Nothern Italians mostly germanic?

[Danny6777]

Would most of the scientists artist and mathematicians that where born in northern Italy be of germanic or celtic stock? Like might Galileo be of germanic ethnicity? It is said that germanic people had invaded northern Italy in ancient times and that celtic people had been settled there for a period before rome came into existence.

[ctc7752]

Tracing the Italians to a single source would be suicide. Perhaps you can find what you are looking for in Greek Mythology. Adrian Room's Who's Who in Greek Mythology is a good start.

[Mokele]

Well, the Eutruscans were there first, then the Romans, who brought in slaves from all over the place, and then there were some invasions by various groups like the Carthiginians, Vandals, Goths, Huns, etc. So any attempt to sort anything like that out is essentially futile at this point.

 

Mokele

[Pangloss]

I've been a student of Roman history for many years, and continue to find their history fascinating. I'm not an expert, but if memory serves the Romans were overrun and Rome itself was sacked in 390 BC. Most of the records were destroyed and most of what we know about Rome before that time is based on documents that were written after that sacking.

 

After that time, gallic peoples settled all over northern Italy. Over time it completely rewrote the genetic makeup of all Italians. During the time of Caesar (two centuries later) people were still recognizably gallic or non-gallic. People who looked gallic were ostracized in various ways (to a degree of severity which it is difficult to fully determine).

 

Anyway, what I was getting to is that about THAT time, during the time of Gaius Marius, when Caesar was just a boy, there was a massive German migration that took place. At one point something like 100,000 Roman men were wiped out at the Battle of Arausio (modern Orange), when they were simply overrun by a reported two million migratory Germans.

 

Rome had to undergo yet another transformation to deal with that crisis, which involved breaking some traditions and letting Marius be consul more than once, and Marius solved the problem of lack of land-owning men by creating the first paid army, comprised of lower class citizens, to go out and fight the Germans. This was the time in which the legionary standards (the "eagles") were created. (The same eagles that Augustus had to buy back from the Parthians later to begin the Pax Romana, an act which is depicted on the famous statue of Augustus that you always see in documentaries and such, with his finger pointing off at the horizon.)

 

But I digress. Anyway, the point is that migratory waves were not uncommon up to that point in Roman history, and were much of the reason why Rome felt it necessary to expand and control the world around it. The gallic and german "boogey men" were quite real, and they had little choice in the matter. Though I suppose if they'd taken the time to ask the Chinese, they might have thought of anther solution.

 

At any rate, the constant German threat to the east is an underlying premise throughout Caesar's commentaries on the Gallic campaigns. His general position seems to be that he's putting Gaul in order in part because it will help to keep the Germans at bay.

 

Getting back to the original question, all of this suggests (to me at any rate) that Northern Italians owe more of a racial influence to France, rather than Germany. But of course I've stopped at a point 2,000 years ago, and much has happened since then.