Since the fall of the Greek civilization, the peninsula has been replenished frequently by migrations from the north, and there are still genes of the original Greeks in some of its citizens today. The nation, though, is a shadow of the splendor of what once was, and still finds its highest meaning in its glorious antiquity.

In many ways the great Roman civilization resembled that of the Greeks. The founding Romans were called patricians. Random House Webster's Electronic Dictionary defines patrician as follows:

patrician n.

1. a person of noble or high rank; aristocrat.
2. a person of breeding, education, and refinement.
3. a member of the original hereditary aristocracy of ancient Rome, having such privileges as the exclusive right to hold certain offices.
4. (in the later Roman and Byzantine empires) a nonhereditary honorary title or dignity conferred by the emperor. (emphasis mine)

As Rome ruled the known world, the city of Rome itself became the New York City of the ancient world. Roman chroniclers talked about walking in the streets of Rome in its declining period as if it were a foreign land filled with alien appearances and languages. One can trace the decline of Roman power directly with (as the fourth definition shows) the transition of the patrician from a hereditary title to an honorary one. Another sign of the genetic basis of the original Roman civilization can be found in the common Jewish word gentiles, which originated from the Roman term gens, a term used to denote the true Roman families that built and for a time ruled the Roman empire. To the Jews of those days the gens or gentiles represented the enemy that had conquered them in Palestine. The very term Gens is the root of words such as gentleman, gent, genes, genetics, genocide, genus, and other terms of heredity.

gens (jenz), n., pl. gentes

1. a group of families in ancient Rome claiming descent from a common ancestor and united by a common name and common ancestral religious rites.
2. Anthropol. a group tracing common descent in the male line; clan.
3. gens race, people. See GENUS, GENDER

gentleman n.

1. a man of good family, breeding, or social position.

Rome never sank to the level of modern Egypt because the racial change was far less dramatic than in that north African nation, but it certainly declined. Luckily Italy enjoyed the fresh, hardy European genes of the northern barbarian invaders and conquerors who were not as culturally advanced but who had the same genetic potential as the original Romans and their patrician standard-bearers. Barbarian is a term that poorly describes these invaders, for they had a strong moral fiber and family life and a rich cultural heritage, as well as the intelligence and planning in war to defeat the schooled and experienced Roman armies.