Originally Posted by
Calpurnius
I'm not judging, it's simply a matter of distinguishing things, a Roman(Italic) is one thing, a Greek is another, a Syrian another one, and ancients Romans were already lamenting how the streets of Rome were unrecognizeably foreign. And it's not like they were getting the best of Greeks in all likelihood, those Graeculi they looked down upon were probably the dregs of Greece.
Roman used to mean something special in the Republic, so much that the aristocracy even resisted the right of citizenship by birth to nearby Italics as long as they could, until by the time of Caracalla everyone and their grandma within the borders of the Empire was formally "Roman", which is to say, nobody was Roman.
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