racial studies Seneca Tacitus

Why Rome fell



Excerpted from
March of the Titans:
A History of the White Race
by Arthur Kemp:


All civilizations fall only if the people who made those civilizations vanish. This is a truth, which applies to all races, nations, and people: as long as the people who created a particular civilization survive, and are present in significant numbers, the civilization that they created, will continue. Once those people vanish, then their civilization vanishes with them. There is no escaping this iron law of nature.

Classical Rome, one of the mightiest nations of the ancient world, was no exception to this rule. Although historians tend to focus on economic, moral, or military reasons for the fall of Rome, the real reason why this mighty civilization fell was because the very people who established the Roman civilization, ceased making up the majority population in and around Rome.

Although many historians have either ignored the racial factor in the cause of the fall of the Roman Empire—and some have never even thought about it—there have been many who have recognized race as the critical element. Amongst the more famous of these were professor Tenney Frank, from the Johns Hopkins University. Professor Frank, a recognized authority on the history of ancient Rome, is most famous for his work An Economic History of Rome (New York, Cooper Square Publishers, 1927, reprinted 1962) but his other works included the important “Race Mixture in the Roman Empire” published in the American Historical Review, volume 21 pages 689-708.

Along with Frank, many other well-known and respected historians dealt with the issue of how the Roman population changed. Amongst these were professor A.M. Duff; Charles Merivale; George La Piana; Theodor Mommsen; and the multiple authors of both the Cambridge Ancient History and the Encyclopedia Britannica’s The Historians’ History of the World.

Frank’s first clue

Frank outlined how he first realized that race mixture was the cause of the change in Roman society. By studying the names of graves on the Appian Way in Rome, he found that huge numbers of late Roman Republic inhabitants had names which originated in the Levant, or Middle East, in strong contrast to the early inhabitants of Rome, who had Latin names. Frank then went on to make a determined study of the tombs and monuments in Rome and surrounds, drawing up a database of over 13,900 different names. His analysis of those names drew the conclusion that about 75 percent of those names were not Latin in origin. The “Greek” names were for the greatest part not Greeks at all, and were Middle Easterners who had adopted Greek names, particularly after the conquest of their region by Alexander the Great. The writer Juvenal, speaking of the Roman population, actually points out the Levantine origin of many of these people in his writings, referring to the Syrian River, the Orontes: “These dregs call themselves Greeks but how small a portion is from Greece; the River Orontes has long flowed into the Tiber” (Juvenal, III, 62).

Frank went on to explain the push and pull effect that led to the racial makeup change in Rome: of how native Romans were drawn away from Rome by colonization and military service, and of how their places were taken up by slaves, in serfdom and as freedmen, in Rome itself.

It is estimated that the slave population of Rome and its immediate surrounding area at the time of Augustus (circa 30 BC) was some 300,000-350,000 out of a population of about 900,000-950,000 (Hopkins, K. Conquerors and Slaves: Sociological Studies in Roman History, Volume 1. Cambridge, 1978). For all of Italy, the figure is approximately the same. A figure of around two million slaves out of a population of about six million at the time of Augustus is accurate—this means that at this early stage one in every three persons in Rome and Italy was a slave.

Charles Merivale points out how Julius Caesar himself saw the danger of slave labor flooding Rome, and actually passed a law forbidding certain types of labor-intensive work from using only slaves.

Roman fate sealed

Professor A.M. Duff pointed out that even by the time of Octavian Augustus, there were significant numbers of “Orientals” in Rome. Duff goes on to describe the social change process at work in Roman society. The desire of Romans to emigrate to other areas of the empire, is mentioned by the Roman writer Seneca, who stated that Romans looked for every opportunity to leave their native country. Freed slaves, mostly of Syrian or Eastern extraction, soon became numerically strong in Rome itself. The Emperor Philip was in fact born in Syria, and became known as “Philip the Arabian” as a result. Tacitus complains that in Nero’s day most of the senators and members of the aristocracy were now men of ex-slave status—and most of these were of Eastern origin.

By the Third Century AD, many of the emperors were actually descendants of the slaves of earlier centuries. George La Piana states it this way: “The denationalized capital of the great empire, came to be ruled by the offspring of races which originally had come to the city only to serve” (La Piana, Foreign Groups in Rome, p. 223).

Based on his research, Frank goes on to estimate that as much as 90 percent of the population of the city of Rome was of “servile extraction.” While this 90 percent would not all have been of foreign race, the majority most certainly were. “This Orientalization of Rome’s populace has a more important bearing than is usually accorded it upon the larger question of why the spirit and acts of imperial Rome are totally different from those of the republic. There was a complete change in the temperament!” (Frank, p. 705).

The Historians’ History of the World, edited by H.S. Williams, and published by the Encyclopedia Britannica underlines the importance of slavery in this change in Roman society: “Slavery was the most determined enemy of that spirit of conservatism and tradition which had been the strength of the Roman race.”

The replacement of the original Roman people by immigrants was marked first at the lowest levels or society, but then gradually made its way up through all levels. Septimus Severus was the first Roman Emperor who was not of Roman extraction, born as he was a Phoenician from North Africa. His wife was Julia Domna, a Syrian. Severus was succeeded by his two sons, who reigned for awhile together then successively. The throne later came to two grandsons. In all, the Syro-Phoenicians dominated the Roman Empire from 193 A.D. to 235 A.D.

A suppressed view of history

It is therefore clear that many famous historians who studied the classical Roman era in depth, saw clearly the change in race which took place as being the primary cause of the fall of that civilization. In summary:

1. The original Roman people were dissipated by war, foreign service in the military and emigration to their colonies;

2. Their place in Rome and surrounds was taken by the wholesale importation of slaves, the majority of whom had come from the mixed race southeastern reaches of the empire;

3. Eventually not even the emperors themselves were of Roman extraction; and

4. As a result, the remaining Roman population became increasingly of mixed racial origin as time progressed.

The importance of this racial change was not lost on many famous historians, but the modern era’s censorship of the issue of race as a determining factor, has led to the deliberate suppression of the work of Frank (and others). Nonetheless, the accuracy and validity of their observations remain as true as ever, and provide the real answer for the fall of the classical Roman civilization.


Note:

For excerpts of all chapters of Kemp’s book see: here.

Categories
Ancient Rome Caesar Augustus Degeneracy Demography Racial studies Who We Are (book) William Pierce

White Suicide since Ancient Rome

Excerpted from the 13th article of William Pierce’s “Who We Are: a Series of Articles on the History of the White Race”:


Wealth inexorably undermined the old virtues. Decadence rotted the souls of the noble Romans. While the mongrel mobs were entertained by the debased spectacles in the Colosseum (not unlike the distraction of today’s rabble by non-stop television), the patricians indulged themselves with every new vice and luxury that money and a resourceful merchant class could provide. Pampered, perfumed, manicured, and attended by numerous slaves, the effete aristocracy of the first century A.D. was a far cry from the hard and disciplined ruling class of a few centuries earlier.

Just as there are Americans today who understand where the weakness and lack of discipline of their people are leading them and who speak out against these things, so were there Romans who tried to stem the tide of decadence engulfing the Republic. One of these was M. Porcius Cato, “the Censor” (234–149 bc), whose public career spanned the first half of the second century B.C.

Cato was born and raised on his father’s farm and then spent 26 years fighting in Rome’s legions before entering politics. Early in his career, having been appointed governor (praetor) of Sardinia, Cato set the pattern he would follow the rest of his life: he expelled all the moneylenders from the island, earning the undying hatred of the Jews and a reputation as a fierce anti-Semite.

Archreactionary

Later Cato was elected censor in Rome. The duties of a censor were to safeguard public morality and virtue and to conduct a periodic census of people and property for military and tax purposes. Cato took these duties very seriously. He assessed jewelry and other luxury items at ten times their actual value, and he dealt promptly and severely with disorder and degeneracy.

In the Senate Cato spoke out repeatedly against the foreign influences in philosophy, religion, and lifestyle which were encroaching on the traditional Roman attitudes and manners. As a result, Rome’s “smart set” condemned him (privately, for he was too powerful to attack openly) as an archreactionary and an enemy of “progress.”

In the field of foreign policy, Cato was adamantly opposed to the integration of the Semitic East into the Roman world. He wanted Rome to concentrate on the western Mediterranean and to deal with the Levant only at sword point. Unfortunately, there were few men of Cato’s fiber left among the Romans by the second century.

Declining Birthrate

One of the most fateful effects of decadence was the drastic decline in the birthrate of the Roman nobility. Decadence is always accompanied by an increase in egoism, a shifting of focus from race and nation to the individual. Instead of looking on bearing and raising children as a duty to the state and a necessity for the perpetuation of their gens and tribe, upper-class Romans came to regard children as a hindrance, a limitation on their freedom and pleasure. The “liberation” of women also contributed heavily to this change in outlook.

The failure of the patrician class to reproduce itself alarmed those Roman leaders with a sense of responsibility to the future. Emperor Augustus tried strenuously to reverse the trend by issuing several decrees regarding family life. Heavy penalties were set for celibacy or for marriage with the descendants of slaves. Eventually, Augustus ordered that every noble Roman between the ages of 25 and 60 must be married or, at least, betrothed.

Suicide of the Nobility

In 9 A.D. tax advantages and other preferences were granted to the parents of three or more children; unmarried persons were barred from the public games and could not receive inheritances, while the childless married person could receive only half of any inheritance left to him.

All these measures failed. Augustus’ own daughter, Julia, was a thoroughly liberated member of the “jet set” of her time, who considered herself far too sophisticated to be burdened with motherhood. In embarrassment, Augustus banished her to an island.

From the dictatorship of Julius Caesar to the reign of Emperor Hadrian, a century and a half, one can trace the destinies of 45 leading patrician families: all but one died out during that period. Of 400 senatorial families on the public records in 65 A.D., during the reign of Nero, all trace of half of them had vanished by the reign of Nerva, a single generation later.

Rise of Capitalism

As the patricians declined in numbers, the Roman peasantry also suffered, but for a different reason. The later years of the Republic saw the rise of agricultural capitalism, with wealthy entrepreneurs buying up vast estates, working them with slaves and driving the freeborn small farmers out of the marketplace.

By the tens of thousands the Latin and Sabine yeomen were bankrupted and forced to abandon their farms. They fled to the city, where most of them were swallowed up in the urban mob.

“New Romans”

The capitalist nouveaux riches who came to wield much of the power and influence in Rome lost by the dwindling patricians were an altogether new type of Roman. Petronius’ fictional character Trimalchio is their archetype. Tenney Frank wrote of these “new Romans”:

It is apparent that at least the political and moral qualities which counted most in the building of the Italian federation, the army organization, the provincial administrative system of the Republic, were the qualities most needed in holding the Empire together. And however brilliant the endowment of the new citizens, these qualities they lacked. The Trimalchios of the Empire were often shrewd and daring businessmen, but their first and obvious task, apparently was to climb by the ladder of quick profits to a social position in which their children, with Romanized names, could comfortably proceed to forget their forebears. The possession of wealth did not, as in the Republic, suggest certain duties toward the commonwealth.

Different Spirit

Many historians have remarked on the fact that the entire spirit of the Roman Empire was radically different from that of the Roman Republic. The energy, foresight, common sense, and discipline which characterized the Republic were absent from the Empire. But that was because the race which built the Republic was largely absent from the Empire; it had been replaced by the dregs of the Orient.

The change in attitudes, values, and behavior was due to a change in blood. The changing racial composition of Rome during the Republic paved the way for the unchecked influx of Levantine blood, manners, and religion during the Empire.

But it also set the stage for a new ascendancy of the same Northern blood which had first given birth to the Roman people. We will look at the conquest of Rome by the Germans. First, however, we must backtrack and see what had been happening in the North during the rise and fall of Rome.