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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;+VGO.DVCKS, post: 6299945, member: 110504&quot;][USER=75937]@Roman Collector[/USER], I&#039;m going to have to watch this whole thing on YouTube, once the popcorn is made.&nbsp; The intro by itself is very impressive.&nbsp; Several notches above The History Channel, <i>that&#039;s </i>for sure!</p><p>...On what may be largely an anecdotal level, in the bigger picture, one thing strikes me about the European transition from broadly ancient to medieval times.&nbsp; The Germanic tribes, whether as mercenaries, clients, or conquerors, seem to have been very keen on assimilation.&nbsp; (Notably in contrast to the Celts, which probably contributed to the extent of their eventual cultural eradication.)&nbsp; Especially from the top, the Roman trappings of power, visual and verbal, were enthusiastically appropriated.&nbsp; And, of course, we shouldn&#039;t forget the ongoing Romanization of the left bank of the Rhine.</p><p>...There are cool markers of the process.&nbsp; For one, the Carolingians continued to render the Frankish name &#039;Louis /Ludwig&#039; as &#039;HLVDOVVICVS,&#039; retaining the Germanic initial &quot;H&quot; (cf. the Merovingian names beginning with &quot;Chl-&quot;), even as they proceeded with its Latinization --well, sort of.</p><p>On the other hand, the appropriation of Roman Imperial rhetoric by the Ottonian and Salian kings /emperors in Germany has every appearance of being as wholesale as it was intentional.&nbsp; After all, the word &#039;Kaiser&#039; <i>retains </i>the original pronunciation of &quot;Caesar,&#039; even while mangling the spelling.</p><p>In aggregate, it&#039;s worth remembering that the Classical legacy was as central to the communal mindset of the Medieval world as it was to the Renaissance.&nbsp; ...Just differently!</p><p>...Speaking of this interval, it also contributed its own exquisite little monkey wrench to the geopolitics of the continent.&nbsp; The division in 840 of the Carolingian Empire into Francia, Lotharingia and Germany, west to east, left a vast swath down that same middle of the continent, to either side of the Rhine, in a state of long-term political limbo.&nbsp; ...Over much of this area, eventual German rule incorporated areas which were already largely Francophone, not to mention Flemish and other variations of so-called Low German, as late as the 15th century.</p><p>...Okay, time to shut up until I&#039;ve seen the movie![/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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