David Williams wrote:   
   >   
   > Voltaire aside, I seem to recall that the HRE was an attempt to recreate the    
   > original Roman empire, with the blessing of the Pope (in Rome...), and for    
   > many years the support and direct involvement of the Roman Catholic Church.    
   > So...  I'd dispute that it wasn't Roman.   
      
   The HRE was by German speakers with a lot of ancestry among folks who   
   had never been conquered by the Romans who had in fact broken the back   
   of Roman Republic expansion.  From the south republic expansion had   
   stopped about the Danube to include plenty of German speakers (not   
   modern German but some cluster of ancestral Old West Germanic dialects).   
      
   At first I thought it was like calling Narn the Holy Centari Empire but   
   the Narns didn't have that mixture of never conquered plus early to   
   revolt.  Not a completely wrong mapping though.  Almost as much right in   
   it as wrong in it anyways.  Sigh.   
   --- SBBSecho 2.12-Win32   
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