Rome's contributions to the world

[Sauron]

I've just been thinking about this for awhile; probably as a result of being in Providence, surrounded by Italians... :yup:

So the other day I remembered this snippet of poem by Vergil:

Others may fashion more smoothly images of bronze (I for one believe it),
evoke living faces from marble,
plead causes better,
trace with a wand the wanderings of the heavens
and foretell the rising of stars.

But you, Roman, remember
to rule the peoples with power (these will be your arts);
impose the habit of peace,
spare the vanquished
and wear down the proud!

And I've always wondered if Rome deserved the bad press it has gotten; i.e., that it was just a military machine that copied everything of any value from Greece or Egypt.

So I was surprised to learn that the Romans had the recipe for concrete so many centuries ago, and that concrete was the secret behind the ease at which Rome erected their buildings. But because of the fall of Rome and the ensuing Dark Ages, the recipe was lost.

Which -- bringing us to the Middle Ages -- had constrained the size of buildings and cathedrals in Europe. This was one reason why the de Medici family had to rely upon the designs of a brilliant, eccentric engineer named Filippo Brunelleschi to design and build Florence's signature cathedral. (http://www.pbs.org/empires/medici/renaissance/brunelleschi.html)

So I wanted to nominate concrete as a Roman contribution to the world.

Who's next?

[livius drusus]

Me! Me! I'm next! Concrete is a great one, especially since it even hardened underwater for badass bridge building.

My personal favorite of Rome's contributions to the world is the aqueduct, including the engineering marvel that is the round arch. The notion of a miles of cross country bridges gradually sloping downwards so water could be delivered from mountain to city using only gravity just boggles the mind. At the peak, there were 9 aqueducts delivering 300 million gallons of water a day to the city of Rome. Once it got to the city, it was pumped (or flowed, if gravity was on its side) everywhere, to public fountains, private homes, baths, latrines, you name it.

Some of them are still in use today -- another mind-boggler -- and even the ones in ruins are beautiful additions to the landscape.

Here's (http://academic.bowdoin.edu/classics/research/moyer/html/intro.shtml) a nice overview of the architecture and most famous aqueducts (including the Aqua Marcia, which any of the First Man in Rome readers might recall as having been built by an ancestor of Gaius Julius Caesar the elder's wife Marcia).

Great thread, Sauron. And no, I'm not at all biased. :caesar:

[Corona688]

On a less architectural note, they also invented the hamburger. Or so the TV told me once, watching James Burke's "connections".

[Hugo Holbling]

Although historians of technology and architecture have often cited the so-called "concrete revolution" as an example of Roman innovation, this has been tempered in recent years by the realisation that the Pozzolana concrete (named after Puteoli) was a strictly local phenomenon, derived from volcanic sands in that area. It was rarely found or used elsewhere (the harbour at Caesarea being one of very few examples) and no diffusion of this technology took place, even within the Empire (due, of course, to this same locality). Moreover, it was no longer employed to construct larger vaults after the fall of the Empire and architecture did not involve concrete again until the late 1800s. For these reasons, it is generally accepted that concrete encouraged local innovation but was not a contribution to the world at large.

Aqueducts are better candidates, although derived in part from Etruscan techniques. The barrel arch, too, was not a Roman invention. What the Romans were able to do, however, was combine extant ideas in new ways, developing their potential. Even so, the most important thing to note is that Roman technologies were strongly influenced by social, economic and political factors, such that technological determinism here is untenable. In layman’s terms, that means that these technologies did not prevail or come into use solely because they worked or were better than the alternatives, but for political and ideological reasons, too.

[maddog]

Law. The jus civile (law of a particular place) and jus gentium (law of the peoples, or a kind of natural law concept, of things that are universal in all places). The codification of Roman law into the Corpus Juris Civilis at the end of the Roman empire left an extant code of laws that influenced many countries' legal systems. England is a common law jurisdiction, which relies a great deal on judge-made law. France, by contrast, is a code-law jurisdiction (Code Napoleon of 1804), drawn in influence from the Roman legal codes. Legislative enactment, and not court decisions, are the sole source of law.

Scotland had a long-lasting relationship with France (the "Auld Alliance"), inasmuch as England, a big bugaboo for both, lay precisely between them. So, from 12th C. or so, the civil law hop-scotched over England and into Scotland as well. Scots law has/had many interesting features, including three, rather than merely two, choices of verdict in criminal cases: "guilty," "not guilty" and "not proven." An interesting fictional example of a legal proceeding in Scotland is contained in Sir Walter Scott's "Heart of Midlothian."

A feature of civil or code-based systems is the "inquisitorial" as opposed to the "adversarial" method of proceeding, in which the judge has a much closer relationship to the public prosecutor (procurator fiscal). The magistrate oversees the investigation into crimes. In the United States (largely of common law heritage), the "adversarial" system holds the magistrate neutral, and operates on the theory that the battling parties will bring truth out into the open.

In the United States, Louisiana is the only civil law jurisdiction (owing to its French roots).
#475

[godfry n. glad]

Candles. :D


:fireworks:

[Sauron]

I'm not sure if this counts as a contribution or not, but I'm told that there is one engineering standard that survives to this day, whether using English or metric units.

Can anyone guess what it is? :)

[Clutch Munny]

Okay, but aside from concrete, the aqueduct, the hamburger, law and candles...


what have the Romans ever done for us?

[godfry n. glad]

Okay, but aside from concrete, the aqueduct, the hamburger, law and candles...


what have the Romans ever done for us?


Splitter!

[Adora]

Vatican rituals and dress.

[Sauron]

Vatican rituals and dress.

Rome gave us drag queens? :giggle:

Sorry; couldn't resist.

Hey liv - new smilie idea. How about doing a Ru Paul smilie?

[MonCapitan2002]

Me! Me! I'm next! Concrete is a great one, especially since it even hardened underwater for badass bridge building.

My personal favorite of Rome's contributions to the world is the aqueduct, including the engineering marvel that is the round arch. The notion of a miles of cross country bridges gradually sloping downwards so water could be delivered from mountain to city using only gravity just boggles the mind. At the peak, there were 9 aqueducts delivering 300 million gallons of water a day to the city of Rome. Once it got to the city, it was pumped (or flowed, if gravity was on its side) everywhere, to public fountains, private homes, baths, latrines, you name it.

Some of them are still in use today -- another mind-boggler -- and even the ones in ruins are beautiful additions to the landscape.

Here's (http://academic.bowdoin.edu/classics/research/moyer/html/intro.shtml) a nice overview of the architecture and most famous aqueducts (including the Aqua Marcia, which any of the First Man in Rome readers might recall as having been built by an ancestor of Gaius Julius Caesar the elder's wife Marcia).

Great thread, Sauron. And no, I'm not at all biased. :caesar:
That is a very impressive feat on the part of the Romans. To build an aqueduct that is still in use two millennia later is certainly an impressive achievement.

[HighOnHotSauce]

Can't help myself, from Monty Python's Life of Brian:
Reg: But apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Attendee: Brought peace?
Reg: Oh, peace - shut up!


Source:http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Life_of_Brian