The French bourgeoisie re-appropriated Roman heritage as its own ancestry

Evidence

A liberal Romanity becomes possible, and even those who are not monarchists or absolutists can revert to it. Even the bourgeois can revert to Romanity. And as you know, the Revolution will have no hesitation in doing so. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 5938

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the scaffold of how social classes construct legitimizing genealogies of descent — will recur in Islamophobia readings on invented traditions and origin narratives.
• DEFINE: Illustrates the mechanism by which a political class retroactively claims a heritage to grant itself legitimacy.