>>17872498>high-ranking officials and even emperors were not ethnically Italic after Augustus.I can't speak for the principate but in Late Antiquity, starting around the mid third century, most Emperors and military commanders were from the frontier provinces while the highest ranking members of the civil administration were often still of italian origin. The majority of governors though would have been provincials, and probably most of the senatorial class as well.
I don't really get why so many people think this is some terrible evil thing though, Caracalla who was from north africa and gets a lot of hate wasn't a great ruler but he was hardly "decadent" either given how he was basically a stereotypical soldiering manly man by roman standards, even his nickname Caracalla comes from the name of the cloak worn by a common legionary. If anything it should be seen as a sign of how strong Roman culture and civilisation was that it could meaningfully unite someone born in North Africa and someone like Valentinian the Great, a pannonian born provincial who was ironically described as having the appearance of a barbarian by Ammianus Marcellinus iirc, under a shared identity and cause.
No universal roman citizenship means no Claudius Gothicus, no Aurelian, no Probus, no Diocletian, no Constantine, no Stilicho, no Aetius, or any other of these Roman heroes whose ancestors had once been barbarians but who themselves fought for the Roman People as hard as someone who's ancestors had been among Romulus' original followers. Even Ammianus Marcellinus, perhaps the greatest Latin historian after Tacitus, was born in Syria.
