wrong
souf germany was firmly celtic on roman times
>italians have nothing to do with romans
majority of italy was non-roman (see: social war which turned them into roman citizens), also why do you think romans weren't like italian
Do Germans as people occupy more or less the same territory of Europe for longest among other European nations??? Germanic tribes lived in modern Germany in the Roman times and, well, Germans still live there.
I mean, neither French nor Italians have anything to do with Gauls or Romans, let alone Greeks. But with Germans it seems to be somewhat continious.
> as people
I'm not sure which continiousity you're talking about as there were no Germans until 19th century, their united culture is quite new. As for Germanic tribes they were quite diverse and experienced a lot of culture and population shifts between each other (also Prussian culture mostly hadn't come from Germanic people and it still persists in significant part of Germany today)
Good thing there's also genetic studies confirming it.
Funnily enough, whereas late imperial period Romans had a LOT of Near East ancestry, it disappears without a trace on transition to Middle Ages. (City dwellers aren't very good at reproduction, and Italian countryside was never population replaced – except for Sicily, that is, which has never been Italic tho)
Italians only become more Greek than ancient Romans.
