Rome?

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Before Rome Italy was full of all different Italian races, and basically they came together to form the Romans. And by this logic we are wrong to call the inhabitants of Italy Italian. Sure there used to be Italians but in my opinion it would seem more logical to call them all Romans. To me it seems like all the efforts of the ancestors of the Italian lands go to waste if they start calling themselvs Italian again. They should be called Roman like they truly are, after all they made the effort to combine everyone to become united. Anyway, Rome started as simply a village full of bandits and runaway slaves, all different Italians. So they didnt feel the need to stick to any particular form of anything, but instead to take anything that was better than theirs and take it further. This included everything from buildings to military weapons and formations. So it is clear then why they became so great, and why luck had absolutely nothing to do with it.

I have to say that from what little I've read on the subject, and from watching the discussions of our Roman team members, I agree with none of this.

Firstly, the people living on the Italic peninsular were not Italians. Italian is a name for members of the national state of Italy. The tribes are rightly termed Italic.

Secondly the ancient tribes who lived on the italic peninsular would never have called themselves italian, so it is impossible for the current people of that same peninsular to call themselves Italian again. See above.

Thirdly, the formation of the Roman state was not a collaborative effort by the different italic tribes. Rome herself was the main city of one such Italic tribe, who named themselves after the city and later won against their closest rivals for land.

Fourthly, I see no reason why to state that the Roman state was massively more adaptive than any other state. The Achaemenid Empire's military was largely a mix of many different traditions. What the Romans had was a winning combination of formation, armour design and sword design. It certainly wasn't luck, but it certainly wasn't some innate characteristic of the Roman people and a cultural fostering of adaptiveness that was unique in the ancient world.

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