Rome and the Roots of Rome and the Roots of Western CivilizationWestern Civilization

Objectives

• Know and understand the contributions Rome made to Western culture.

• Artistic

• Legal

• Architectural

• Language

• Technology/engineering

Classical civilization

• Greco-Roman culture or the mix of Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman influences.

• Bear in mind that the Roman Empire spanned a wide expanse of territory and incorporated a number of cultures. Just as Roman culture influences them, they influence Rome and a whole new mix comes out.

Fine arts

• Greek sculpture emphasized the ideal human form. Roman sculpture presented more realistic representations of people. The Romans were practically-minded, after all.

From this…From this… to this.to this.

• Bas-relief

• Type of sculpture with figures that project from a flat background. Often used to tell stories.

Trajan’s Column

Bas-relief of a play

Notice how the bas-relief spirals around the column all the way to the top.

• Can see close up pictures here, here, or here.

• Mosaics

• Very intricate and made by many small tiles.

Close-up of a mosaic.

• Painting

• Doesn’t survive as well, but we have many fine examples from Pompeii.

PompeiiPompeii

August 24, August 24, AD 79AD 79

From a barFrom a bar

GraffitiGraffiti

• Literature

• Virgil wrote the Aeneid, an epic about the mythical Trojan hero Aeneas who travels to Italy after the Trojan War and becomes an ancestor of the Romans.

• Was a nationalistic work and a love note to Roman virtues.

• Written between 29-19 BC, a time of transition from the republic to the empire. Meant to reunite Romans under “Roman-ness” after the civil wars.

• History

• Livy, Plutarch, and Tacitus wrote histories of Rome. Tacitus was more accurate than past historians, mainly because he was trying to write history. Still somewhat biased – like even modern historians.

What Rome gave us

• Language

• The Latin language was predominant in the western Empire and became the basis for the Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, and French languages – the Romance languages.

• Started off as just bad Latin, but then established themselves as separate languages.

• Influenced other languages as well, at least insofar as the words they use.

• English, for example, doesn’t really have Latin syntax grammar, but has many Latin words.

• Part of this is because Latin was the language of the Roman Catholic Church and of academics. Naturally, it influenced non-Romance languages.

• Architecture

• Many important buildings, like government buildings, use neo-Classical architecture. Like say, the U.S. Capitol Building.

The columns, the dome, the arches.

• The Romans were also big on the arch.

• As we’ve previously discussed, it’s an extremely efficient weight-bearing structure.

• You see them a lot in their aqueducts, for example.

• The aqueducts were used to supply Rome with water and were engineering marvels.

• Eleven of them were built over 500 years, ran for 260 miles, and had gradients of just 1/2000. That means that for every 2,000 meters in length, they lowered in elevation just 1 meter. That’s about a yard every 1.25 miles. In some cases less – one aqueduct descends only 17 meters over 31 miles. This gradient used gravity to keep the water flowing.

• Most of them ran underground. Only 29 mile were above ground and required those amazing spans.

• They supplied Rome with nearly 300 million gallons of water a day. That’s for a population of just 1 million. That makes for about 300 gallons of water per day per person.

• This is more than what most water systems provide today.

• There were over documented aqueducts that supplied water to Rome and other Roman cities throughout the empire. Some of them are still in use today.

Maps of aqueducts going into Rome.

• Pantheon The PantheonThe Pantheon

• The roads and road system were also engineering marvels, but we’ve already talked about them.

• Law

• Big contribution, mainly the rights of individuals.

• Rights under the law.

• Innocent until proven guilty.

• Burden of proof on accuser.

• Punishment for actions.

• The legal system also became basis of most Western countries’ legal systems.

• England, the U.S., and other Anglosphere countries, while heavily influenced by the Roman system and its reliance on rights, operate by common law.