The Fall of Ancient Rome
http://www.faem.com/western/fallrome.htm
by ROGER PEARSON

What causes the fall of civilization? Some people have advanced
cyclical
theories, which have no substance in causal fact. Since Darwin,
however, Race
Scientists have taken the view that the most common cause of the
decline of a
civilization is a change in the biological character of the people.
Thus,
race-mixing, especially when the mixture is with a race of different or
inferior
ability, can and almost invariably does, bring about the downfall of
civilizations.
Here Roger Pearson follows the analysis of Professor Hans F. K.
Gunther, to
show how a racial change accompanied, or more properly, preceded, the
decline
of Imperial Rome. This article is an extract from the paperback
entitled Early
Nordic Civilizations, now published by Noontide Press.

Anthropological and archaeological research reveals that during the
Neolithic
period Northwest Europe shared a common culture with distinct and
characteristic forms which corresponded to a definite racial type.
Southern Scandinavia
and northwestern Germany appear to reveal the earliest traces of this
culture,
while the oldest Nordic remains in central and southern Germany, and in
the
British Isles, show that these countries were settled by Nordic peoples
at a
somewhat later date.

Unfortunately the record of the earliest period of out-going migration
from
this area is difficult to follow, since for a period of time the
practice of
body-burning prevailed, and the old saga of Beowulf tells us that the
corpse of
this great English hero was burned and not buried; but archaeology
makes it
possible for us to trace the Nordic migrations, even during the
body-burning
period, by the styles of building, ornament and technology which were
left for us
in the soil as Nordic culture spread throughout Europe. We can now see
the
Early Nordic peoples of the Neolithic Age moving steadily southwards in
a broad
stream from central and south Germany to the Balkans. With them goes
the
rectangular house, and the journey is traced in heavy panoply:
strongholds mark its
way. The word now is not merely peaceful penetration but conquest. So
it is
that Troy, on the Hellespont, is reached by them; so Mycenae and Tiryns
are
reached through Thessaly and Boeotia.... Into Italy the Italic-Nordic
streams
came first along the road from Valona into the Po and Tiber country.
Only much
later, in the Hallstatt period, however, did Nordic nations enter into
Britain,
France and Spain in the west. But in these movements, all alike
starting from
the same center, we behold our continent becoming Indo-European.

The Nordic Folkwandering

The Nordic tribes that took part in this early folk-wandering were
many. The
Nordic Phrygians went to Troy and Asia Minor; their close relatives the
Keltic-type Nordic Hellenes to Greece; the Nordic Italics (Italians or
Romans) to
Italy; the Nordic Kelts to France and Spain. To all these lands they
brought
their Indo-European languages (for Latin and Greek were also
Indo-European
tongues) and established themselves as a ruling class, usually over a
numerically
superior Mediterranean or Slav people.

Thus the builders of ancient Rome were the Nordic-Italic tribes which
gave
Italy its name, and as long ago as 2000 B.C. pile lake-dwellings in
upper Italy
show that a migration from north of the Alps had taken place. The
immigrants
burned their dead, and the pottery and burnings both point to a Nordic
background. The lake-villages were laid out in regular patterns,
similar to the later
Roma quadrata, and there were apparently rituals connected with the
bridges
which led from the land to the villages, which are perhaps reflected in
the
title of "pontifex" for the chief priest in Rome.

The main Italian migration which led to the foundation of Rome,
however, came
later during the Bronze Age. The pottery again shows that central
Germany
must have been the original home of these people, and the Latin
language, which
is closely akin to the Keltic group, is also Indo-European. The
Italians appear
to have entered Italy over the Eastern Alps from Austria, and then
moved down
the centre of Italy, skirting the firmly entrenched Etruscan state.
Relatively few in number, they were organized on a simple and stern
warriors code, and
the Latins appear in many ways to have been more Nordic than the
Hellenes,
certainly in their greater earnestness, the Roman gravitas and virtus,
and the
greater freedom for women.

The earliest Italian records tell of the legendary wars with the
Etruscans,
when Horatio kept the bridge, and saved Rome, and also of the slow
extension of
nationhood between the various Italic tribes, the Umbrians, Oscians,
Sabellans and Sabines. We hear of the Oscian love of fighting, and the
truthfulness
and feminine chastity of the Sabines. The oldest constitution reveals a
class
system based on race: the 300 Patricians who make up the Roman Senate
represent
the 300 families of the Latine and Sabine tribe of the Nordic
conquerors,
whereas the Plebeians correspond to the subject Mediterranean-Alpine
population,
with Dinaric and Hither Asiatic elements, and the descendants of the
Ligurian-Iberians. Marriage customs are different in the two groups,
and although the
Plebeians appear to some extent to have retained mother-rights in
inheritance,
the Nordics adhere to paternal lineage. The fair Romans had the
proverb, quoted
by Horace (Sat., i. 4, 85): :hic niger es; hunc tu, Romane, caveto; He
is
black, beware of him, Roman.

The oldest element in Roman Law is the Twelve Tables, and in this we
find
provision for the killing of misshapen children. The later Roman Laws
strove
also, without forgetting the eugenic ideal, to raise the number of
children. Even
then Seneca wrote, "We drown the weaklings and misshapen. It is not
unreason
but reason to separate the fit from the unfit." But before that, in 445
B.C.,
the first element of decay had already appeared, when the law, the Lex
Canuleia
de Connubio permitted marriages between Patricians and Plebeians. Until
this
law the children of mixed descent went always to the Plebeian stock,
thus
tending if anything to spread Nordic blood amongst the Plebeians. This
was the
pars deterior, or the "worse hand" as old German laws called it. Now,
instead,
the blood of the Plebeians was to mingle with the Nordic upper classes.
This was
the first step in the downfall of Rome, sure to bring evil even though
its
effects were slow.

Patrician Losses

The history of the Roman constitution pictures the change in racial
stratification of the Roman population, as power passes steadily into
the hands of the
Plebeians. The wars with the Nordic Kelts were borne by the Nordic
Patricians
the most. From the Patrician class came the soldiers and the
administrators of
the conquered territories. Cato (d. 109 B.C.) was the type of true
Roman,
born from the high nobility, with lofty aims, a complete patriot, a
statesman and
a general. According to Plutarch and a satirical poem he was
fair-haired and
light-eyed. But in his time Nordic blood was already running thinner.
The old
Roman names are still chosen -- Fulvius, Flavus, Rufus and others
denoting
coloring, and of two kinsmen one is called Niger (the dark) and the
other Rufus
(the fair) to discriminate between identical names. But after the Punic
Wars
all the old Patrician families were said to have vanished, but for a
dozen or
so.

More...

In the civil wars Nordic blood was spilt lavishly. Marius, leader of
the
Plebeians, after his victory over fair-haired and light-eyed (Plutarch)
Sulla, had
many leading members of the nobility executed, and Sulla afterwards
took
similar vengeance on the leaders of the Plebeians, amongst whom, due to
the
operation of the old marriage laws, a considerable amount of Nordic
blood must have
spread. Another blow was the disappearance, outside the city, of the
yeoman
Nordic peasantry in the entire area of Italic settlement, with the
import of
cheap corn from the colonies. It is generally in the country, in
contact with
Nature and the land, that Nordic blood keeps fittest and survives the
longest.
The fall of the Republic was the fall also of the Last of the Patrician
element.
Bled of its Nordic class, the Republic gave way and the government
passed to
a series of autocrats, purporting to have the sympathy of the Plebeian
masses,
whose support they won often with "bread and circuses." Imperial rule
in Rome
took on the cloak of Oriental despotic magnificence, but it was merely
a
splendid cloak hiding a mouldering body.

Corruption Appears

The old Republican nobility were replaced by a new moneyed nobility,
the
equites, who thrived on financial speculation and lived in great
personal luxury.
Their example was the beginning of moral decay, and while their
financial
power ground down the freeman, the officials were corrupted by their
bribes. So
Caesar commented (Gallic Wars i. 39, 40), and Vergil protested that a
new race
must come down from heaven if the situation were to be rectified. As
the old
Italic blood died out, the administration began to fear for the
recruitment of
the legions. Censor Mettellus had in 131 B.C. demanded legal sanction
to oblige
citizens to marry. Caesar, Augustus, Nero, Trajan and Hadrian provided
for
rewards to parents of numerous families. But without success, the
effects of war
were not made good; and to fill the empty spaces foreign blood flowed
into
Italy. As in modem days, the inferior appeared to have the higher
birth-rate,
and as a result the last days of Rome are repulsive. Pliny noticed
this, and
pointed out that in the early days of Rome, there had been little need
for
physicians. There came also a proverb, "A crooked countenance is
followed by crooked
morals" (distortum vultum sequitur distortio morum). The blood of
hundreds of
thousands of slaves, mostly from Africa and Asia, turned Imperial Rome
into a
racial morass, and finally citizenship was extended to all freemen
living
within the limits of the empire. This last low was published under the
infamous
Caracalla (A.D. 212), the son of an African slave and a Syrian woman, a
notorious criminal degenerate.

The larger part of the Roman population must, by the birth of Christ,
have
been Mediterranean-Dinaric-Alpine. Caesar, who was himself tan and
light-eyed
with Nordic features, compares the Romans with the Gauls of that age,
indicating
how short the Romans were by comparison, and mentions that the Keltic
Coritavi of modem Lincolnshire were blond in youth, and by comparison
tall, for the
minimum height of the Roman soldier had by that time been brought down
to 1.48
metres (5'10"). When considering height, however, we must recollect
that this
is determined not merely by heredity, but by diet and health in
infancy.

Many of the more noble and thoughtful men who survived turned to
Stoicism, in
dislike of the sophistry and falseness of the age; Cicero's De Officiis
gives
a Nordic spirit to those few noble men who struggled on. But Stoicism
was
without hope in its philosophy, and in consequence militated against
marriage.
These last strong figures of ancient Rome were lonely, and many were in
fact
banished and executed. But for the fact that new Keltic and Nordic
blood was
seeping in from France and Germany, to give Rome a backbone of strong
legions, and
later on even administrators, the collapse of this repulsive charade
would
have been spontaneous.

A number of the later Emperors who strove to hold the disintegrating
and
festering empire together were of immediate German origin. The first of
these was
Maximinus Thrax (A.D. 235-238), the son of a Goth man and an Alan
woman, both
Nordic peoples. According to every record he was of giant stature,
strikingly
handsome, and dazzlingly fair. Valentinian I (A.D. 375), was also of
"barbaric
blood", with tall stature (in relation to the Plebeians who would seem
very
short by modem English or German averages), fair skin, blue eyes and
light
hair. With the influx of German mercenaries to the legions, it became
possible to
raise the height of the army in the fourth century to 1.65 metres
(6'6"), and
for the Guard to 1.72 metres (6'9"). Textullian portrays, perhaps with
some
exaggeration, the revival of life in the Empire following the new
German or
Gothic influx, which became especially marked with the Gothic conquest
and rule of
Theodoric. "The world strides on from day to day," he writes, "Now
there are
roads everywhere, all is looked into, all is busy. Estates have taken
the
place of ill-famed wildernesses, forests are held in check by sown
land, swamps
are drained dry, wild life is driven back before the herds, sandy
wastes are
sown, there are more towns than there were once huts."

But the old Romano-Nordic power and lineage was gone, for Textullion
wrote in
the last days of the old empire, already mingling with the beginning of
the
Middle Ages. The invasions of Odoacer (A.D. 476) and Theodoric
represent the
fresh wave of Teutonic conquest which was to usher in the Middle Ages
and to set
the pattern for the modem nations of Europe today. Rome itself had
become a
racial morass which was despised by the new conquerors, a mob in which
only now
and then would Nordic characteristics reappear. It was the rabble which
made
Jahn say: "The purer a people the better; the more mixed it is the more
it is
like a rabble." Amongst all this the Christian state church now built
homes
for the poor and protected the lowest from the law. But in doing so it
made the
propagation of the mentally and physically weak possible, and "with
much good
has also come much evil."

Painted Statues

Despite all this, the ideal of beauty remained Nordic to the end. Up to
the
second century A.D. Roman portrait busts were painted, the hair often
showing
remains of paint which was of a light brown color, and the features
quite
frequently Nordic. It may be, however, that the idea of light-coloring
for the hair
was deliberate, as coloring is usually the first thing to change with
darker
admixtures, and the light hair coloring is more frequent than the
Nordic
features, light-coloring could therefore be deliberate to give an
aristocratic
impression.

From the point of view of individual choice, nevertheless, anyone
amongst the
nobility who had dark hair liked to hide it, and Juvenal tells us (Sat.
vt
IM) that Messalina hid her black hair under a fair wig, while the rich
new
Plebeians bought fair hair from Germany to make wigs for their wives
and daughters,
and give them the "noble appearance" which Vergil gave to the blond
Mercury,
Turnus, Camillus, Lavinia, and even Dido, the Phoenician. Ovid mentions
the
custom of fair wigs, Martial, Lucan and Pliny give methods of dying the
hair
blond. Even half-African Caracalla wore a blond wig and walked around
in Germanic
garb. Both Horace and Vergil's ideal of beauty is the Nordic, and Ovid
paints
Romulus and Remus as fair. Apuleius born of parentage in an African
colony,
calls himself slender, tall and blond, and follows Platonistic
philosophy.

Most of the sculptures representing Romans also show Nordic features, a
narrow face, long head, sharp chin, and the famous "Roman nose," though
again, how
far did the sculptor err in favor of traditional ideas of beauty with
the
intention of flattering? Marcus Antonius, Caesar, Galba, Vespasian and
Trajan were
all praised for having the handsome "High Mountain Form" forehead, the
high
brow which is so typically Nordic. It is an irony that the racial
characters
that once qualified the whole race, should remain the ideal of beauty
amongst
the rabble of aliens, ugly in their heterogeneous confusion of
characteristics.
But such was the case in Rome. The memory of the Heroic Age was eagerly
seized
by all who could take power, by fair means or foul, but that age could
not be
recaptured, and despite the temporary improvements effected by Germanic
conquerors such as Theodoric, the racial material on which they had to
work was of
little value, and their efforts bore no fruit after their own demise.