Expert: Maria - 1/16/2010

Question
Rome’s most enduring accomplishments lay in the practical areas of law, language, and political life. How did Rome’s accomplishments influence other cultures? Did these influences last?  Can you explain this please?  I must accomplish a 1250 word paper on this subject and any references and/or information you can provide will help me greatly. Thanks in advance

Answer
Hello,

here‘s a synthesis of Rome’s most enduring accomplishments in the practical areas of law, language, political life, since some features of Roman culture have survived mostly in the field of jurisprudence, engineering, art, literature, language, architecture, road network and  city planning.

1)LAW (Jurisprudence).    
The Romans have been masters of Law for all peoples subjected to their rule and then for Western Europe and Western Civilization. In fact, Roman law was a complex body of laws from the Twelve Tables (ca. 449 BC), the basis of Roman Law that made public some basic rights, to the Corpus Juris Civilis (AD 529–34) ordered by Emperor Justinian I.
So, it is just from the  Roman law that originated the legal system applied still today in most of  Europe as well as, generally speaking, in Western Civilization, where the influence of Latin can be seen in a number of words and phrases such as 'ad hoc'(for this purpose), 'de facto' (In reality or fact), 'bona fide'(in good faith), 'inter alia'(among other things), 'alibi'(in or at another place),  which remain in current use in legal writing.

2)CIVIL  ENGINEERING, ARCHITECTURE and  ROAD NETWORK.
The Romans achieved unprecedented standards of hygiene with their plumbing, sewage disposal, dams, aqueducts and the famous thermal baths. Moreover Roman architecture was thoroughly planned and executed: see e.g. the Forum, the triumphal arches built to celebrate a victory in war or a ruler, theatres, amphitheatres like the  Flavian Amphitheatre, aka Colosseum, etc.
Shortly, the arch, the vault, the aqueducts or the urban development plans which often derive from the Roman military camps  with “cardo “ (a north-south-oriented street ) and “decumanus”( an east-west street that served as a secondary main street.) are still today the legacy of Rome in most European cities (see e.g. Paris in France, or Torino in northern Italy).
Also, the Romans planned and accomplished a great system of main and subsidiary roads that started from Rome and went to all the places of their Empire.
Such a road system, with over 50,000 miles of paved road radiating from the “miliarium aureum”  (golden milestone), a high stone at the Forum, indicating the distances between Rome and the larger cities in the Roman empire,  was originally built to facilitate the movement of troops and military supplies throughout the empire, and then to link economic centres so that it was used for trade, mail delivery,  the transport of goods and  pedestrian traffic.
Roman roads remained in use as core trunk roads for centuries not only e.g. in Italy, France, Germany, but also in England, after the Romans withdrew from Britain in 410 A.D.


3)LANGUAGE, LITERATURE and WRITING SYSTEM.  
The Romans spoke Latin, i.e. the language of Latium (today 'Lazio'), a region of Central Italy where Rome was founded in 753 BC, and later in the Roman Empire when Rome  grew from a small town  on the Tiber River into a vast empire that ultimately embraced England, all of continental Europe west of the Rhine and south of the Danube, Greece , most of Asia west of the Euphrates, northern Africa, Turkey, Mesopotamia and the islands of the Mediterranean sea.
Therefore Latin  was used throughout the empire as the language of law, administration and increasingly as the language of everyday life, so that it was not only the official language of this vast Empire  until its fall in 476 AD, but continued to be used not only as a “vehicular language” like English today, but also  as a literary language throughout western and central Europe, even after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and until the 15th century, when Latin began to lose its dominant position and  was largely replaced by written versions of the vernacular languages of Europe, many of which are descendants of Latin or have been heavily influenced by it. Over the centuries in fact  the spoken varieties of Latin continued to move away from the literary standard and eventually evolved into the modern Romance languages (Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian).
Anyway, Latin still lives on in  Ecclesiastical Latin, i.e. the language today used by the Catholic Church, though this Latin differs from the classical Latin spoken e.g. by Caesar, Seneca, Cicero, Livy.
Finally, Roman literature,  together with Greek literature, has been the foundation of civilization and  knowledge of Western European literature.
As for WRITING SYSTEM, the Latin alphabet has enjoyed an extraordinary success as a model of other alphabets. On it, in fact, are based the writing systems employed in a great part of modern world.


4)THE MILITARY AND POLITICAL STRENGHT, EXPANSIONISTIC POLICY and STATECRAFT.
The Romans  were a warlike nation, possessed a powerful army and conquered many territories.
In fact, during the later Republic and most of Empire Rome was the dominant power in the entire Mediterranean basin, most of Western Europe and large areas of northern Africa, as the Roman Empire comprised many countries from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea and the Black Sea, i.e. modern England, Scotland, Portugal, Spain, France, Western Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Hungary, Austria, Italy, former Yugoslavia, Romania, Albania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Armenia, Syria, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Northern Africa from Morocco  to Egypt.

To sum up, the Roman Empire was distinguished not only for its outstanding army, the foundation upon which the whole empire rested, but also for its accomplishments in intellectual endeavours, as the Romans were gifted not only in the applied arts of law, government, city planning, and statecraft, but also in a great ability in taking  the best features out of every people they were ruling: for instance, they took culture from the Greeks and provided a stable framework of government for many peoples with widely different customs.

This attitude led to a lack of violent rebellions against the Romans, which explains why their empire could last so long. In fact rebellions only happened towards the end of the empire, when the central power had become very weak, so that the so-called Barbarians were able to stage successful rebellions against the Roman rulers as the enormous extension of the Empire caused internal difficulties and then  the Roman Legions could not defend the borders effectively against invading barbarians and  communication with officials and legions to control the empire had become quite impossible, due to the enormous distances.

Hope this can be helpful to you.
Best regards,
Maria