Mărturii asupra conştiinţei romanităţii la români reflectate în publicaţiile secolului al XIX-lea
Some evidence about the Romanians’ awareness of their Roman origin, taken from the newspapers from the middle of the XIXth century

Summary/Abstract: The article deals with some pieces of information extracted from the newspapers from the XIXth century, in which the authors, many of them remaining anonymous, discuss, in various contexts, about the famous Roman civilization and history. The authors present books on Roman history edited in the West and mainly discuss the ancient imperial heritages, shown even in modern ages in the Romanian folk traditions, in the national costume etc. They refer to Giuseppe Micali’s book, L’Italia avanti il dominio dei Romani, published in three editions (1810, 1821 and 1852), or to Henri Martin’s monumental book Histoire de France depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’en 1789, printed in Paris, between 1855-1860. Another work published in Middle Age is much discussed because its authors supported the cause of the Romanians. It is Johannes Tröster’s book, Das Alt- und New- Teutsche Dacia, published in Nürnberg, in 1666.The degree of Romanity of the Romanian ethnicity is also much debated. The hypothesis of the exclusive Roman origin is rejected by Ion Brătianu, who argues that on the arrival of the Romans at the Lower Danube, the ancient territory of Dacia was inhabited by Thracians and Celts. Some archaeological discoveries are well presented in the newspapers and they are used as historical proofs for the hypothesis that the Romanians descend from Romans. Some books treating about the ancient Roman artifacts discovered in many parts of Romania were also published.The idea of the Roman origin of the Romanian people was also promoted by references to the ancient books. Sometimes, the articles simply discuss the life and the works of an author, but other times fragments extracted from their works are also reproduced. Such authors are Cicero, Tacitus, Salustius, Plinius etc. All these popularizing materials are illustrated, sometimes in the “artistic supplement” of the newspapers, with engravings, lithographs, drawings etc., that reproduce historical characters or monuments from ancient Rome.By these examples extracted from the newspapers of the XIX-th century we tried to underline the evolution of the awareness of their Roman origin of the Romanians. At times, they realize a synthesis of the knowledge related to this aspect, supporting this hypothesis with proofs of various kinds: historical, linguistic, ethnographic etc.

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