This is strictly about linguistic similarity and not genetic similarity.
On a genetic map, a PCA plot, Romans and Romanians simply don't overlap. Romanians cluster with their Balkan neighbors, (1) on account of massive Slavic migration from around the 7th century AD, and (2) on account of strong historical and genetic evidence to suggest that the Roman colonists sent to Dacia were largely recruited from neighboring Balkan provinces (like Moesia and Pannonia), rather than from the city of Rome.
Genetically, the nearest populations to Ancient Romans are Cypriots and certain other Mediterranean types, including Anatolians. But it's not neat; there's no clear unambiguous descent. A lot can happen in >1000 years!
Just wait for Hollywood to create a film about Roman mythology and not cast a single Roman!
But less tongue-in-cheek, the other thing is that the legacy of the Romans is pretty much all around us. The Roman Calendar (with July and August both referencing a Roman leader), the Latin alphabet (with the additional letters like 'y' being added later on to support Greek), the roads we can travel, etc.
It's not only July and August; January, May, June, and Mars, are named after Roman gods; February and April after Roman rituals; and September to December after Roman numerals (7 to 10th month, as they were when the calendar first started).
This brings to mind the wonderful Econtalk episode about Bruno Leoni [0]. The beginning of the podcast describes his untimely passing, which almost seems a Cohen brothers movie plot.
So, we pore over Supreme Court cases on the First Amendment, for example, to
try to interpret what tests we will use to determine whether something is
going to be unconstitutional law. Leoni didn't want that. He argued that--and
again, he was proud of the Roman law contribution. He said that the Roman
jurist was a sort of scientist: that the object of his research was a
solution to cases that citizens submitted to him for study. So, an
industrialist or a scientist might look to a physicist to engineer a
technical problem. So, private Roman law was something to be described or
discovered, not something to be enacted. So, over time, these principles
emerge.
My grandfather was a smith in deep rural Spain. He made and fixed many roman ploughs, well into the 70s. They were called that because they were pretty much the same tool the Romans used.
I bought a torrone (Italian nougat dessert) in local Auchan (French supermarket chain) today and while briefly researching the dessert history found out that it was popular in Ancient Rome named as cupedia and in some Southern parts of Italy it still called as cupeta.
Just imagine to make recipe so good that it not just transferred across generations through 2000 years, but also evolved to come in supermarket in Russia.
As an American with mostly Western European ancestors (according to a popular DNA testing site), I've always considered Romans as some distant/tangentially related group.
It was surprising to find out that I have "ancient" DNA matches with a couple of Roman and Etruscan individuals.
No mention of the Romansch, that's quite disappointing. But learning more about Romania and Romanian culture still made for a wonderful read, kudos to the author.
REG: "All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?"
To me, what would suck the most is living in a place after the Romans where you can see signs of their civilization but you're living a rural peasant life.
In many ways, that's how a lot of people feel in modern Britain: everywhere you see signs of XIX century grandeur, but "on the streets" life can feel depressingly backwards.
Brewing alcohol was known to hunter-gatherers.
Irrigation, sanitation and water-systems were invented in Mesopotamia (as were cities).
Medicine/education, that's the Greeks.
> Irrigation, sanitation and water-systems were invented in Mesopotamia (as were cities)
This is sort of like saying computers were invented in Mesopotamia because they did math.
Roman water and earth-moving civil engineering was absolutely cutting edge to the degree that the projects they undertook would have been unfathomable to their Bronze-Age predecessors.
Don't glorify Rome too much. It was a slavery based society that progressed sciences, technology and civilization little from what they inherited from the Mesopotamian's/Greeks. Heck written Latin didn't even have punctuation marks, not even spaces. That's because it was only used by slave scribes. The nobility that could write, did so in Greek.
- Go stand in the Hagia Sophia and tell me the Romans did little to improve architecture and engineering.
- I won't defend the Roman record on slavery, but I will point out that the Greeks (particularly the Spartans) were slave societies too.
- The Greeks were significantly more xenophobic and sexist than the Romans. If you washed up on the shores of ancient Greece, you could never have become a citizen. The Romans were far more tolerant and inclusive.
- Putting spaces between words was a medieval innovation. The Greeks wrote in much the same way as the Romans, and that was thanks to the Phoenicians!
- Romans revered Greek culture because their city started in a period when Greek colonies were spreading Greek influence throughout the Mediterranean and, specifically, in Italy itself. Greece was to Rome as Rome was to medieval Europeans: A colonizer.
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No ancient society smells of roses if you look close enough. However, it's also rare to find ancient societies that expanded and persisted for centuries without being innovative and progressive. The Romans were both awful and great, much like the Greeks, Akkadians, Babylonians, Sumerians, etc. before them.
Sparta is quite possibly the pinnacle of horribleness for civilization, which is why I think they emphasized that it particularly was a slave society (80%+ slaves and a majority of the remainder were non-citizens).
It was one of the most influential civilization in all of recorded history. It's not about glorifying it, or justifying it. I think that a lot of people see it much more "civilized" than many others, before and during it. And perhaps after it too.
>Don't glorify Rome too much. It was a slavery based society that progressed sciences, technology and civilization little from what they inherited from the Mesopotamian's/Greeks.
It progressed civic life, institutions, law, infrastructure, and other things, a lot. Modern law is a heavy percentage ancient roman law in basis.
Slavery-based society doesn't say much for 2 millenia ago. Most where. The US had slavery until less than 2 centuries, and Jim Crow and other such things until less than a century. And still has things like forced prison labor, so let's cut the Romans some fucking slack.
Slavery was legal in most society's 2 millennia ago but most society's were not built to be depended on slavery the way it was in Sparta, Rome and the American South.
It’s ironic that the civilizations that directly contributed to us sitting here believing in egalitarian democracy, get far more hate for it than the ones that never evolved into egalitarian democracy at all. We are standing on the shoulders of giants and some people can’t see it.
As opposed to the Greeks, Parthians, Ptolemaic Egypt and Judea?
Unless you mean "fully dependent on slave labour" - then I guess we can mention Sparta and Athens.
> that progressed sciences, technology and civilization little from what they inherited from the Mesopotamian's/Greeks
What does "little" mean in this context? This is a very fuzzy concept but this doesn't sound right.
Sparta is known for little other than their military prowess, which was a necessity for managing their much larger slave population.
Athens had a rather strange system of slavery. The majority of slaves, owned by State, earned wages and worked and lived unattended. It was much more similar to indentured-servitude.
On a genetic map, a PCA plot, Romans and Romanians simply don't overlap. Romanians cluster with their Balkan neighbors, (1) on account of massive Slavic migration from around the 7th century AD, and (2) on account of strong historical and genetic evidence to suggest that the Roman colonists sent to Dacia were largely recruited from neighboring Balkan provinces (like Moesia and Pannonia), rather than from the city of Rome.
Genetically, the nearest populations to Ancient Romans are Cypriots and certain other Mediterranean types, including Anatolians. But it's not neat; there's no clear unambiguous descent. A lot can happen in >1000 years!
But less tongue-in-cheek, the other thing is that the legacy of the Romans is pretty much all around us. The Roman Calendar (with July and August both referencing a Roman leader), the Latin alphabet (with the additional letters like 'y' being added later on to support Greek), the roads we can travel, etc.
Just imagine to make recipe so good that it not just transferred across generations through 2000 years, but also evolved to come in supermarket in Russia.
It was surprising to find out that I have "ancient" DNA matches with a couple of Roman and Etruscan individuals.
Small world!
To me, what would suck the most is living in a place after the Romans where you can see signs of their civilization but you're living a rural peasant life.
Egyptians, Shirley?
(Although they're such abstract concepts, I'm sure everyone had them to some degree).
This is sort of like saying computers were invented in Mesopotamia because they did math.
Roman water and earth-moving civil engineering was absolutely cutting edge to the degree that the projects they undertook would have been unfathomable to their Bronze-Age predecessors.
There's some other ways they've left a mark on you.
- I won't defend the Roman record on slavery, but I will point out that the Greeks (particularly the Spartans) were slave societies too.
- The Greeks were significantly more xenophobic and sexist than the Romans. If you washed up on the shores of ancient Greece, you could never have become a citizen. The Romans were far more tolerant and inclusive.
- Putting spaces between words was a medieval innovation. The Greeks wrote in much the same way as the Romans, and that was thanks to the Phoenicians!
- Romans revered Greek culture because their city started in a period when Greek colonies were spreading Greek influence throughout the Mediterranean and, specifically, in Italy itself. Greece was to Rome as Rome was to medieval Europeans: A colonizer.
----------
No ancient society smells of roses if you look close enough. However, it's also rare to find ancient societies that expanded and persisted for centuries without being innovative and progressive. The Romans were both awful and great, much like the Greeks, Akkadians, Babylonians, Sumerians, etc. before them.
It progressed civic life, institutions, law, infrastructure, and other things, a lot. Modern law is a heavy percentage ancient roman law in basis.
Slavery-based society doesn't say much for 2 millenia ago. Most where. The US had slavery until less than 2 centuries, and Jim Crow and other such things until less than a century. And still has things like forced prison labor, so let's cut the Romans some fucking slack.
I'd rather work than be in a cell.
Roman engineering was pretty darn solid.
As opposed to the Greeks, Parthians, Ptolemaic Egypt and Judea? Unless you mean "fully dependent on slave labour" - then I guess we can mention Sparta and Athens.
> that progressed sciences, technology and civilization little from what they inherited from the Mesopotamian's/Greeks
What does "little" mean in this context? This is a very fuzzy concept but this doesn't sound right.
Athens had a rather strange system of slavery. The majority of slaves, owned by State, earned wages and worked and lived unattended. It was much more similar to indentured-servitude.