[NewsyHacker]

Caesar didn't "introduce the voi". Is this an urban myth that Italians believe? The tu/vous distinction in Romance languages arose in medieval times. Not only did it not exist in Caesar's time, it is absent from the centuries of Imperial-era literature in Latin.

There is a wide literature on Latin forms of address. Eleanor Dickey's monograph published by Oxford University Press is a good survey.

[lnxg33k1]

I am not an historian but it seems so, I’ve found in the past few minutes two sources that attribute Voi to romans, its in italian but sure it can be translated, going to paste the original links unaltered

https://www.elisamotterle.com/galateo-del-tu-del-lei-e-del-v...

https://www.treccani.it/magazine/atlante/cultura/Diamoci_del...

Beware the treccani is the most used/influential encyclopaedia in italy, so I’d tend to say that i trust them a lot

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treccani

[NewsyHacker]

Your first link backs up exactly what I mentioned above:

> In antichità, quando si parlava latino, le formule di cortesia non esistevano … L’usanza del Voi nasce insieme a una nuova formula politica: la tetrarchia introdotta nel 293 da Diocleziano.

It was an innovation in Romance that took place centuries after Caesar and most of the Imperial era. Again, there is ample scholarly literature on this, so no need to resort to popular references like encyclopedias.

[lnxg33k1]

Yeah I saw that, but I'd say if that makes sense, that they're attributing the introduction of "Voi" within the roman era and not in the medieval times, right? The second one instead attributes it to "Roma Cesarea", to be fair, it is not the encyclopaedia that attributes it to "Roma Cesarea" but the article that influenced Mussolini quoted on the article on the encyclopaedia, so they're probably only quoting, but I don't know enough, so I'd trust you're right, thank you

[NewsyHacker]

Historians today tend to trace the ultimate fall of the Roman Empire to the multiple crises of the third century, even if the name of the empire limped on for a couple of centuries more. So AD 293 is quite a late date, on the threshold to a new era. From the viewpoint of modern historians, it is hard to understand how Italian Fascism could have seen anything that late as worth being proud of and emulating.

[ffgjgf1]

> trace the ultimate fall of the Roman Empire to

Or the plague and the subsequent Arab invasions. The empire was rebounded several times from near collapse after the 300s

[NewsyHacker]

The Western Empire was the only Roman Empire that the Italian Fascists ever really cared about. Early Byzantium was totally foreign to their mythology.

[082349872349872]

It's much easier to understand if one doesn't assume that Fascism ever cared about academic truth.

[lnxg33k1]

Probably you're right, they just needed something widely known to make people feel some sort of national identity/united/proud and control them better