The word "paganus", which is where the modern word "pagan" derives from is basically the antiquity way to communicate the idea of a hillbilly, redneck or white-trash person. (bad) Latin speaking yokels are a historical fact.
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Isn't it time we had Romans in Charlemagne?
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Sure, it's essentially the opposite of urbanus. But I always preferred negating adjectives because they're so delightfully superior -- take, for example, invenustus: uncharming, ghastly even. It sounds rather snobbier than simply calling someone rusticus or paganus.
It's important to note that the language the Lombards were speaking in Charlemagne's time was Romance. Langobard is theorised to have survived in Friuli until 1000, so it should probably be put in too.
Right - and all Greeks are pagans worshipping Zeus, right?
Done properly CKII has the potential to educate, in a general way, about the period it covers. Like I said, I worked on Europa Barbarorum and don't tell me that mod wasn't popular - I used "Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla at the time.
Just because people assume that doesn't mean it's ture, or that the stereotype should be perpetuated. Justinian and Belisarius were Romans but they would have been a lot closer to the people in Italy in the 8th Century than in the 1st.
Well, melting pot events exist for two reasons -
1. To simulate the emergence of a "Hybrid" culture when one group rules over another, as with the events that create Norman or English culture.
2. To simulate a culture breaking up due to political fragmentation - as with Visgothic breaking down into seperate Iberian cultures or Norse breaking down into Danish, Swedish and Norwegian.
There's some argument for the former in Germany when one Germanic group creates the Kingdom of Germany (e.g. the Franks) and absorbs the other tribes they might all merge into "German" by virtue of being in Germany.
That's debatable - remember that many people in this period spoke multiple languages. Probably ever "Greek" character in the CM start could also speak and read fluent Latin just as all their "Roman" ancestors could read and speak fluent Greek. Charlemagne himself supposedly spoke Latin, Frankish and Greek. The Lombards probably spoke their own language to their own people and Latin to their Roman subjects, but then they would only have read in Latin.
The Lombard language was already in heavy decline in the 600s. Like all Germanics, they quickly adopted the local language. If we're going by language, the Lombards should be Italo-Roman too, but since CK2 cultures don't just represent language, they speak Lombard. At the very least, Langobard should be added. It's also important to note that Gothic was still being spoken in this period in some parts of Spain, Bulgaria (Tomis, specifically), and Crimea.
What does that even mean though, the Byzantines were Roman. The whole concept of Roman being a culture is stupid to begin with, you can argue about LATIN culture but Roman culture more or less just means 'the culture of people with roman citizenship and not barbarian imbeciles who can't even build bathhouses'.
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I'm sorry, I don't understand your point.
Nobody's suggesting that there's a direct relationship between language and "culture" in CKII, in fact the culture and culture-group can be at odds with the language. For example, the Vlach are within the South Slavic group despite the fact that the Romano-Dacians spoke - guess what - Latin, and indeed modern Romanian is still quite close to Italian, with some Slavic intrusions.
The Lombard culture is for the Lombard rulers of Italia, whose Kings doubtless spoke Latin but the extent to which the aristocracy also spoke Lombard is debatable, it's likely by the CM start that the majority of people spoke Latin the majority of the time but that would have been a continuum that varied from place to place. Langobard is just an archaisation of "Lombard" so I don't understand that you mean by saying we should have Langobard alongside Lombard.
We could also have "Italian" be the Roman culture and have is break down into regional Italian cultures like Neapolitan and Venetian. That would just create a big mess though.
My original point was that we should have Roman holdouts in Italy and that what we today understand as "Italian" should come from a melting pot event, rather than the Lombards sinking into an existing Italian culture without trace.
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You mean Greco-Romanophiles, surely?
I'd like to see someone take up the part of my argument about the Adriatic Coast. I take it we all agree that modern day Istria and parts of Croatia should be Roman, then?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubrovnik
Note that the old city, Ragusa, was seperate from the Croatia settlements until the 12th Century and that Latin (later Dalmatian) was the official language of internal politics for centuries after that.
I'm saying we should keep Lombard to represent the Lombard ruling class but also add Langobard as a Germanic language. The Lombards spoke Latin in CM, but seen themselves as Lombards. The original Germanic Lombard language was still spoken in Friuli until 1000, so it should be added. Since we already have a Lombard culture, it should be called Langobard, emphasising its Germanic character.
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Absolutely amazing argument buddy, although I'll have you know I don't particularly like the Eastern Roman Empire due to how badly they started fucking up after roughly 1000AD and due to how they more or less doomed the Persians and got them replaced by Arabs.
That being said, there are no semantics there - Roman citizenship and Latin culture were linked, sure, but while being a Latin meant you were almost certainly a Roman citizen, being a Roman citizen in no way implied you were a Latin.
I don't support this "Roman" culture, by the way, for that very reason - there's no such thing as a Roman culture.
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The thing that doomed the Persians was an elephant panic at the Battle of al-Qadisiyyah. The Persian/Roman alliance never really even got off the ground far enough to be betrayed, by either side.
I meant they doomed the Persians with their constant rival warfare which the Persians hadn't recovered from by the time the Arabs went full Jihad on them. I know it's a weak reason to blame them since who can fault them for fighting with their five-hundred-year rival but I gotta blame someone.
The great Byzantine-Sassanid war was a 30 year long affair under multiple emperors. The Sassanids were on the ascendant for the vast majority of the conflict, taking all of the Levant and Egypt, Syria and Armenia while also taking the True Cross. Heraclius only "won" the war with several brilliant maneuvers on the strategic level and only forced a slightly beneficial white peace. If anyone was better prepared to deal with the Arabs it was the Persians, Yarmouk was also a disaster you know. Both sides also were still dealing with the plague throughout the war's time too.
If you want to blame someone, it's neither Rome nor Ctesiphon.
>Rome
I know what you mean but...
Also, the idea was that if they'd not been at war, stuff might've gone down differently. Both sides were worn out.
New Rome then. Constantinople if you prefer.
Phocas was an ass, but the idea that Khosrau would have simply let the murder of Maurice go unchallenged (since Maurice elevated Khosrau in his own similar situation) is probably vacuous. Khosrau's internal legitimacy depended on him fighting the Romans. War was always inevitable once Maurice was slain though since the royal families no longer shared blood or adoption ties and the Persian side needed to humble the usurper in Constantinople, the great war that followed was just an awful snowball and you are certainly correct everyone was worn out too much to do anything about the Arabs but if we wish to blame any one person we should blame those who murdered Maurice.
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I see - well to that I would offer you the counter of the "Franks", some Franks spoke Latin, some spoke Frankish. The same is true of the Lombards, but it's likely that those Lombard-speaking enclaves are just more economically isolated remnants of Lombard settlers who were outside the ruling class. The situation you describe is adequatelyrepresented by a Lombard province with a Lombard ruler, wherein we might asume everyone is mostly speaking Lombard - in the case of a Lombard ruler in an Italian (or Roman) province we might assume everyone was speaking Latin.
You realise there's another, much better documented, example of this? The flip from Norman to "English" starts after 1100 but those "English" nobles won't even start speaking English as court for another two centuries, they'll speak English to their servants - grudgingly - but among themselves they will speak Norman French and Latin.
Roman culture is Urban Italic culture, exported. That culture spread to Illyria, Hispania, Africa, Gaul and Britain, even modern-day Romania. It survived in many places and gave rise to the modern European cultures in those regions. Latin culture, by contrast, is the culture of Latium and whilst it originally gave rise to Roman culture the Romans (in Rome) were cosmopolitan, taking influences from across the Empire. By the time the Western Empire collapsed you had, in most regions of the Empire, Urban areas and rurla areas. Urban areas were heavily Romanised whilst rural areas much less so. Despite that when the Germanic Barbarians occupied of the provinces they were ultimately assimilated into the Roman culure.
My argument is that this culture persisted for the longest in Italia, including Sardinaia and Corsica, and on the Adriatic coast around Istria and Dalmatia.
As to your thesis that the Romans "doomed" the Persians it's as fair to say the Persians doomed the Romans. Border wars were an intermittent feature of Persian/Roman relations in Parthian and Sassanid period. The wars prior to the Arab invasions were just the last in a long line of wars.
It's worth noting that Khosrau II started the war on the pretext of Maurice' murder.
So perhaps you should blame him specifically.
Point of Order - the Roman Empire held Rome during this period - This was still the Latin-governed Empire, it was a Roman as Constantine's, and Rome would still have been the nominal "heart" of the Empire even as it decayed.
I disagree with your analysis somewhat, specifically I would say that war was inevitable after Maurice' death, the fact he was murdered hasted it somewhat but probably only by a few years. Khosaru might have been indebted to Maurice but he would not have felt much compunction about attacking the Empire if one of Maurice' sons or another Roman was on the throne.
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It grinds my gears how people call those Gyro-eating, Ouzo-drinking, Greeks as "Eastern Roman Empire". Bah, they are as much Romans as the "Sultanate of Rûm". Just because the Empire was partitioned waaaaaaaay back during Augustus rule, it doesn't mean that they were Romans way that late! From the moment Western Rome fell, Eastern Rome lost its privileges to be called Rome! There is nothing Roman about them, not their tongues, not their clothes, not their culture, their poltiics, or even their military tactics!
Remember the rule, in general, when historians convene and decide that they should be called BYZANTINES, it is probably better to agree on it, they know their trade.
And before anyone comes with the "hurr durr they were officially called Roman Empire", let me tell you that the Austrian Emperor was officially King of Jerusalem, yet I don't see a bunch of internet dwellers thinking themselves fancy to call the Austrian Emperor "King of Jerusalem". A claim is a claim, and what the Greeks had, was nothing but a claim.
Remember the rule, in general, when historians convene and decide that they should be called BYZANTINES, it is probably better to agree on it, they know their trade.
And before anyone comes with the "hurr durr they were officially called Roman Empire", let me tell you that the Austrian Emperor was officially King of Jerusalem, yet I don't see a bunch of internet dwellers thinking themselves fancy to call the Austrian Emperor "King of Jerusalem". A claim is a claim, and what the Greeks had, was nothing but a claim.
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