Latins

The Latins were originally an Italic tribe in ancient central Italy from Latium. As Roman power and colonization spread Helleno-Latin culture during the Roman Republic, Latins culturally "Romanized" or "Latinized" the rest of Italy, and the word Latin ceased to mean a particular people or ethnicity, acquiring a more legal and cultural sense. As the Roman Empire spread to include Spain, Portugal, France, and Romania, these joined Italy and Greece in becoming "Latin" and remain so to the present day. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal, Spain and France began to build world empires in the Americas, Africa and the East Indies. By the mid-19th century, the former American colonies of these Latin European nations became known as Latin America. Latins (Italic tribe) The Latins were an ancient Italic people of the Latium region in central Italy (Latium Vetus, "Old Latium"), in the 1st millennium BC. Although they lived in independent city-states, they spoke a common language (Latin), held common religious beliefs, and shared a sense of kinship, expressed in the myth that all Latins descend from Latinus. Latinus was worshiped on Mons Albanus (Monte Albano) during an annual festival attended by all Latins, including those from Rome, one of the Latin states. The Latin cities extended common rights of residence and trade to one another. Rome's territorial ambitions united the rest of the Latins, the Latin League, as they were later called, against Rome in the Latin War in 341BC, but in the end, Rome won 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. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, many Europeans held on to the "Latin" identity, more specifically, in the sense of the Romans, as members of the Empire. In the Eastern Roman Empire, and the broader Greek-Orthodox world, Latins was a synonym for all people who followed Roman Catholic Christianity.