Early Western Civilization

Traces the development of western civilization in 20 year time periods from 1050 to the present, in Europe and the New World.


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August 28, 2012

The Roman Gens Claudian


2,450 years ago the human family in the known world was experiencing a golden age. In Athens, the glorious Parthenon was being built on the Acropolis; the reformation of Israel led by the Jewish scribes Nehemiah and Ezra was taking place; the Sabines, like other neighboring indigenous tribes, were being absorbed into the superior immigrant Roman culture; and one of the Sabine families -- the Attus Clausus -- later evolved into one of Rome's elite families, the Roman Gens Claudian, producing among other notable emperors Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (pictured as Claudius I) who was responsible for the conquest of Britain in AD 43.

Many of the family members of this Sabine tribe were lame -- probably from some congenital disorder -- so their given name came from the Latin claudeo (to limp). Appius Claudius Sabinus Inregillensis was the first notary, becoming consul in 495 BC, and Constantine III was the last, a Roman general who declared himself Western Roman Emperor in AD 407, abdicated in AD 411 and was killed soon after. The family fame, therefore, lasted for about 900 years.

Rome, of course, was founded by colonists from Greece and the Middle East, and there was little ethnic division between the three centers of learning -- Athens, Rome and Jerusalem. The Italian Peninsula, 2,450 years ago, was the New World for the Greeks and the people of the Middle East, and the successful colonization of Rome was, essentially, a success for Greece in the same way as the successful colonization of America later became a success for England.

In Rome, the territory between the Tiber and Anio was constantly pressured by the indigenous Sabine tribes. Unlike the American Indians, the Sabines were likely to have had fair complexions and hair similar to the ferocious Northern Celtic tribes who had yet to make an impact on history. Naturally, the indigenous tribes of the Italian Peninsula resented their lands being colonized by foreigners and their women being abducted, and fighting broke out.

After a major victory for Rome in 449 BC the Sabines -- like other neighboring Italian tribes -- were absorbed into Roman culture in the same way that all indigenous populations are eventually absorbed (or annihilated) by superior invading colonists, at all times in history.

In fact, one of the Sabine tribes was so zealously allied with Rome that it sought and gained permission to move its entire population onto Roman territory and become Roman in all respects. Among these new Romans was the Attus Clausus family -- later the Roman Gens Claudian family -- which became one of Rome's elite families, producing emperors and statesmen.

Back in those days they didn't have any rules forbidding 'foreigners' becoming emperors and in 445 BC, the Romans even gave plebeians the right to marry patricians. Considering that a king of England, Edward VIII, was forced to abdicate his throne in 1936 over a marriage with a commoner, the Romans were far more enlightened 2,450 years ago.

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