Legacy of the Roman Empire


The legacy of the Roman Empire has been varied and significant, comparable to that of other hegemonic polities of world history.
The Roman Empire itself, built upon the legacy of other cultures such as Ancient Greece, has had long-lasting influence with broad geographical reach on a great range of cultural aspects, including state institutions, law, cultural values, religious beliefs, technological advances, engineering and language.
This legacy survived the demise of the empire itself and went on to shape other civilisations, a process which continues to this day. The city of Rome was the civitas and connected with the actual western civilisation on which subsequent cultures built.
One main legacy is the Latin language of ancient Rome, epitomized by the Classical Latin used in Latin literature, evolved during the Middle Ages and remains in use in the Roman Catholic Church as Ecclesiastical Latin. Vulgar Latin, the common tongue used for regular social interactions, evolved simultaneously into the various Romance languages that exist today. Although the Western Roman Empire fell in the 5th century AD, the Eastern Roman Empire continued until its conquest by the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century AD and cemented the Greek language in many parts of the Eastern Mediterranean even after the Early Muslim conquests of the 7th century AD. Although there has been a small modern revival of the Hellenistic religion with Hellenism, ancient Roman paganism was largely displaced by Roman Catholic Christianity after the 4th century AD and the Christian conversion of Roman emperor Constantine I. The Christian faith of the late Roman Empire continued to evolve during the Middle Ages and remains a major facet of the religion and the psyche of the modern Western world.
Ancient Roman architecture, largely indebted to ancient Greek architecture of the Hellenistic period, has influenced the architecture of the Western world, particularly during the Italian Renaissance of the 15th century. Roman law and republican politics have left an enduring legacy, influencing the Italian city-state republics of the Medieval period as well as the early United States and other modern democratic republics. The Julian calendar of ancient Rome formed the basis of the standard modern Gregorian calendar, while Roman inventions and engineering, such as the construction of concrete domes, continued to influence various peoples after the fall of Rome. Roman models of colonialism and of warfare also became influential.

Language

became the lingua franca of the early Roman Empire and later of the Western Roman Empire, while - particularly in the Eastern Roman Empire - indigenous languages such as Greek and to a lesser degree Egyptian and Aramaic language continued in use. Despite the decline of the Western Roman Empire, the Latin language continued to flourish in the very different social and economic environment of the Middle Ages, not least because it became the official language of the Roman Catholic Church. Koine Greek, which served as a lingua franca in the Eastern Empire, remains in use today as a sacred language in some Eastern Orthodox churches.
In Western and Central Europe and in parts of northern Africa, Latin retained its elevated status as the main vehicle of communication for the learned classes throughout the Middle Ages and subsequently; witness especially the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Books which had a revolutionary impact on science, such as Nicolaus Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, were composed in Latin. This language was not supplanted for scientific purposes until the 18th century, and for formal descriptions in zoology, as well as botany - it survived to the later 20th century. The modern international binomial nomenclature holds to this day: taxonomists assign a Latin or Latinized name as the scientific name of each species.
In the 21st century the Romance languages, which comprise all languages that descended from Latin, are spoken by more than 920 million people as their mother tongue, and by 300 million people as a second language, mainly in the Americas, Europe, and Africa. Romance languages are either official, co-official, or significantly used in 72 countries around the world. Of the United Nations' six official languages, two descend from Latin.
Additionally, Latin has had a great influence on both the grammar and the lexicon of West Germanic languages. Romance words make respectively 59%, 20% and 14% of English, German and Dutch vocabularies. Those figures can rise dramatically when only non-compound and non-derived words are included. Accordingly, Romance words make roughly 35% of the vocabulary of Dutch. Of all the loanwords in Dutch, 32.2% come directly from some form of Latin.

Script

All three official scripts of the modern European Union— Latin, Greek and Cyrillic—descend from writing systems used in the Roman Empire. Today, the Latin script, the Latin alphabet spread by the Roman Empire to most of Europe, and derived from the Phoenician alphabet through an ancient form of the Greek alphabet adopted and modified by Etruscan, is the most widespread and commonly used script in the world. Spread by various colonies, trade routes, and political powers, the script has continued to grow in influence. The Greek alphabet, which had spread throughout the eastern Mediterranean region during the Hellenistic period, remained the primary script of the Eastern Roman Empire through the Byzantine Empire until its demise in the 15th century. Cyrillic scripts largely derive from the Greek.

Latin literature

The Carolingian Renaissance of the 8th century rescued many works in Latin from oblivion: manuscripts transcribed at that time are our only sources for some works that later fell into obscurity once more, only to be recovered during the Renaissance: Tacitus, Lucretius, Propertius and Catullus furnish examples.
Other Latin writers never went out of circulation: Virgil, reinterpreted as a prophet of Christianity by the 4th century, gained the reputation of a sorcerer in the 12th century.
Cicero, in a limited number of his works, remained a model of good style, mined for quotations. Medieval Christians read Ovid allegorically, or re-imagined Seneca as the correspondent of Saint Paul. Lucan, Persius, Juvenal, Horace, Terence, and Statius survived in the continuing canon and the historians Valerius Maximus and Livy continued to be read for the moral lessons history was expected to impart.
Through the Roman Empire, Greek literature also continued to make an impact in Europe long after the Empire's fall, especially after the recovery of Greek texts from the East during the high Middle Ages and the resurgence of Greek literacy during the Renaissance. Many educated Westerners from the Renaissance up to the 20th century, for instance, read Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, originally written in Greek. Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar takes most of its material from Plutarch's biographies of Caesar, Cato, and Brutus, whose exploits were frequently discussed and debated by the literati of Shakespeare's time.

Education

developed the system of the seven liberal arts that structured medieval education. Although the liberal arts were already known in Ancient Greece, it was only after Martianus that the seven liberal arts took on canonical form.
His single encyclopedic work, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii "On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury", laid the standard formula of academic learning from the Christianized Roman Empire of the 5th century until the Renaissance of the 12th century.
The seven liberal arts were formed by the trivium, which included the skills of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, while arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy played part as the quadrivium.

Calendar and measurement

The modern Western calendar is a refinement of the Julian calendar, which was introduced by Julius Caesar. The calendar of the Roman Empire began with the months Ianuarius, Februarius, and Martius. The common tradition to begin the year on 1 January was a convention established in ancient Rome. Throughout the medieval period, the year began on 25 March, the Catholic Solemnity of the Annunciation.
Roman monk of the 5th-century, Dionysius Exiguus, devised the modern dating system of the Anno Domini era, which is based on the reckoned year of the birth of Jesus, with AD counting years from the start of this epoch, and BC denoting years before the start of the era.
The modern seven-day week follows the Greco-Roman system of planetary hours, in which one of the seven heavenly bodies of the Solar System that were known in ancient times—Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury and the Moon—is given "rulership" over each day. The Romance languages preserve the original Latin names of each day of the week, except for Sunday, which came to be called dies dominicus under Christianity.
This system for the days of the week spread to Celtic and Germanic peoples, as well as the Albanians, before the collapse of the empire, after which the names of comparable gods were substituted for the Roman deities in some languages. In Germanic languages, for instance, Thor stood in for Jupiter, yielding "Thursday" from the Latin '' were assigned to Thursday and Friday respectively.
DaySunday
Sōl 		Monday
Luna 		Tuesday
Mars 		Wednesday
Mercurius 		Thursday
Iuppiter 		Friday
Venus 		Saturday
Saturnus
Latin:la:Dies Solis:la:Dies Lunae:la:Dies Martis:la:Dies Mercurii:la:Dies Iovis:la:Dies Veneris:la:Dies Saturni
Italian:it:Domenica:it:Lunedì:it:Martedì:it:Mercoledì:it:Giovedì:it:Venerdì:it:Sabato
French:fr:Dimanche:fr:Lundi:fr:Mardi:fr:Mercredi:fr:Jeudi:fr:Vendredi:fr:Samedi
Spanish:es:Domingo:es:Lunes:es:Martes:es:Miércoles:es:Jueves:es:Viernes:es:Sábado
Catalan:ca:diumenge:ca:dilluns:ca:dimarts:ca:dimecres:ca:dijous:ca:divendres:ca:dissabte
Romanian:ro:Duminică:ro:Luni:ro:Marți:ro:Miercuri:ro:Joi:ro:Vineri:ro:Sâmbătă
Albanian:sq:e dielë
:sq:e hënë
:sq:e martë:sq:e mërkurë:sq:e enjte:sq:e premte:sq:e shtunë
Irish:ga:An Domhnach
:ga:Domhnach		:ga:An Luan
:ga:Luan		:ga:An Mháirt
:ga:Máirt		:ga:An Chéadaoin
:ga:Céadaoin		:ga:Déardaoin
:ga:Déardaoin		:ga:An Aoine
:ga:Aoine		:ga:An Satharn
:ga:Satharn
Welsh:cy:Dydd Sul:cy:Dydd Llun:cy:Dydd Mawrth:cy:Dydd Mercher:cy:Dydd Iau:cy:Dydd Gwener:cy:Dydd Sadwrn
Breton:br:Sul :br:Lun :br:Meurzh :br:Merc'her :br:Yaou :br:Gwener :br:Sadorn
Old EnglishSunnandægMōnandægTīwesdægWōdnesdægÞunresdægFrīgedægSæternesdæg
German:de:Sonntag:de:Montag:de:Dienstag, :de:Ziestag :de:Mittwoch :de:Donnerstag:de:Freitag:de:Sonnabend, :de:Samstag
Dutch:nl:Zondag:nl:Maandag:nl:Dinsdag:nl:Woensdag:nl:Donderdag:nl:Vrijdag:nl:Zaterdag
Icelandic:is:Sunnudagur:is:Mánudagur:is:Þriðjudagur:is:Miðvikudagur:is:Fimmtudagur:is:Föstudagur:is:Laugardagur
Norwegian Nynorsk:nn:Sundag:nn:Måndag:nn:Tysdag:nn:Onsdag:nn:Torsdag:nn:Fredag:nn:Laurdag
Danish:da:Søndag:da:Mandag:da:Tirsdag:da:Onsdag:da:Torsdag:da:Fredag:da:Lørdag
Swedish:sv:Söndag:sv:Måndag:sv:Tisdag:sv:Onsdag:sv:Torsdag:sv:Fredag:sv:Lördag

Hours of the day

The 12-hour clock is a time convention popularized by the Romans in which the 24 hours of the day are divided into two periods. The Romans divided the day into 12 equal hours, A.M. and P.M.. The Romans also started the practice used worldwide today of a new day beginning at midnight.

Numerals and units

Roman numerals continued as the primary way of writing numbers in Europe until the 14th century, when they were largely replaced in common usage by Hindu-Arabic numerals. The Roman numeral system continues to be widely used, however, in certain formal and minor contexts, such as on clock faces, coins, in the year of construction on cornerstone inscriptions, and in generational suffixes. According to the Royal Spanish Academy, in the Spanish language centuries must be written in Roman numerals, so "21st century" should be written as "Siglo XXI".
The Romans solidified the modern concept of the hour as one-24th part of a day and night. The English measurement system also retains features of the Ancient Roman foot, which was used in England prior to the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain. The inch itself derives from the Roman wiktionary:uncia, meaning one-twelfth part.

Three-age systems

Although the present archaeological system of the three main ages—stone, bronze and iron—originates with the Danish archaeologist Christian Jürgensen Thomsen, the concept of dividing pre-historical ages into systems based on metals extends to Ancient Rome, originated by the Roman Lucretius in the first century BC.

Religion

While classical Roman and Hellenistic religion were ultimately superseded by Christianity, many key theological ideas and questions that are characteristic of Western religions originated with pre-Christian theology. The first cause argument for the existence of God, for instance, originates with Plato. Design arguments, which were introduced by Socrates and Aristotle and remain widely discussed to this day, formed an influential component of Stoic theology well into the late Roman period. The problem of evil was widely discussed among ancient philosophers, including the Roman writers such as Cicero and Seneca, and many of the answers they provided were later absorbed into Christian theodicy. In Christian moral theology, moreover, the field of natural law ethics draws heavily on the tradition established by Aristotle, the Stoics, and especially by Cicero's popular Latin work, De Legibus. Cicero's conception of natural law "found its way to later centuries notably through the writings of Saint Isidore of Seville and the Decretum of Gratian" and influenced the discussion of the topic up through the era of the American Revolution.
Christianity itself also spread through the Roman Empire; since emperor Theodosius I, the official state church of the Roman Empire was Christianity. Subsequently, former Roman territories became Christian states which exported their religion to other parts of the world, through colonization and missionaries.
Christianity also served as a conduit for preserving and transmitting Greco-Roman literary culture. Classical educational tradition in the liberal arts was preserved after the fall of the empire by the medieval Christian university. Education in the Middle Ages relied heavily on Greco-Roman books such as Euclid's Elements and the influential quadrivium textbooks written in Latin by the Roman statesman Boethius.
Major works of Greek and Latin literature, moreover, were both read and written by Christians during the imperial era. Many of the most influential works of the early Christian tradition were written by Roman and Hellenized theologians who engaged heavily with the literary culture of the empire. St. Augustine's City of God, for instance, draws extensively on Virgil, Cicero, Varro, Homer, Plato, and elements of Roman values and identity to criticize paganism and advocate for Christianity amidst a crumbling empire. The engagement of early Christians as both readers and writers of important Roman and Greek literature helped to ensure that the literary culture of Rome would persist after the fall of the empire. For thousands of years to follow, religious scholars in the Latin West from Bede to Thomas Aquinas and later renaissance figures such as Dante, Montaigne and Shakespeare would continue to read, reference and imitate both Christian and pagan literature from the Roman Empire. In the east, the empire's prolific tradition of Greek literature continued uninterrupted after the fall of the west, in part due to the works of the Greek fathers, who were widely read by Christians in medieval Byzantium and continue to influence religious thought to this day.

Science and philosophy

While much of the most influential Greek science and philosophy was developed before the rise of the Empire, major innovations occurred under Roman rule that have had a lasting impact on the intellectual world. The traditions of Greek, Egyptian and Babylonian scholarship continued to flourish at great centers of learning such as Athens, Alexandria, and Pergamon.
Epicurean philosophy reached a literary apex in the long poem by Lucretius, who advocated an atomic theory of matter and revered the older teachings of the Greek Democritus. The works of the philosophers Seneca the Younger, Epictetus and the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius were widely read during the revival of Stoic thought in the Renaissance, which synthesized Stoicism and Christianity. Fighter pilot James Stockdale famously credited the philosophy of Epictetus as being a major source of strength when he was shot down and held as prisoner during the Vietnam War. Plato's philosophy continued to be widely studied under the Empire, growing into the sophisticated neoplatonic system through the influence of Plotinus. Platonic philosophy was largely reconciled with Christianity by the Roman theologian Augustine of Hippo, who, while a staunch opponent of Roman paganism, viewed the Platonists as having more in common with Christians than the other pagan schools. To this day, Plato's Republic is considered the foundational work of Western philosophy, and is read by students around the globe.
The widespread Lorem ipsum text, which is widely used as a meaningless placeholder in modern typography and graphic design, is derived from the Latin text of Cicero's philosophical treatise De finibus.
Pagan philosophy was gradually supplanted by Christianity in the later years of the Empire, culminating in the closure of the Academy of Athens by Justinian I. Many Greek-speaking philosophers moved to the east, outside the borders of the Empire. Neoplatonism and Aristotelianism gained a stronghold in Persia, where they were a heavy influence on early Islamic philosophy. Thinkers of the Islamic Golden Age such as Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd engaged deeply with Greek philosophy, and played a major role in saving works of Aristotle that had been lost to the Latin West. The influence of Greek philosophy on Islam was dramatically reduced In the 11th century when the views of Avicenna and Avveroes were strongly criticized by Al-Ghazali. His Incoherence of the Philosophers is among the most influential books in Islamic history. In Western Europe, meanwhile, the recovery of Greek texts during the Scholastic period had a profound influence on Latin science and theology from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance.
In science, the theories of the Greco-Roman physician Galen dominated Western medical thought and practice for more than 1,300 years. Ptolemy produced the most thorough and sophisticated astronomical theory of antiquity, documented in the Almagest. The Ptolemaic model of the solar system would remain the dominant approach to astronomy across Europe and the Middle East for more than a thousand years. Forty eight of the 88 constellations the IAU recognizes today were recorded in the seventh and eighth books of Claudius Ptolemy's Almagest.
At Alexandria, the engineer and experimentalist Hero of Alexandria founded the study of mechanics and pneumatics. In modern geometry, Heron's formula bears his name. Roman Alexandria also saw the seeds of modern algebra arise in the works of Diophantus. Greek algebra continued to be studied in the east well after the fall of the Western Empire, where it matured into modern algebra in the hands of al-Khwārizmī. The study of Diophantine Equations and Diophantine Approximations are still important areas of mathematical research today.
All of the planets in the Solar System, excluding Earth and Uranus, are named after Roman deities.

Roman law and politics

Although the law of the Roman Empire is not used today, modern law in many jurisdictions is based on principles of law used and developed during the Roman Empire. Some of the same Latin terminology is still used today. The general structure of jurisprudence used today, in many jurisdictions, is the same as that established during the Roman Empire.
The modern concept of republican government is directly modeled on the Roman Republic. The republican institutions of Rome survived in many of the Italian city-states of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The United States Congress is inspired by the Roman senate and legislative assemblies, while the president holds a position similar to that of a Roman consul. Many European political thinkers of the Enlightenment were avid consumers of Latin literature. Montesquieu, Edmund Burke, and John Adams were all strongly influenced by Cicero, for instance. Adams recommended Cicero as a model for politicians to imitate, and once remarked that "the sweetness and grandeur of his sounds, and the harmony of his numbers give pleasure enough to reward the reading if one understood none of his meaning."

Inventions

Many Roman inventions were improved versions of other people's inventions and ranged from military organization, weapon improvements, armour, siege technology, naval innovation, architecture, medical instruments, irrigation, civil planning, construction, agriculture and many more areas of civic, governmental, military and engineering development.
That said, the Romans also developed a huge array of new technologies and innovations. Many came from common themes but were vastly superior to what had come before, whilst others were totally new inventions developed by and for the needs of Empire and the Roman way of life.
Some of the more famous examples are the Roman aqueducts, Roman roads, water powered milling machines, thermal heating systems sewage and pipe systems and the invention and widespread use of concrete.
Metallurgy and glass work and a wealth of architectural innovations including high rise buildings, dome construction, bridgeworks and floor construction are other examples of Roman innovation and genius.
Military inventiveness was widespread and ranged from tactical/strategic innovations, new methodologies in training, discipline and field medicine as well as inventions in all aspects of weaponry, from armor and shielding to siege engines and missile technology.
This combination of new methodologies, technical innovation, and creative invention in the military gave Rome the edge against its adversaries for half a millennium, and with it, the ability to create an empire that even today, more than 2000 years later, continues to leave its legacy in many areas of modern life.

Colonies and roads

Rome left a legacy of founding many cities as Colonia. There were more than 500 Roman colonies spread through the Empire, most of them populated by veterans of the Roman legions. Some Roman colonies rose to become influential commercial and trade centers, transportation hubs and capitals of international empires, like Constantinople, London, Paris and Vienna.
All those colonies were connected by another important legacy of the Roman Empire: the Roman roads. Indeed, the empire comprised more than of roads, of which over were stone-paved. The courses of many Roman roads survived for millennia and many are overlaid by modern roads, like the Via Emilia in northern Italy. The roads are closely linked to modern-day economies, with those that survived from the empire's territorial peak in 117CE having more economic activity today. This is especially true in European areas, which kept wheeled vehicles in the latter half of the first millennium, whereas other regions preferred cheaper methods of transport such as camel caravans.

Architecture

In the mid-18th century, Roman architecture inspired neoclassical architecture. Neoclassicism was an international movement. Though neoclassical architecture employs the same classical vocabulary as late Baroque architecture, it tends to emphasize its planar qualities, rather than sculptural volumes. Projections and recessions and their effects of light, and shade are flatters; sculptural bas-reliefs are flatter and tend to be enframed in friezes, tablets or panels. Its clearly articulated individual features are isolated rather than interpenetrating, autonomous and complete in themselves.
International neoclassical architecture was exemplified in Karl Friedrich Schinkel's buildings, especially the Old Museum in Berlin, Sir John Soane's Bank of England in London and the newly built White House and Capitol in Washington, DC in the United States. The Scots architect Charles Cameron created palatial Italianate interiors for the German-born Catherine II the Great in St. Petersburg.
Italy clung to Rococo until the Napoleonic regimes brought the new archaeological classicism, which was embraced as a political statement by young, progressive, urban Italians with republican leanings.

Imperial idea

From a legal point of view the Roman Empire, founded by Augustus in 27 BC and divided into two "parts" after the death of Theodosius I in 395, had survived only in the eastern part which, with the deposition of the last western emperor Romulus Augustulus, in 476, had also obtained the imperial regalia of the western part reuniting from a formal point of view the Roman Empire.
The Roman line continued uninterrupted to rule the Eastern Roman Empire, whose main characteristics were Roman concept of state, medieval Greek culture and language, and Orthodox Christian faith. The Byzantines themselves never ceased to refer to themselves as "Romans" and to their state as the "Roman Empire", the "Empire of the Romans" or "Romania". Likewise, they were called "Rûm" by their eastern enemies to the point that competing neighbours even acquired its name, such as the Sultanate of Rûm.
, with an imperial pennant of the Habsburgs suggesting that as Holy Roman Emperors they are the political descendants of the ancient Roman emperors
The designation of the Empire as "Byzantine" is a retrospective idea: it began only in 1557, a century after the fall of Constantinople, when German historian Hieronymus Wolf published his work Corpus Historiæ Byzantinæ, a collection of Byzantine sources. The term did not come in general use in the Western world before the 19th century, when modern Greece was born. The end of the continuous tradition of the Roman Empire is open to debate: the final point was the capture of Constantinople in 1453 AD, while some place it at the sack of Constantinople by the crusaders in 1204.
After the fall of Constantinople, Thomas Palaiologos, brother of the last Eastern Roman Emperor, Constantine XI, was elected emperor and tried to organize the remaining forces. His rule came to an end after the fall of the last major Byzantine city, Corinth. He then moved to Italy and continued to be recognized as Eastern emperor by the Christian powers.
His son Andreas Palaiologos continued claims on the Byzantine throne until he sold the title to Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile before his death in 1502. However, there is no evidence that any Spanish monarch used the Byzantine imperial titles, which would have symbolically converted the king of Spain into a legitimate Emperor of Rome.
In Western Europe, the Roman concept of state was continued for almost a millennium by the Holy Roman Empire whose emperors, mostly of German tongue, viewed themselves as the legitimate successors to the ancient imperial tradition and Rome as the capital of its Empire. The German title of "Kaiser" is derived from the Latin name Caesar, which is pronounced in Classical Latin.
The coronation of Charlemagne as "Roman" emperor by Pope Leo III in the year 800 was a deprived act of legitimate juridical profile: only the Roman emperor of the East would be crowned a peer of him in the western part, which is why Constantinople was always suspicious of that act.
The emperors of the Holy Roman Empire sought in many ways to make themselves accepted by the Byzantines as their peers: with diplomatic relations, political marriages or threats. Sometimes, however, they did not obtain the expected results, because from Constantinople they were always called "King of the Germans", never "Emperor." The Holy Roman Empire was dissolved in 1806 owing to pressure by Napoleon I.
In Eastern Europe, firstly the Bulgarian, then the Serbian and ultimately the Russian czars proclaimed being Emperors. In Moscow in Russia adopted the idea of being a Third Rome. Sentiments of being the heir of the fallen Eastern Roman Empire began during the reign of Ivan III, Grand Duke of Moscow who had married Sophia Paleologue, the niece of Constantine XI. Being the most powerful Orthodox Christian state, the Tsars were thought of in Russia as succeeding the Eastern Roman Empire as the rightful rulers of the Orthodox Christian world. There were also competing Bulgarian, Wallachian and Ottoman claims for legal succession of the Roman Empire, Mehmet II "the Conqueror" claiming the title Kayser-i Rûm, meaning Caesar of Rome.
In the early 20th century, the Italian fascists under their "Duce" Benito Mussolini dreamed of a new Roman Empire as an Italian one, encompassing the Mediterranean basin. Associated with Italian fascism also Nazi Germany and Francoist Spain connected their claims with Roman imperialism.