Julian, 33

Julian presiding at a conference of Sectarians
(Edward Armitage, 1875)

 
Libanius: Yes, I do know. At the beginning, we all had great hopes for Gallus. I recall vividly Gallus’s first appearance before the senate of Antioch. How hopeful we were! He was indeed as handsome as men say, though that day he was suffering from a heat rash, as fair people sometimes do in our sultry climate. But despite a mottled face, he carried himself well. He looked as one born to rule. He made us a most graceful speech. Afterwards, I was presented to him by my old friend Bishop Meletius.

“Oh, yes,” Gallus frowned. “You are that teacher-fellow who denies God.”

“I deny God nothing, Caesar. My heart is open to him at all times.”

“Libanius is really most admirable, Caesar.” Meletius always enjoyed making me suffer.

“I am sure he is.” Then Gallus gave me a smile so dazzling that I was quite overwhelmed. “Come see me,” he said, “and I shall personally convert you.”

A few weeks later, to my surprise, I received an invitation to the palace. When I arrived at the appointed hour, I was shown into a large room where, side by side on a couch, lay Gallus and Constantia.

In the center of the room two nude boxers were pummeling one another to death. When I had recovered from my first shock at this indecent display, I tried to make my presence known. I coughed: I mumbled a greeting. But I was ignored. Gallus and Constantia were completely absorbed by the bloody spectacle. As the world knows, I hate gladiatorial demonstrations because they reduce men to the level of beasts—and I do not mean those unfortunates who are forced to perform. I mean those who watch.

I was particularly shocked by Constantia. It was hard to realize that this bright-eyed unwomanly spectator was the daughter of Constantine the Great, sister of the Augustus, wife of the Caesar. She seemed more like an unusually cruel courtesan. Yet she was distinguished-looking in the Flavian way-big jaw, large nose, gray eyes. As we watched the sweating, bloody men, she would occasionally shout to one or the other, “Kill him!” Whenever a particularly effective blow was dealt, she would gasp in a curiously intimate way, like a woman in the sexual act. Constantia was most
alarming.

We watched those boxers until one man finally killed the other. As the loser fell, Gallus leapt from his couch and threw his arms around the bloody victor, as though he had done him some extraordinary service. Then Gallus began to kick the dead man, laughing and shouting gleefully. He looked perfectly deranged. I have never seen a man’s face quite so revealing of the beast within.

“Stop it, Gallus!” Constantia had noticed me at last. She was on her feet.

“What?” He looked at her blankly. Then be saw me. “Oh, yes,” he said. He straightened his tunic. Slaves came forward and removed the dead boxer. Constantia approached me with a radiant smile. “How happy we are to see the famous Libanius here, in our palace.” I saluted her formally, noticing with some surprise that her normal voice was low and musical, and that her Greek was excellent. In an instant she had transformed herself from Fury to queen.

Gallus came forward and gave me his hand to kiss. I got blood on my lips.

“Good, very good,” he said, eyes unfocused like a man drunk. Then without another word, the Caesar of the East and his queen swept past me and that was the end of the only private audience I was ever to have with either of them. I was most unnerved.

During the next few years the misdeeds of the couple were beyond anything since Caligula. (Editor’s interpolated note: Although Vidal was anti-Christian, he did not know that the Christians falsified the biography of Caligula.) To begin with, they were both eager for money. To further her political objectives Constantia needed all the gold she could amass. She tried everything: blackmail, the sale of public offices, confiscation.

One of her fund-raising attempts involved a family I knew. It was a peculiar situation. When the daughter married an extremely handsome youth from Alexandria, her mother, an ordinarily demure matron—or we all thought—promptly fell in love with him. For a year she tried unsuccessfully to seduce her son-in-law. Finally, he told her that if she did not stop importuning him, he would return to Alexandria. Quite out of her mind with rage, the woman went to Constantia and offered that noble queen a small fortune for the arrest and execution of her son-in-law. Constantia took the money; and the unfortunate youth was executed on a trumped-up charge. Then Constantia, who was not without a certain bitter humor, sent the matron her son-in-law’s genitals with a brief note: “At last!” The woman lost her mind. Antioch was scandalized. And the days of terror began.

At times it seemed almost as if Gallus and Constantia had deliberately studied the lives of previous monsters with an eye to recreating old deeds of horror. Nero used to roam the streets at night with a band of rowdies, pretending he was an ordinary young buck on the town. So did Gallus. Caligula used to ask people what they thought of the emperor and if their answer was unflattering, he would butcher them on the spot. So did Gallus. Or tried to.

Unfortunately for him, Antioch—unlike early imperial Rome—has the most elaborate street lighting in the world. Our night is like the noon in most cities, so Gallus was almost always recognized. As a result, the praetorian prefect of the East, Thalassios, was able to persuade him that not only was it unbecoming for a Caesar to rove the streets at night, it was also dangerous. Gallus abandoned his prowling.

During Gallus’s third year as Caesar, there was a famine in Syria. When the food shortages at Antioch began, Gallus tried to fix prices at a level which would make it possible for everyone to buy grain. Even wise rulers from time to time make this mistake. It never works since the result is usually the precise opposite of the one intended. Grain is either held back from the market or bought up by speculators who resell it at a huge profit, increasing the famine. Men are like this and there is nothing to be done about them.

The senate of Antioch has many faults, but its members are sound businessmen with an understanding of the market which is their life. They warned Gallus of the dangers of his policy. He ordered them to obey him. When they continued to resist him, he sent his own guards into the senate chamber, arrested the leading senators and condemned them to death.

Antioch had reason to be grateful to both Thalassios and Nebridius, the Count of the East. These two brave men told Gallus that if he went through with the executions, they would appeal to Augustus and demand the Caesar’s removal. It was a brave thing to do, and to everyone’s surprise they carried the day. Gallus released the senators, and that was the end of the matter.

For some months Antioch was relieved to know that in Thalassios the city had a defender. But then Thalassios died of fever. Of course it was rumored that he had been poisoned, but I happen to know that it was indeed the fever that he died of, as we shared the doctor. But I do not mean to write the history of Gallus, which is so well known.

Apocalypse for whites • XIII

by Evropa Soberana

Caligula

In 38, Caligula, the successor of Tiberius, sends his friend Herod Agrippa to the troubled city of Alexandria, to watch over Aulus Avilius Flaccus, the prefect of Egypt, who did not enjoy precisely the confidence of the emperor and who—according to the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria (Contra Flaccus)—was an authentic villain.

The arrival of Agrippa to Alexandria was greeted with great protests by the Greek community, as they thought he was coming to proclaim himself king of the Jews. Agrippa was insulted by a crowd, and Flaccus did nothing to punish the offenders, despite the fact that the victim was an envoy of the emperor. This encouraged the Greeks to demand that statues of Caligula be placed in the synagogues, as a provocation to Jewry.

Caligula, Roman Emperor reviled
by Judaeo-Christians.

This simple act seemed to be the sign of an uprising: the Greeks and Egyptians attacked the synagogues and set them on fire. The Jews were expelled from their homes, which were looted, and thereafter segregated in a ghetto from which they could not leave: since they were stoned, beaten or burned alive, while others ended up in the sand to serve as food to the beasts in those macabre circus shows so common in the Roman world. According to Philo, Flaccus did nothing to prevent these riots and murders, and even supported them, as did the Egyptian Apion, whom we have seen criticising the Jewish quarter in the section devoted to Hellenistic anti-Semitism.

To celebrate the emperor’s birthday (August 31, a Shabbat), members of the Jewish council were arrested and flogged in the theatre; others were crucified. When the Jewish community reacted, the Roman soldiers retaliated by looting and burning down thousands of Jewish houses, desecrating the synagogues and killing 50,000 Jews.

When they were ordered to cease the killing, the local Greek population, inflamed by Apion (not surprisingly, Flavius Josephus has a work called Contra Apion) continued the riots. Desperate, the Jews sent Philo of Alexandria to reason with the Roman authorities. The Jewish philosopher wrote a text entitled Contra Flaccus and, along with the surely negative report that Agrippa had given to Caligula, the governor was executed.

After these events, things calmed down and the Jews did not suffer violence as long as they stayed within the confines of their ghetto. However, although Flaccus’ successor allowed the Alexandrian Jewry to give their version of the events, in the year 40 there were again riots among the Jews (who were outraged by the construction of an altar) and among the Greeks, who accused the Jews of refusing to worship the emperor.

The religious Jews ordered to destroy the altar and, in retaliation, Caligula made a decision that really showed how little he knew the Jewish quarter: he ordered to place a statue of himself in the Temple of Jerusalem. According to Philo, Caligula ‘considered the majority of Jews suspects, as if they were the only people who wished to oppose him’ (On the Embassy to Gaius and Flaccus). Publius Petronius, governor of Syria, who knew the Jews well and feared the possibility of a civil war, tried to delay as long as possible the placement of the statue, until Agrippa convinced Caligula that it was a bad decision.

In 41, Caligula, who already promised to be an anti-Jewish emperor, was assassinated in Rome, which unleashed the violence of his German bodyguards, who had not been able to prevent his death and who, because of their peculiar sense of fidelity, tried to avenge him by killing many conspirators, senators and even innocent bystanders who had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Claudius, the uncle of Caligula, would become the master of the situation and, after being appointed emperor by the Praetorian Guard, ordered the execution of the assassins of his nephew, many of whom were political magistrates who wanted to reinstate the Republic.

Here is the probable cause of the unprecedented historical defamation of this emperor: The texts of Roman history would eventually fall into the hands of the Christians, who were mostly of Jewish origin and viscerally detested the emperors. Since, according to Orwell, ‘he who controls the past controls the present’, Christians adulterated Roman historiography, turning the emperors who had opposed them and their Jewish ancestors into disturbed monsters.

In this way, we do not have a single Roman emperor who has participated in harsh Jewish reprisals who has not been defamed by accusations of homosexuality, cruelty or perversion. The historian José Manuel Roldán Hervás has dismantled many of the false accusations against the historical figure of Caligula.

Kriminalgeschichte, 9

Below, a translated passage from the first volume of Karlheinz
Deschner’s Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums
(“Criminal History of Christianity”)

 
The Jewish religion, tolerated by the pagan state

But even the masters of Rome were tolerant of the Jews (in whom they found peasants, artisans, workers—at that time they were not yet characterised as merchants), and in some cases showed some sympathy for them. They enjoyed some special privileges, especially in the East, such as Sabbath observance. They had their own jurisdiction and were not obliged to submit to Roman jurisdiction.

Caesar supported them in many ways. Augustus generously endowed the Temple of Jerusalem. According to the terms of the imperial donation, a bull and two lambs were sacrificed there every day “to the highest God.” Agrippa, an intimate friend of Augustus, also favoured the Jews.

On the other hand, Emperor Caligula (37-41)—somewhat eccentric and aspiring to have his own temple, appeared in public clothed with the attributes of various divinities, even female, and lived married to his sister Drusilla and intended that an image of him be erected even in the Holy of Holies of Jerusalem—expelled the Jews of the main cities of Parthia, where they were especially numerous.

But even the emperor Claudius, before persecuting the Jews of Rome, had issued a decree in their favour, in the year 42, granting them a special jurisdiction valid throughout the empire, but at the same time warned them not to abuse imperial magnanimity and that they did not despise the customs of other peoples. Nero’s wife, Poppaea Sabina, was a great protector of Judaism. In general terms, the Roman administration was always ready “to accommodate as much as possible, and even more, with all the demands of the Jews, justified or not” (Mommsen).

Not even after the conquest of Jerusalem did the emperors harass the Jewish faith, which for them was religio licita. Vespasian and his successors corroborated the privileges already granted by Caesar and Augustus. Jews could marry, sign contracts, acquire property, hold public office, possess slaves, and many other things, like any Roman citizen. Jewish communities could manage their own goods and had their own, albeit limited, jurisdiction.

Even after Bar Kokhba’s insurrection, Emperor Hadrian and his successors consented to the public celebration of Jewish cults, and granted the dispensation of common obligations which were incompatible with their religion. Even in the provinces there were almost no restrictions against them; they built synagogues, appointed their trustees, and were exempt from military service in accordance with their beliefs.

And all this because, just as today the primitive peoples do not know, in their beliefs, the claim of exclusiveness of a “superior being,” also the old Hellenism was characteristically tolerant. In polytheism, no deity can claim the exclusive. The native cults amalgamated without problems with the imported ones. In the ancient pantheon prevailed a kind of collegiality or friendly companionship; the faithful could pray to the god they preferred, believed to recognize their own gods under the appearances of others, and certainly did not bother trying to “convert” anyone. Schopenhauer says that intolerance is an essential characteristic of monotheism, that only the one God is

by its nature, a jealous god, that does not want to consent the subsistence of any other. On the other hand, the gods of polytheism are by nature tolerant; Live and let live, and in principle tolerate their colleagues, the gods of the same religion. Later on, that tolerance extends equally to foreign deities.

To the pagans, the belief in a unique God seems to them a poverty of concepts; uniformity, un-sacralisation of the universe, atheism. Nothing more foreign to their way of thinking than the idea that the foreigners’ gods are idols. Nothing sounds to them as incomprehensible as the “thou shalt have no other God but Me” of the Jews; “I am the Lord,” “I am the Lord your God,” an expression that is repeated up to sixteen times in the 19th chapter of Leviticus, to give but one example and not the longest. Paganism knows nothing comparable to the covenant of blood between Yahweh and his “chosen people.” And nothing excited more the antipathy against the Jews than their behaviour on account of their beliefs.

The face of Classical Europe (II)

Were the Romans blond and blue-eyed?

 

Translated from Evropa Soberana

 

Recently I was called names on VNN forum as a result of my criticism of anti-Nordicism in my previous post. Isn’t it ironic that the signature-legend of VNN’s admin states that the Jews must be exterminated while, at the same time, some of the forum’s senior members want to grant amnesty to the mudbloods in Europe?

Hopefully this abridged translation from the Spanish blogsite Evropa Soberana, which could be read together with the first installment about the phenotype of Greeks in Classical Europe, will throw more light on why anti-Nordicists are deluding themselves.



 

Were the Romans blond and blue-eyed?

The Latin malus [“bad”] (beside which I place mélas, Greek for “black”) might designate the common man as dark, especially black-haired (hic niger est), as the pre-Aryan settler of the Italian soil, notably distinguished from the new blond conqueror race by his color.

—Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals

 
The Roman case is virtually identical to the Greek case. This YouTube clip contains the first minutes from the series Rome, where fighting between Gauls and Romans is recreated. The series had tremendous blunders, great nonsense, and several lies and BS in abundance. But the atmosphere was curious, as was the march of historical events, the legions in action, the splendor of the imperial palaces, the goings-on in the alleys of Rome, etc. One of the protagonists of the series was a centurion, the one with the whistle.

He was blond.

But how can you be so fascists so Nordicists, so Nazis so anti-Teresa-de-Calcutta, as Eurocentric and racists as these media? If you had a minimum of culture (like me) you should know that the Romans were of Mediterranean phenotype (like me)—and so on.

Things like these I have heard more times than you can imagine. And similar poppycock we continue to hear even by people who, by their admiration of Rome, obviously have read something written by these sober and tough soldiers who were the Romans, right?

In this article the testimonies from the handwriting of the real Romans are presented. Forget the movies and the illiterate pundits and let the sources explain us how Romans saw themselves.


The first Roman emperors as an example of patrician racial types

We will examine the phenotype of the first Roman emperors, who were representative of the race of patricians, the Roman nobilitas, i.e., the ruling aristocracy. What interests me is not so much to demonstrate the presence of Nordic blood in the upper Roman class (which is easy), but mainly to show that the Nordic blood in Rome was also inextricably linked to the notion of divinity and of noble descent. Some passages are originally in Greek. This is because Greek had great prestige as a cultured, poetic and philosophical language, and there were many Romans educated in that language.

• Augustus, the first Roman emperor, was “blond” (subflavum) according to Suetonius (De Vita Caesarum: Divus Augustus), and had “blue eyes” (glauci) according to Pliny (Naturalis Historia, XI, CXLIII):

He had clear, bright eyes, in which he liked to have it thought that there was a kind of divine power, and it greatly pleased him, whenever he looked keenly at anyone, if he let his face fall as if before the radiance of the sun (Suetonius, De Vita Caesarum: Divus Augustus, LXXIX).

• Tiberius had “gray-blue” (caesii) eyes according to Pliny (Naturalis Historia, XI, CXLII).

• Caligula had a “blonde beard” (aurea barba) according to Suetonius (De Vita Caesarum: Caligula, LII).

• Claudius had “gray-white hair” (canitieque) according to Suetonius (De Vita Caesarum: Divus Claudius, XXX), and “gray eyes” (γλαυκόφθαλμος) according to Ioannes Malelas (Chronographia, X, CCXLVI).

• Nero was “blond or redhead” (subflavo); had “gray-blue eyes” (caesis) according to Suetonius (De Vita Caesarum: Nero, LI), and descended from a family named after their light pigmentation.

Of the Domitian family two branches have acquired distinction, the Calvini and the Ahenobarbi. The latter have as the founder of their race and the origin of their surname Lucius Domitius, to whom, as he was returning from the country, there once appeared twin youths of more than mortal majesty, so it is said, and bade him carry to the senate and people the news of a victory, which was as yet unknown. And as a token of their divinity it is said that they stroked his cheeks and turned his black beard to a ruddy hue, like that of bronze. This sign was perpetuated in his descendants, a great part of whom had red beards. (Suetonius, De Vita Caesarum: Nero, I.)

• Galba had gray-white (μιξοπόλιος) hair according to Malelas (Chronographia, X, CCLVIII) and blue eyes (caeruleis) according to Suetonius (De Vita Caesarum: Galba, XXI).

• Vitellius was “redhead” (πυρράκης) and had “gray” or “blue” eyes (γλαυκός) according to Malelas (Chronographia, X, CCLIX).

• Vespasian had “gray-white hair” (πολιός) and “wine-colored eyes” (οινοπαης τους οφθαλμούς), although it is unclear whether this refers to red wine (brown) or white wine (green) according to Malelas (Chronographia, X, CCLIX).

• Titus, according to Wilhelm Sieglin (1855-1935) in Die blonden Haare der indogermanischen Völker des Altertums, 109, was “blonde”.

• Domitian was “blond” (ξανθός) and had “gray or blue eyes” (γλαυκός) according Malelas (Chronographia, X, CCLXII).

• Nerva was “gray-haired” according to John V. Day (Indo-European Origins).

• Trajan had “golden hair” (caesaries) according to Sieglin (Die blonden Haare der indogermanischen Völker des Altertums, 109). But let us not forget that Trajan was not Roman but a Spanish with Celtic blood, and therefore we should not take this into account when trying to define the phenotype of the Roman patrician aristocracy.

• Adriano, from a noble Roman family established in Hispania, was “dark-haired” (κυανοχαιτα) according Sieglin (Die blonden Haare der indogermanischen Völker des Altertums, 112), and of “gray or blue eyes” (γλαυκόφθαλμος) according to Malelas (Chronographia XI, CCLXXVII).

Interestingly, despite being described as “dark-haired,” on his statue there are traces of gold paint on his hair and beard. Formerly, the statues were painted according to the colors of the original “model”. His facial features correspond to the Nordic type.

• Antoninus Pius had “gray-white hair” (πολιός) and eyes “the color of wine” (οινοπαης τους οφθαλμούς) according Malelas (Chronographia, XI, CCLXXX).

• Lucius Verus had “blond hair” (flaventium) according Sieglin (Die blonden Haare der indogermanischen Völker des Altertums, 110).

• Commodus had “blond hair” (ουλόξανθος) and “blue or gray eyes” (υπόγλαυκος) according Malelas (Chronographia, XII, CCLXXXIII).

Therefore, we find that:

• Of the 18 emperors from Augustus to Commodus, 9 had blond or red hair, 5 had gray or white hair, of 3 we have no way of knowing the hair color, and only one (Adriano) was described as dark-haired.

• Of the 18 emperors from Augustus to Commodus, 9 had blue or gray eyes, 2 had eyes of “the color of wine” (whatever that means, let us take it as brown), and of 7 we have no record as to the color of their eyes.

Many emperors came to power in their advanced years, with already gray or white hair. However, many were even so described with light eyes. If we had records of their appearance when they were young, it is likely that a significant proportion of them had light hair. Of the 9 Emperors with light hair, we know that at least 5 had clear eyes, and of the other 4 we know nothing about the color of their eyes. Of Tiberius, for example, we know nothing about his hair, maybe because he was bald when he came to power. And the same applies to Otto, who shaved his head and wore a wig. Nor do we know anything about the physical aspect of the “philosopher emperor” Marcus Aurelius, father of Commodus and a first-class sovereign. Many other emperors (as Julius Caesar), without being blond, were tall and had a very fair complexion, ruddy, or rosy.

From Commodus on I renounce to provide more emperor descriptions because:

1 – those individuals who began ascending to power were not of Roman origin, and therefore their phenotype cannot tell us anything about the genetic legacy of the nobilitas of Italian and patrician origin.

2 – miscegenation was already quite advanced; lineages of patrician origin having lost their meaning. At that time it was common that women of Roman high society should shave the manes of Germanic slaves to fix their blond-hair wigs.


The gods, the Italici, the patricians and the origins of Rome

Let us go back around 1200 BCE and transport ourselves to Italy. At that time, Central Europe was a buzzing propagating zone for the Indo-European stock. From what is now Germany, of a semi-barbarous proto-civilization of the iron age, flowed migrant groups in all directions. These waves were of the Celts, the Hellenes, the Illyrians and the Italici (also called italos or italiotas).

At that time, the Italici, probably with some confederate Illyrian groups as in the case of the Dorians, broke into Italy.

They were a people who, in contrast to the native inhabitants of Italy, were patriarchal rather than matriarchal; ruddy rather than swarthy; that cremated their dead instead of burying them; that brought with them a whole pantheon of gods and heroic warriors, spoke an Indo-European language, yielded a war cult and whose symbology was a lot more oriented to heavenly than earthly symbols.

Italici were the settlers of sites such as the Villanovan Culture. Subsequent “civilian” conflicts that feminist history has termed as “matriarchy vs. patriarchy,” and what is left in mythology regarding the heroic struggle of the Indo-Europeans against the native, telluric bodies (like snakes) actually refer to a spiritual confrontation triggered by the arrival of a small, aggressive and martial people that did not mix with the native population and struggled to dominate the area.

Under a rigid religious ritualism, on April 21, 753 BCE the heads of some Italic clans founded the city of Rome. For two centuries, Rome lived under the despotism and tyranny of the Etruscan kings, heads of a degenerate civilization that practiced sacrificial rituals, orgies, matriarchy, homosexuality, luxurious opulence, pedophilia, decadent entertainments, etc. The Etruscans came from Asia Minor, styling themselves as rasena (“chosen,” as the Jews) yet their legacy, which only represented the decline of something greater than themselves, meant that they were a doomed people.

The situation of the Roman tribute to Etruria lasted until, in 509 BCE, the Romans rose against the Etruscans and expelled the Etruscan king, Tarquinius Superbus, from the lands. Legends want to portray that this Italic insurrection—a “holy rebellion” against the pre-Indo-European; of patriarchy against matriarchy—was motivated by the rape of Lucretia, a beautiful and virtuous woman of Roman family at the hands of Sextus Tarquinius, son of the Etruscan king and raunchy as all his people, as opposed to the Puritan morality of the Latins.

Lucretia committed suicide by honor and, this being the straw that broke the camel of the Roman patience, the patriarchs began a rebellion against the Etruscans that led to the overthrowing of the Etruscan kings, the founding of the Roman Republic and the systematic eradication of almost all Etruscan memory. (Comparable only to the “genocide” and the complete destruction of Carthage, the mortal enemy of Rome, considered as the reincarnation of Etruscan and oriental spirit, whose fields were cast in salt so that nothing would grow there.)

Recreation of Rome during the Republic. Pay attention to the shape of the boats, so reminiscent of the Scandinavian drakkar.

With the expulsion of the Etruscan power two praetors (later consuls) who held the vacuum of power were named. It was therefore founded the Roman Republic, marked by social struggles between patricians (nobles) and plebeians.

At that time, the original Populus Romanus was divided into 30 curiae (tribes or clans), whose origin was lost among the Italic peoples before the invasion. The curiae were headed by patres (parents) of the gens (family), that is, the founding fathers of the clan and of each family that composed it. Each gens or family was considered descendant of a genius or semi-divine patriarch, who was worshiped on the household as protector idol of the house and their descendants.

If we assimilate the fact that to the Romans a gens or family was a whole social, state, military and religious institution, we may understand the importance of the geniuses and patres as leaders of this small imperial cell, that corresponded to social, political and military leadership as well as leading positions in the characteristic Roman religious worship, where Jupiter is confused with the State, the patriarch, the Senate, the Legion and the family. No wonder, then, that they were regarded as semi-divine and of very high wisdom.

The patres were those who gave their name to the breed of the patricians, namely those belonging to the system of families and clans: the aristocracy, the first nobilitas, which differed from the plebs or plebeians—the people outside the Italic clans. At first, the male patricians were the only Roman citizens, the members of the Legion, the only ones who could be senators and enjoyed all the rights and duties traditionally associated with Roman citizenship.

Later, after the “universalization” and “cosmopolitanization” of Rome during the Empire, the patricians came to form an aristocracy over the other peoples of Italy, encompassed by the plebs. The patricians as social class, and among them the patres as heads of households, are probably the most exalted expression of patriarchy and patriotism itself of the Indo-European, in opposition to the narcotic matriarchy of the pre-Indo-European peoples of Europe, already decadents and altogether “civilized”.
 

♣

 
We now turn to the patricians and Roman gods from the point of view of the phenotype, after seeing the first Roman emperors, mostly patrician.

• Lucius Cornelius Sulla (138-78 BCE), Roman consul and dictator, of patrician descent, had blond hair, blue eyes and a ruddy complexion:

…for his golden head of hair gave him a singular appearance, and as for bravery, he was not ashamed to testify in his own behalf, after such great and noble deeds as he had performed. So much, then, regarding his attitude towards the divine powers. (Plutarch, De Vita: Sulla.)

What was the rest of his figure appears in his statues, but that fierce and unpleasant look of his blue eyes was still more terrible to stare at because the color of his face, being noted at intervals so ruddy and red mixed with his whiteness, and it is even said that he took his name from that, coming to be a nickname for the designated color. Thus, a teller of Athens taunted him with these lines: “If you knead a blackberry with flour, you have the portrait of Sulla.”

Marcus Porcius Cato the “Censor”, better known as Cato the Elder (234-149 BCE), the pronouncer of the famous saying Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam (“Furthermore, I think Carthage must be destroyed”) in every speech, had reddish hair according to Plutarch:

As for his outward appearance, he had reddish hair, and keen grey eyes, as the author of the well-known epigram ill-naturedly gives us to understand: “Red-haired, snapper and biter, his grey eyes flashing defiance, Porcius, come to the shades, back will be thrust by their Queen.” (Plutarch, Cato the Elder.)

• Poppaea Sabina (30-65 CE), the wife of Nero, famous for her beauty all over Rome, was very white and redhead.

We note that the Romans, like the Greeks, saw light pigmentation as a sign of the “divine” or “supernatural”. Some may interpret this that light pigmentation was rare among the Romans. But considering naming conventions, it is clear that the light features were quite common among the patricians. According to Karl Earlson:

Once they had reached a certain stage in their lives, the patricians earned their additional name (cognomina), which was often based on their physical appearance. The name Albus indicated light skin; Ravilla, gray eyes; Caesar, blue eyes; Flavius, blonde hair; Rufus, red hair; Longus, tall; Macer, a slender constitution. All these names were common among the patricians.

Thus, the Latin author Quintilian, in Institutio Oratoria (I, IV, XXV), notes that a man named Rufus or Longo has that name for his body characteristics: he is high or redhead. Plutarch (Coriolanus XI) states that two men, one redhead and one swarthy, could be distinguished because the first would be called Rufus and the second Niger. Aelius Spartianus, in Historia Augusta (II, IV), suggests that the Caesars earned their name from the fact that the founder of his gens had blue eyes (oculis caesiis). The lexicographer Sextus Pompeius Festus, in De verborum significatu (CCCLXXVI ff) states that the name Ravilia derives from “gray eyes” (ravis oculis), and the name Caesulla from blue eyes (oculis caesiis). Julius Paris, in De nominibus Epitome, VII, provides examples of names of women that, he says, have their origin in the pigmentation of those who held them: Rutila (red hair), Caesellia (blue eyes), Rodacilla (pink complexion), Murrula and Burra (red hair or ruddy complexion).

I have provided all these quotations to show that these names were not purely arbitrary but were, in fact, based on physical characteristics; and that these features were not uncommon among certain strata of Roman society.

Even where the patricians had almost disappeared, the Romans had memories of the old patres as the semi-divine beings who arrived to Italy, founded Rome, “Romanized” the peninsula and bequeathed the patriarchate to those lands, together with a strong mentality and a durable and effective political system that lasted for centuries. The ancient ancestors of the patricians were still considered in Rome as a common heritage to be proud of.

Karl Earlson summarizes how he follows Sieglin’s findings as to the pigmentation of the patricians and their identity as a breed:

Wilhelm Sieglin [in Die blonden Haare der indogermanischen Völker des Altertums, 1935] compiled the list of the Roman patricians whose names indicate light hair. He provided the following list: 7 Flavi, 20 Flaviani, 10 Fulvi, 121 Fulvii, 27 Rubrii, 26 Rufi, 24 Rufii, 36 Rufini, 45 Rutilii and 13 Ahenobarbi. This completely disrupts Sergi’s claim that: “The Romans also had their Flavi, indicating that people with fair complexion were rare and required a special name, but does not indicate that the Germanic type was considered aristocratic or dominant” (Sergi: 1901, 20). In fact, such people were not scarce.

Sieglin also determined that among the families Iulii, Licinii, Lucretii, Sergii and Virginii, the name Flavius was very common; Rufi was often seen among the families Antonii, Caecilii, Coelii, Cornelii, Geminii, Iunii, Licinii families (often also the Flavii), Minucii, Octavii, Pinarii, Pompei, Rutilii, Sempronii, Trebonii, Valgii and Vibii; Rufini was common among the gens Antonia, Cornelia, Iunia, Licinian, Trebonia and Vibia. Sieglin notes that this list could certainly be increased in the light of further research.

Besides all this, Sieglin also compiled a list of 63 blond or red-haired Romans. Many of these individuals were patricians. He also found references to 27 blond divinities (including Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, Diana, etc.) and 10 blondes in heroic personalities.

Man makes the gods in their own image. These blond gods speak of the racial nature of the early Romans. (In the Aeneid, Virgil refers to Mercury, Lavinia, Turnus and Camilla as “golden-haired.”) His list of blonds includes Aeneas, the mythical ancestor of the Latins (also blond was his son Julo or Ascanius), Romulus and Remus, the twin founders of Rome; Augustus, the first Roman emperor, and even Roma: which symbolized the city of Rome.

While most of Sieglin’s historical figures of light hair were patricians, most the 17 swarthy Romans in his references were commoners or freedmen.

On the disappearance of the patricians and the mestization of the original Romans

What happened to the patricians? They faded with time. In the numerous conspiracies and intrigues of the Empire, it was common that after the formation of two opposing parties and the victory of one over the other, the winner assassinated the head of the enemy party, his family and all the families related to him. (The strong destroy each other and the weak continue to live, as George Bernard Shaw maintained.) These calamities greatly decimated the patrician class. If we add the ongoing miscegenation in the majority of plebeian population, the immigration of slaves from Syria and the provinces of Asia Minor, Egypt and Africa, as well as the bleeding of the patrician stock over the battlefield, we may realize why the patricians did not last too long during the Empire, given the dysgenic situation. John V. Day wrote:

In a journal about the West and its future, it is fitting to end this article by briefly recounting the fate of the Roman upper class. Among Indo-European peoples, the Romans offer an especially useful example because they left masses of records, enabling later historians to determine what became of them. The evidence found in ancient texts implies that this class descended largely from Indo-Europeans who had a decidedly northern European physical type, although that isn’t something one reads in modern books about Roman history [emphasis added]. In Rome, though, the upper class was always a tiny minority. Instead of protecting its interests, it allowed itself to wither away. Consider a bleak statistic. We know of about fifty patrician clans in the fifth century B.C., but by the time of Caesar, in the later first century B.C., only fourteen of these had survived. The decay continued in imperial times. We know of the families of nearly four hundred Roman senators in A.D. sixty five, but, just one generation later, all trace of half of these families had vanished.

If we in the West want to avoid a similar fate, we must learn from Indo-European history. (*)

In the time of Julius Caesar we know 45 patricians, of which only one is represented by posterity when Hadrian rises to power. The Aemilsi, Fabii, Claudii. Manlii, Valerii and everyone else, except the Comelii have disappeared. Augustus and Claudius ascended 25 families to the Patriciate, and by the reign of Nerva all but 6 have disappeared. Of the families of nearly 400 senators registered under Nero in 65 CE, trace has been lost about half of them in times of Nerva. And the records are so complete that it can be assumed that these statistics represent quite accurately the disappearance of the male lineage of the families concerned. (Cf. Tenney Frank, “Race Mixture in the Roman Empire,” American Historical Review, Vol. XI, 1916).

Conclusion

Were the Romans, then, blond?

It all depends on what you mean by “Romans”. The original Romans did not descend from the original inhabitants of the Italian soil, but of the Italici (italios or italiotas or as you please to call them) and probably also of Illyrian groups, namely, Indo-European invaders who entered Italy from the North, what is now southern Germany. These early invaders—from whom the Latins descended (considered the most influential and who eventually gave their language to the Empire), the Sabines (considered by Plutarch “a colony of the Lacedaemonians,” i.e., Spartans), the Umbrians, Samnites and all patrician clans that founded Rome and the Republic—were indeed mostly Nordic, and also formed the basis of the political and military elite of the Empire.

However, in the later Rome these groups formed an aristocratic minority ruling over a mob of pre-Indo-European origin and, later, even Semites and black slaves. This ended up in interbreeding between all these groups. Over time, the numbers of the dominant Nordic caste withered, and with them their strong patriarchal, sober and authoritative influence in favor of the dissolution of the Empire: expressed in its cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism and proliferation of slaves.

The rest of the history of the post-Roman imperial splendor and their great men, we already know. It is set in a decadent agony, punctuated by binges, parties, orgies, wine snobbery, false sophistication, acrobats, gays, stupid fads, obesity, blond wigs made from hair stolen from Germanics, mongrels, pacifists, emboldened slaves, “liberated” women, Christian zealots and a corrupt bourgeois which reneged of their homeland.

The ghost of ancient Etruria, killed by the ancient Latin Patriarchs, had reborn. Before these decaying monsters, which had nothing to do with the demigod patricians or their rude peasants and patriotic soldiers, the Germanic “barbarian” was really an authentic, pure, hard, strong, noble, idealistic, simple and brave hero, in whose blood awaited the hidden forces of the Indo-European humanity, ready to give birth and germinate in the next millennia of European power.

In short, it has not been argued that all Romans were of Nordic type. It has been argued that the Nordic blood prevailed among the Italic invaders, the ancestors of the posterior dominant Roman aristocracy, the authentic Roman citizens, who imposed their ethos throughout the Empire and spread their spirit, marking the “Roman style” with a distinctly Nordic stamp.

“Are the Germanics a healthy and natural people that will overcome the decadence of the Romans?” —Tacitus, Germania.

_________________

See also a previous article about the subject of:

“Saying the truth about race throws even white nationalists into fits.”

(*) John V. Day, Ph.D., is the author of Indo-European Origins: The Anthropological Evidence (The Institute for the Study of Man, 2001).

The Satyricon

Educated homosexuals like to pull out the old Ancient Greco-Roman card that the liberals use. They project their values onto an idealized past that never existed in order to legitimize their lifestyles today.

Judge it by yourself. What could be more decadent in the Greco-Roman world than the homoerotic adventures recounted in a novel written in times of Nero or Caligula? However, classic pederasty was not meant for coeval adults, as is the LGBT movement of today.

Below I include my translation of the prologue by Jacinto Leon Ignacio to one of the Spanish translations of Petronius’ novel (ellipsis omitted between unquoted passages):

Rome,
centuries ago

In the vast and important Greek and Roman literature from which we still live, there are just a few novelists. Maybe for an overwhelming majority of illiterates it would had been much more affordable the theater, which is enough to listen, that the written narrative which must be read. The same was true of poetry and the rhapsodies recited in public.

The fact is that in Greece there are only a few examples of novels, apart of Longus, and from the Romans only Apuleius and Petronius, whose work we offer here.

It appears that, at the time, the Satyricon enjoyed considerable popular success, for both Tacitus and Quintilian commented it in their manuscripts, although it is apparent that neither knew it directly, only from hearsay. It is likely that they did not grant it much literary value because its style and form collided with all the concepts in vogue.

However, the Satyricon was not lost and copies were kept in the Middle Ages, while jealously concealed because of its subject matter [pederasty] and for being the work of a pagan. The work continued to be ignored by the public to the point that only scholars knew its title, but believed it was lost.

Therefore, a scandal broke when, in 1664, appeared the first edition of Pierre Petit.

Soon after, the Satyricon was translated into several languages, including ours, with such success that has made it one of the great bestsellers in history. There were those who sought to take advantage that the work is incomplete, rewriting it to their liking. It was easy nevertheless to expose them.

Presumably, however, the author would not work at top speed like if we should go to a literary prize. He seems to have devoted years to this task. Do not forget that what is now known are only fragments of the original, estimated in twenty books. The author might have started writing when Caligula reigned and Nero followed, to see the publication during the reign of the next emperor. It can be no coincidence that the book mentions contemporary events known to all, or that the author considered worth mentioning many names.

This is a job too conscientious not to be the work of a professional. Moreover, the action does not take place in Rome, but in the provinces and almost none of the men are Latins. It seems as if the author had had an interest in showing the reality of the empire, a reality ignored in the capital.

The novel consists merely of the travel story of [Encolpius] and his servant Gitone through different locations. The incidents, sometimes unrelated, their adventures and the people they encounter are the text of the Satyricon, which lacks a plot as was the style of the epoch. We could actually say that it consists of countless short stories of the two protagonists. This technique influenced many centuries later the books of chivalry, the picaresque and even Don Quixote. Throughout many incidents the author reveals us an extraordinary real view of the life in the Roman provinces, although tinged with irony.

Petronius simply tells us what he saw. In a way, his novel was an approach to realism, leaving aside the epic tone of the tragedies to focus on current issues, as Aristophanes did in Greece. And that was the pattern followed by Petronius. There is a huge difference between his style and that of other contemporary writers.

Poets, despite their undoubted genius, are pompous and in the tragedies the dialogues are extremely emphatic. Petronius by contrast, remains accessible to everyone. He expressed himself in a conversational tone, which justifies the use of a first person that conveys the feeling that someone is telling us a live tale. That’s why today we can read his Satyricon with the same interest of his times and nothing of its freshness is lost.

Writing is, in a sense, a childbirth with the same joys and suffering. Both things must have accompanied Petronius in this trip with [Encolpius] and Gitone through the decline of Rome.