If You Serve Roast for Christmas Thank The Roman Empire

The problem, you see, was Latin. The elite classes of the late Roman Empire stopped speaking to each other.

It wasn’t because of acrimonious political debate, although that did lead to 82 emperor assassinations during a 500-year run which some historians believe was the fault of climate change. Greta Thunberg, are you listening? Nor was it reluctance to express opinion. There were plenty of those, too. What was it then??

The Pope was a dullard. That was the reason Latin declined faster than a drunken Praetorian Guard. Innocent I could rap in classic Latin at Mass like a teenager on TikTok, and so it became the manner of speech of the educated classes. But average blokes the Romans called plebeians, from Latin plebius, “a person of less than noble rank,” were left out in the cold. So when the Germanic tribes from the North swept through Rome in an orgy of devastation, it was hardly surprising that Innocent I was taken by surprise. In a brilliant flash of insight, he tried to buy off the invaders of 410 AD by blessing pagan rituals.

The Visigoths dutifully performed the pagan duties. Then they sacked away.

For reasons too obvious to note, Latin stopped being cool. Maybe it never was, but the prospect of being crucified made it so. Street Latin, also known as Vulgar (common) Latin and used by ordinary people in the marketplace, replaced it throughout the empire, signaling the end of one reign and the start of another. Completing the transformation required new thinking. And to make it stick, a new conqueror. Voila, the Roman Empire came to an end.

Almost.

Yet the empire never wholly disappeared. It still exerts an outsized influence in fields such as law, government, language, architecture, engineering, and religion owe their origin to Rome. The Roman alphabet is the backbone of many languages, including English, although Rome stole it from the Etruscans.

And let’s not forget that Roman numerals are used in Superbowls.

Roman governance served as a model for modern-day democracies. Concepts such as the balance of power, veto, and people’s representation were Roman. The United States took its three branches of government from the Roman Republic. The consul became President. The Roman Assembly is now the Congress. The Senate of Rome is how we came by the name of the United States Senate. Sadly, we neglected to borrow a few Roman senators (see Cato the Younger) and settled for Chuck Schumer.

The Judicial Branch is the Praetor, to sum up.

But the Roman Empire is remarkable because the conquerors who came to visit (the locals would say sacked) spread it across Europe. That event can be traced back to a single day, August 24 of the year 410, when the plot thickened, or a more polite way to say it, the plot petered out.

The change came gradually and then suddenly, as Hemingway noted in a different context. To summarize, the Germanic tribes had been ruled by the Romans for four centuries, and throughout that protracted, gloomy period, they accomplished more than making schnitzel. Back-and-forth victories and defeats complicate the tale. Tensions ran high between the Romans and the warrior people they viewed as inferior and even subhuman. As a result of exposure to Roman innovation, the tribes had by this point adapted new technologies and combat strategies. They improvised and conquered.

Originally from southern Scandinavia near Denmark and Poland, the Germanic tribes were a highly-predatory culture that waged war mercilessly. But they should not be confused with Hitler’s army or modern Germany. The most fearsome tribe, the Goths, should not be confused with people wearing lip studs or growing purple hair. A more accurate description is by the great Byzantine historian Procopius who described them as “tall and athletic, with pale skin, blonde hair and blue eyes, and handsome to look at.” One trait all agree on is that beauty was second only to their viciousness. Rome’s turn came for a taste of both on August 24.

Their reputation preceded them. Rome had a 55,000-person population before the invasion and a 10,000-person population after. The kill count was 6,000 to 12,000 as the center of the Italian High Renaissance transformed into a bloodsport arena. The Tiber River must have flowed the color of dark magenta, a word we trace back to Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius Maxentius. After trouncing the city to its bones, King Alaric I scattered his armies across the provinces of France and Spain. There is a reason we call it the Fall of the Roman Empire.

Rome was still regarded as the eternal city and spiritual headquarters even if it was no longer the capital (that honor already went to Milan and Ravenna second). As St. Jerome noted, “The city which took over the world was itself taken.” It marked the first time in 800 years that an outside force overran the city.

But there was a problem. The Goth Christmas list did not include literary Latin. The only mass they worshipped was mass killing. Although the Goths were the first Germanic tribe to embrace Christianity, they were more concerned with commerce and trade. Speaking straightforward and practical Vulgar Latin was good business. As the Gothic influence grew, the vernacular became the lingua franca, literally meaning the language of the Franks, another Germanic tribe (from whom we get the name France). It was a shock to the system for the ruling Roman elite.

Imagine you are a time traveler from 200 AD who is suddenly transported to Rome after the fall in the year 500. You stroll down a well-to-do avenue, a word we get from the Latin advenire meaning “to arrive at.” You hear festive sounds outside a majestic domicile from the word Domus. A family at the dinner table discusses the day’s news, in Latin, nova. The voices are animated, thrilling, and emotional as if the new kind of speech gives added expression. They aren’t speaking church Latin although many words sound the same. This is street Latin, about as understandable to our visitor as rap is to baby boomers. It sounds familiar yet somehow foreign.

The origin of the word “foreign” may help here.

Foreign means ‘from abroad.’ It is derived from the Latin word foris, which translates to “on the outside.” The spelling changed in the 17th century to incorporate the word reign, implying that someone from abroad might show allegiance to the wrong king. For this reason alone, the invasion of conquerors altered the Roman language. However, the Goths didn’t just take Rome apart; they put it back together again. Eventually, they separated into two groups in order to dominate Europe.

Instead of divide and conquer, it was divide and discover. The Goths acted like an umbrella over the existing heads of the Roman provinces, shielding them from other barbarian tribes, adapting customs here, and confiscating ideas there. They turned an important historical empire into a world-changing force for Christianity, democracy, and civilization. Before being defeated by the Muslim Empire in 711, the western Goths, also known as Visigoths, established dominance in France and Spain. The eastern, or Ostrogoths, devoured Italy, and if you are familiar with the name Andalusia, it is named after another Germanic tribe, the Vandals.

Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, and French developed in the Provinces as Vulgar Latin merged with ancient national dialects. The Romance Languages were closer to each other than to their mother tongue. The close connection between the various Romance languages best illustrates the impotence of Rome in contrast to the importance of the ideas it gave the world, including some that are pretty delicious.

Although the Roman Empire may have gone astray, its values, traditions, languages, and food discovered a new home. For instance, “Asado” is derived from Old Galician, a historical Spanish dialect spoken by over 3 million people today and closely related to Portuguese. It is a modified version of the Latin term assuso and means “Roast.” From old Europe to far-off colonies in Latin America, Asado means the same thing. If you roast meat for the holiday, your debt, from the Latin word debitum, meaning ‘something owed,’ is to Rome.

Empires may become extinct, but the good stuff they leave behind remains forever.

PS In case you are wondering where the word “roast” comes from, it was a gift from the Franks: r?sten, meaning to “cook on a grate or gridiron.”