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Chapter 11-1: The Race Change in Western Europe - Part 1

Historians have recognized that a tremendous change of attitude and/or temperament took place in the people of Italy, North Africa (and even Spain and Gaul) between the 2^nd century B.C.E. and the 3^rd century C.E. The truth is, it wasn’t that the native populations (that is, the early Latins, Etruscans, Celts, etc.) changed their basic temperaments. Something very different happened. There areas of western Europe were deluged by great influxes of peoples from other areas of the Roman Empire, notably from the east. It wasn’t the temperament of the people that changed, it was the race. Simon Magus, in going to Rome, came among his own type of people. While in his time there remained a thin veneer of old Latin stock in the west, most of the population of Rome and Italy by the 1^st century was made up of Chaldeans, Syrians, Phoenicians, Edomites and Samaritans. Italy, by the 1^st century of our era, had become a Semitic country.

This evidence comes from historical and archaeological records which have been accumulated by some of the world’s most recognized historians, men who have devoted their whole lives to the study of Roman history. In the following pages of this book I will quote at length from these historians in order that no one could possibly charge an "out-of-context" evaluation on the material that will be presented. It is hoped that the longer quotes (which I feel are important) will not prove laborious reading for the non-professional. They are necessary evidence for the student of history.

The principal scholar to whom credit is due for discovering this race change was Professor (Tenney) Frank of John Hopkins University who died in 1939. It was in 1916 that he contributed his classic research on the race change in Italy and the western provinces. What he wrote is still recognized today as a first class presentation of the matter. His essential facts come from inscriptional evidence which he presented to prove his case. Scholars today rank him among the great Roman historians such as Mommsen and Rostovtzeff (and he well deserves to be). His conclusions have never been successfully challenged as any common sense student of history would admit. But, just like Professor Goodenough in cataloguing what he considered to be Jewish archaeological remains has not been given the proper attention for his work, Professor Frank’s early researches have not been given the equal attention in the last forty years that they deserve. This book in part is written to revive the historical and archaeological information that Professor Frank and others discovered in the early part of this century.

The lack of attention does not mean that Professor Frank is not respected for his academic abilities and his contributions to the understanding of social and economic matters in the Roman Empire. The problem today is the fact that so many scholars are afraid to tackle the subject of race in history (or changes of race) because the climate for unemotional discussion is not available even in the universities. Too many people are so sensitive to the subject of "race." In evaluating such things the terms "superiority" or "inferiority" often enter the discussions by emotionally motivated individuals (even scholars) so the subject of "race" is not a popular one today.

But this attitude needs to be changed. Let me say at the outset that in my view there is no such thing as "superiority" and "inferiority" in race as anyone with common sense would observe. But there are demonstrable differences in temperaments and attitudes existing among all races of peoples (though there are always exceptions to any rule and stereotyping a race is not always proper). But no one would argue that the temperament of the Finnish people (as a recent television episode of 60 Minutes showed) with their very private and subdued emotional attitude to life, have the same temperament as the Spanish people who proverbially are characterized as showing effervescence in temperament. The point is, both peoples (as all people on earth) are "superior" in representing themselves as a necessary (and a desired) part of the human race to which we all belong.

All races should rejoice in their differences (because we all have them) and capitalize on them for their own pleasure and welfare. No one should use demeaning terms such as "superiority" or "inferiority" in regard to the different attributes of any race. Thankfully, Professor Frank never resorted to such epithets, but we should be grateful that he did not shrink from giving his historical evaluation regarding the facts of history that he found in many of the monumental inscriptions of early Rome and Italy. His contribution in showing a change of race in the area is superb.

Where did the expertise of Professor Frank exist? Let me state at the start that Professor Frank was a recognized authority on the economic history of ancient Rome. He was the author and editor of the five volume Economic History of Rome, and the author of many other books and articles for scholarly journals concerning ancient Roman History. As a matter of interest, the Cambridge Ancient History and the Oxford History of Rome by Cory, as well as the excellent works of Professor Boak in America, freely quote from his various works.

Since much of the material in this part of the book is founded on Professor Frank’s researches, and because of that (for the benefit of those not having studied much Roman history), I have felt it necessary to give his qualifications. Mention also must be made of Professor Duff of Oxford University whose book, Freedmen in the Early Roman Empire, represents a substantiation of Professor Frank’s work.

The compilation of quotes which will be given in the rest of this book were prepared by me to illustrate a part of my history class which I taught at a college in England for 13 years (from 1960 to 1972) titled: ‘The History of Western Civilization." The quotes herein were centered primarily on that section of the class dealing with the period of the late Roman Republic and that of the Roman Empire. Though most of the research was done in the first half of this century, recent investigators have not in any way changed the deductions reached by those scholars in historical research who dominated the first part of the 20^th century. That’s why I have not felt it necessary to buttress with up-to-date (1993) historical observations that vindicate what the earlier historians of this century related. Indeed, as stated before, modern historians often avoid the issue of "race" in their discussions.

Let us now look at what Professor Frank discovered in Latin inscriptions which he found in and around Rome. What he uncovered was proof that a fundamental change of race occurred in the Italian peninsula between the 2^nd century B.C.E. and the 3^rd century C.E. The records of the monuments attest to this change. What we will discover is Chaldean, Anatolian, Syrian, Phoenician, Edomite, Samaritan (and some Egyptian) racial stocks replacing the earlier Latin races in Italy. A little amalgamation of Latins with these immigrant Semites (most were Semitic) took place, but the Latin element was so weak when the mixing began, that in Italy the remnants of the Latin race were completely submerged by these incoming Semites. For all practical purposes, by the end of the Empire, Italy had become a Semitic country.

The vast majority of these immigrants to Italy and western Europe had a Semitic origin from the patriarch Abraham (who was the progenitor of numerous Semitic-type peoples besides the proverbial Jews and Arabs). It is not normally recognized but the apostle Paul told the Romans of his day (and though they were clearly uncircumcised Gentiles and not Jews) that Abraham was their father, not only spiritually, but he was their father in the flesh. Note what Paul said in Romans 4:1 (the capitalization points out what is usually overlooked): "What shall we say then that Abraham our father, AS PERTAINING TO THE FLESH?" That’s right, the main population of Rome by the time the apostle Paul wrote his epistle were fleshly descendants of Abraham (though they were not Jews nor were they circumcised).

This statement of the apostle Paul about the physical origin of the Romans of his time (that they were of Abrahamic physical stock) should not be surprising to anyone when the evidence supplied by Professor Frank and other historians is understood. The archaeological and historical indications make it certain that there was a significant race change that took place in Rome and Italy in the two centuries preceding the time of Paul (and that the race change increased even more in the following three centuries).

Let us notice this evidence from history. As we have mentioned, we will first quote from Professor Tenny Frank. He, probably more than any other person, studied at length the native Roman records, epigraphical information and archaeological finds relative to his specialty which was the social and economic history of Rome. Now, let us notice what Professor Frank said about the race question which he revealed in "Race Mixture in the Roman Empire," American Historical Review 21(1916): 689–708. The information he records is illuminating. What Professor Goodenough admirably did to catalogue Jewish (or what he thought were "Jewish") archaeological remains, Professor Frank did for the ordinary Romans and Latins from the 2^nd century before our era to the 4^th century after.

My own comments will be given in brackets within the various quotes that follow in this book. I am also italicizing rather extensively (which has not been done in the earlier parts of this book) in order to point out to non-professional historians (to whom this book is being written) the essential features of the quote in order to view in an easier way the central theme of the text. Also, the words "orient" or "oriental" or "orientalization" that occur quite frequently in the original quotes of the scholars tend to confuse most lay readers today because they almost always associate those words with the Far East such as China and Japan, while the Roman historians who use such terms restrict them to the eastern part of the Roman Empire, notably Asia Minor, Syria, Phoenicia, Palestine and even Egypt. For that reason I have taken the liberty of changing those words in the original texts to "east" or eastern or "easternization."

Let us begin with Professor Frank’s opening statements on this evidence of a race change in western Europe. Words in brackets are mine, including italics and boldness.

"There is one surprise that the historian usually experiences upon his first visit to Rome. It may be the Galleria Lapidaria of the Vatican or at the Lateran Museum, but, if not elsewhere, it can hardly escape him upon his first walk up the Appian Way. As he stops to decipher the names upon the old tombs that line the road, hoping to chance upon one familiar to him from his Cicero or Livy, he finds prenomen and nomen promising enough, but the congnomina all seem awry. L. Lucretius Pamphilus, A. Aemilius Alexa, M. Clodius Philostosgas do not smack of freshman Latin. And he will not readily find in the Roman writers now extant an answer to the questions that these inscriptions invariably raise. Do these names imply that the Roman stock was completely changed after Cicero’s day, and was the satirist [Juvenal] recording a fact when he wailed that the Tiber had captured the waters of the Syrian Orontes? If so, are these foreigners ordinary immigrants, or did Rome become a nation of ex-slaves and their offspring?

"Unfortunately, most of the sociological and political data of the empire are proved by satirists. When Tacitus informs us that in Nero’s day a great many of Rome’s senators and knights were descendants of slaves and that the native stock had dwindled to surprisingly small proportions, we are not sure whether we are not to take it as an exaggerated thrust by an indignant Roman of the old stock. ... To discover some new light upon these fundamental questions of Roman history, I have tried to gather such fragmentary data as the corpus of inscriptions might afford. This evidence is never decisive in its purport, and it is always, by the very nature of the material, partial in its scope, but at any rate it may help us to interpret our literary sources to some extent. It has at least convinced me that Juvenal and Tacitus were not exaggerating. It is probable that when these men wrote a very small percentage of the free plebians on the streets of Rome could prove unmixed Italian descent. By far the larger part ― perhaps ninety percent ― had eastern blood in their veins.”

• Frank, "Race Mixture in the Roman Empire," pp.689–690

About ninety per cent of those people living in Italy in the 1^st century had originally come from the eastern parts of the Roman Empire. Now what was it that convinced Professor Frank that a change of race had taken place? What he and his colleagues did was to study the epigraphical information on the various tombs and monuments in Rome and throughout Italy. He looked at over 13,900 different inscriptions with various names written on them and found that about three quarters bore names of foreign derivation. The vast majority had Greek cognomina (that is, their last names show a Greek origin).

To Professor Frank the bearing of Greek last names in what had been prime Latin areas of the west gave him a major clue to the movements of people from the east to the west. Note what he states:

"For reasons which will presently appear I have accepted the Greek cognomen as a true indication of recent foreign extraction, and, since citizens of native stock did not as a rule unite in marriage with ‘liberti,’ a Greek cognomen in a child or in one parent is sufficient of status [i.e. he was foreign].

• Frank, "Race Mixture in the Roman Empire," p.691

"On the other hand, the question has been raised whether a man with a Greek cognomen must invariably be of foreign stock. Could it not be that Greek names became so popular that, like biblical and classical names today, they were accepted by the Romans of native stock? In the last days of the empire this may have been the case; but the inscriptions prove that the Greek cognomen was not in good repute. I have tested this matter by classifying all the instances in the 13,900 inscriptions where the names of both father and son appear. From this it appears that fathers with Greek names are very prone to give Latin names to their children, whereas the reverse is not true"

• Frank, "Race Mixture in the Roman Empire,"pp.692–693

"Clearly the Greek name was considered as a sign of dubious origin among the Roman plebians, and the freedman family that rose to any social ambitions made short shift of it. For these reasons, therefore, I consider that the presence of a Greek name in the immediate family is good evidence that the subject of the inscription is of servile or foreign stock. The conclusion of our pro’s and con′s must be that nearly ninety per cent of the Roman-born folk represented in the above mentioned sepulchral inscriptions are of foreign extraction. ... Who are these Romans of the new type and whence do they come? How many are immigrants, and how many are of servile extraction? Of what race are they?"

• Frank, "Race Mixture in the Roman Empire," p. 693

Professor Frank will answer these questions. Information on this matter cannot come from epigraphical material, it must come from literary sources, especially from eyewitnesses. In this we are not left without evidence. In fact, there is quite a lot of information about these foreigners and who they were. These new "Romans" bore Greek names. This is enough to show that the majority came from the east, from Greece and the Hellenistic world. However, from literary evidence we can gain a better insight into the exact locality from whence most had come into Italy. Juvenal in the 2^nd century, referring to the Roman population speaks about these people with Greek names. He says most epithetically: "These dregs call themselves Greeks but how small a portion is from Greece; the River Orontes has long flowed into the Tiber" (III,62).

Juvenal, then, tells us that very few of these people were actually Greek. They were actually from the Hellenistic world. To be exact, they were from Syria, Anatolia, the Levant and Samaria.

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