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Information about Latins

For other uses, see Latin (disambiguation).


The Latins were an ancient Italic people who migrated to central Italy, (Latium Vetus - Old Latium), in the 2nd millennium B.C., maybe from the Adriatic East Coast and Balkanic Area, perhaps from pressures by Illyrian peoples. Although they lived in independent city-states, the Latins had a common language (Latin), common religious beliefs and a close sense of kinship, expressed in the myth that they were all descendants of Latinus, the father-in-law of Aeneas. Latinus was worshipped as Jupiter Latiaris on Mons Albanus (Monte Cavo) during an annual festival that was attended by all Latins, including Rome, one of the Latin states. The Latin cities extended common right to residence and trade to one another. Rome's territorial ambitions united the rest of the Latins against it in 341 BC, but the final victory was on Rome's side in 338 BC. Consequently some of the Latin states were incorporated within the Roman state, and their inhabitants were given full Roman citizenship. Others became Roman allies and enjoyed certain privileges.

Gradually, with the spread of Roman power throughout Italy and Western Europe, 'Latin' ceased to be an ethnic term and became a legal category.

Medieval usage

In the Middle Ages "Latin" frequently meant something associated with Roman Catholic Church, for example "Latin rite". Latin Empire was established in the territory of the former Byzantine Empire after the Fourth Crusade with support of the church.

Modern uses

In modern times the term "Latin" is most commonly applied as an adjective to people of Italian, French, Portuguese, Romanian or Spanish descent because their languages descend from Latin.

In the United States Latin, Hispanic, and Latino (the Italian, Spanish and Portuguese form of Latin) are often used as synonyms in referring to people from Latin America (the parts of America where Latin-derived languages are spoken, and where most of the population has some (mixed or pure), Latin-European ancestry). As a shortening of the term 'Latin America', "Latin" refers to an inhabitant of Latin America and not specifically to someone of Latin-European ancestry. In this sense, the term is used as an equivalent to terms like European, African, Asian, and Middle Eastern, which makes any woman from Latin America a "Latina" or in the case of man a "Latino", even if their ancestry is non-European.

Who is a Latin?

Further information: Latin peoples (linguistic)
Most commonly in Europe, as a noun, the term “Latin” is applied to people from countries where Romance languages are spoken and so Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, French people and Romanian people are popularly called "Latins" by other Europeans because of their distinctive Roman roots. In America, this trend is not continued, as French Guyana, the French Caribbean and Haiti are not popularly considered to be part of Latin America, although technically they should be. In Canada, French-speaking Quebec is often considered to be inhabited by the "Latins of the North", though this usage is not very common outside of Quebec or French-speaking Europe. In the Byzantine Empire, "Latins" was a synonym to "Westerners", referring to all people of the Roman Catholic faith. Today the Byzantine cultural successors (Greece, Cyprus) also use "Latins" as a term for "Roman Catholics" in order to distinguish them from a member of the Greek Church.

See also

External links

Latin may refer to:

The ancient world

  • Latin, an ancient language
  • Latins, or Latini, an ancient people living in central Italy
  • Latin is an adjective that relates to Roman culture, cf. "Latin literature", "Latin writers".

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Ancient Italic peoples are all those peoples that lived in Italy before the Roman domination. Not all of these various peoples are linguistically or ethnically closely related.
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Latium was a region of ancient Italy, home to the original Latin people. Its area is now part of the (much larger) modern Italian Regione of Lazio, also called Latium in Latin and also occasionally so in modern English.
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Adriatic Sea is a body of water separating the Italian Peninsula from the Balkan peninsula, and the system of the Apennine Mountains from that of the Dinaric Alps and adjacent ranges. The Adriatic Sea is a part of the Mediterranean Sea.
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Balkans is the historic and geographic name used to describe a region of southeastern Europe. The region has a combined area of 550,000 km² and an approximate population of 55 million people.
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Illyrians has come to refer to a broad, ill-defined "Indo-European"[1] group of peoples who inhabited the western Balkans (Illyria, roughly from the Albanian and Montenegro border to southern Pannonia) and even perhaps parts of Southern Italy in classical times into the
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A city-state is a region controlled exclusively by a city, usually having sovereignty. Historically, city-states have often been part of larger cultural areas, as in the city-states of ancient Greece (such as Athens, Sparta and Corinth), the Phoenician cities of Canaan (such as
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Latin}}} 
Official status
Official language of: Vatican City
Used for official purposes, but not spoken in everyday speech
Regulated by: Opus Fundatum Latinitas
Roman Catholic Church
Language codes
ISO 639-1: la
ISO 639-2: lat
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Roman mythology, the mythological beliefs of the people of Ancient Rome, can be considered as having two parts. One part, largely later and literary, consists of whole-cloth borrowings from Greek mythology.
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Latinus or Latinos was a figure in Greek and Roman mythology.

Greek mythology

In Hesiod's Theogony, he was the son of Odysseus and Circe who ruled the Tyrsenoi, that is the Etruscans, with his brothers Ardeas and Telegonus.
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Aeneas (Greek: Αἰνείας, Aineías; pronounced:
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Jupiter (Iuppiter in Latin) held the same role as Zeus in the Greek pantheon. He was called Juppiter Optimus Maximus Soter (Jupiter Best, Greatest, Savior); as the patron deity of the Roman state, he ruled over laws and social order.
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Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew from a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula circa the 9th century BC to a massive empire straddling the Mediterranean Sea.
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4th century BC - 3rd century BC
370s BC  360s BC  350s BC - 340s BC - 330s BC  320s BC  310s BC 
344 BC 343 BC 342 BC - 341 BC - 340 BC 339 BC 338 BC

Politics
State leaders - Sovereign states

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4th century BC - 3rd century BC
360s BC  350s BC  340s BC - 330s BC - 320s BC  310s BC  300s BC 
341 BC 340 BC 339 BC - 338 BC - 337 BC 336 BC 335 BC

Politics
State leaders - Sovereign states

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Citizenship in the time of Ancient Rome was a privileged status afforded to certain individuals with respect to laws, property, and governance.

It is hard to offer meaningful generalities across the entire Roman period, as the nature and availability of citizenship was
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Anthem
Il Canto degli Italiani
(also known as Fratelli d'Italia)


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The Latin Empire or Latin Empire of Constantinople (original Latin name: Imperium Romaniae, "Empire of Romania") is the name given by historians to the Crusader state founded by the leaders of the Fourth Crusade on lands captured from the Byzantine Empire
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Fourth Crusade (1202–1204) was originally designed to conquer Jerusalem through an invasion of Egypt. Instead, in April 1204, the Crusaders of the West invaded and conquered the Greek Orthodox city of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire.
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Anthem
Il Canto degli Italiani
(also known as Fratelli d'Italia)


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Please help Wikipedia by adding references. See the for details.
This article has been tagged since September 2007.

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Anthem
"A Portuguesa"


Capital
(and largest city) Lisbon5

Official languages Portuguese1
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Motto

(each main institution has its own motto)
Anthem
Deşteaptă-te, române!


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Motto
"Plus Ultra"   (Latin)
"Further Beyond"
Anthem
"Marcha Real" 1
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Motto
"In God We Trust"   (since 1956)
"E Pluribus Unum"   ("From Many, One"; Latin, traditional)
Anthem
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Latin America (Portuguese and Spanish: América Latina; French: Amérique Latine) is the region of the Americas where Romance languages, those derived from Latin (particularly Spanish and Portuguese), are primarily spoken.
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The Latin peoples, also known as Romance peoples, are those European linguistic-cultural groups (and their cultural descendants all over the world) that speak Romance languages. The Romance languages descend from Vulgar Latin.
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Romance languages (sometimes referred to as Romanic languages) are a branch of the Indo-European language family that comprisies all the languages that descend from Latin, the language of the Roman Empire.
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120 - 140 million (est.)
Regions with significant populations  Italy      56 million (95% population of Italy)

 Brazil [1]
 Argentina
 United States [2]
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Spanish people or more properly Spaniards are a nation native to Spain, in the Iberian Peninsula of southwestern Europe. The Spanish people have varied origins, due to Spaniards long history of invasions and migrations.
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