QUESTION: If I remember my history well, letting in all of these refugees who are Muslim will eventually mean that Europe becomes Muslim or at the very least we will have a Muslim at the head of the EU in a matter of just a few decades. Would you care to refresh my history on this topic of migrations and how these change society? After all, the blacks were slaves and it took less than 150 years after your civil war for Obama to become president.

Thank you for coming to Rome.

I am looking forward to meeting you at your cocktail party which everyone talks about.

HG

ANSWER: Yes, you are correct. The first Arab Emperor of Rome was Philip I (244-249 AD). That was about 271 years after the first emperor took the throne — Augustus (27 BC-14 AD). John McCain was not actually born in the United States. He was born on a military based in Panama. Claudius (Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus; b. 10 BC – 54 AD; r. 41-54 AD) was the first Roman emperor born outside of Italy like McCain. However, he was a member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty as the son of Drusus, who was the brother of Tiberius and Antonia. Antonia was the younger daughter of Marc Antony and Octavia, the sister of Augustus. Claudius was born at Lugdunum (Lyons) in Gaul, which at that time was part of the Roman Empire. Lugdunum was founded in 44 BC, ten years after the conquest of Gaul, in the aftermath of the assassination of Julius Caesar that erupted into civil war.

Nevertheless, the first scandal to erupt that revealed a member of the royal family was not a Roman citizen came just a few years later concerning the wife of Emperor Vespasian (69-79 AD) by the name Domitilla. She was born in Sabratha to Italian colonists who had moved there during the reign of Augustus. Her parents were Italian and not strictly Roman Latins, which presented a rather serious scandal as she was alleged to have been a barbarian born in a colony outside of the Roman Empire. Her father had to produce documentation to establish that she was a Roman citizen born prior to the family moving.

The first emperor born from a non-Latin (Rome) family was Trajan (98–117 AD) who was born in Italica, Spain, about the year 52 AD. His family was originally from Umbria in Italy, not Rome. He was considered a “provincial” as he was born outside of Italy.

Therefore, it took about 112 years for the first non-Latin Emperor to appear and about 271 years for a foreigner to become an emperor who was not Italian. If we look at history, what Europe has done by letting in the refugees will most certainly alter its history going forward. Italians lost control of the Roman Empire and then emperors no longer needed to be Italian after Philip I.