the Roman empire got divided and split up among a lot of heirs. even if you take the metaphor seriously (which you shouldn’t) it’s a partible inheritance type situation and anyone claiming primogeniture is being bigheaded about it.
i know what this is referring to and I don’t like it btw because it’s stupidly reactionary, even compared to how reactionary a sentiment “ROMANEE FWEEMUS” is.
“the Romans thought Germans were barbarians!” is true and irrelevant because that was 2000 years ago. families and nations change a lot in 2000 years, poor men become rich when they come into their inheritance, lowly children are adopted into high families etc.
it’s even a particularly narrowly time-bound sense of roman snobbery to pretend to hold. Sure, I expect the average Roman senator of the Principiate was very snobby about Germans. 300 years later when, to pick one example among several, Clovis was running around I would also expect the snobbier element of the Roman senate to be prejudiced against the Franks, but Clovis was literally heir to several Roman provinces – or rather he was heir to provinces granted somehow to Chlodio and he took it upon himself to gain more. How sincere could anti-German snobbery be when all the high positions in the Western Empire were taken by Germans?
“You German tinka da you da heirs to da ROMAN EMPIRE. ohhhh, i eata da garum an makeada da laffa” was a silly and basic racist wop take *1500 years ago*