>>18338112Cicero described how after the conquest of Judea, people from that province started buying their way into Roman society with their moneychanger golds. They started intermarrying with the Roman patrician caste, who up until then had been mostly ethnic Romans. Slowly over the following centuries, Rome spiraled into degeneracy and debauchery, and their war-effort which up until then had been turned mostly towards Asia, the Middle East and Africa changed gears towards expensive, loss-ridden campaigns against the barbarians of Northern/Western Europe (people who were generally considered quaint cousins by the old Roman aristocracy.)
An interesting side-note is that at this point groups of people would go around in Rome and knock the noses of statues of the old aristocracy. As if someone had some sort of issue with noses. Maybe someone was making fun of someone's noses or something, it's one of those mysteries lost in history. Anyways, then the new Roman aristocracy, whose ancestors was mostly drawn from the merchant strongholds in Asia Minor and Carthage, adopted Christianity as the state religion of Rome. Then, shortly after that, Rome fell and was destroyed.¨
The families who had been the last aristocrats of Rome and it's Palatines, mostly survived however. They went on to becoming the great banking families of the European dark ages, mostly based out of Venice. These wealthy families then started buying their way into the Northern/Western aristocratic families with their moneychanger golds...
