← Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More
Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
00:15:54
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- [00:01]
A
Rome didn't just simply vanish when its empire fell. Its roads, laws, languages, calendars, architecture, engineering and political ideas all survived and became part of the foundation of the modern world. From the courthouse to the Capitol building, from the Alphabet you read and the cities you live in, Rome is still with us in ways both obvious and invisible. Join me as I ask the question, what have the Romans ever done for us on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. This episode is sponsored by Quint's Summer's here and if you happen to live in a place with actual seasons as I do, that means wearing entirely different clothes. Wool sweaters are great when the temperatures drop, but they're not the best option when you're outside in the sun. Quince has European linen pants and shirts that are the perfect warm weather upgrade to add to your rotation. Starting at just $34, their T shirts are soft and easy to wear and their lightweight cotton sweaters are perfect for cool summer nights. I just got two Quint's T shirts myself and I love them as always. Everything at quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands and they can do that by working directly with ethical factories and cutting out the middleman. So so you're paying for quality, not brand markup. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com daily for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q U-N-E.com daily for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com daily. This episode is sponsored by Butcherbox. I've spoken before about how much I love Butcherbox and I usually end up talking about their grass fed and grass finished beef. However, there's so much more. In my recent Butcherbox order I got a whole organic chicken. I thawed it, let it soak and brine overnight and then cooked it in my air fryer and it was some of the best chicken I have ever had. And that's because Butcherbox sources the best quality meats and seafood available. No antibiotics, no hormones, no fillers, just clean, reliable protein that you can feel good serving. Butcherbox delivers over a hundred premium protein options straight to your door for from grass fed beef to wild caught seafood. As an exclusive offer, new listeners can get their choice between free sirloin tips, ground beef or chicken wings in every box for life plus $20 off when you go to butcherbox.com everything. That's right, your choice of free sirloin tips, ground beef or chicken wings in every box for life plus $20 off your first box and free shipping always. That's butcherbox.com everything. Don't forget to use the link so they know that I sent you. The process of creating an episode for this podcast has had many different routes. I've had some episodes that I thought of in the morning and recorded later that evening. Then there are some that have taken years from the original idea to the final recording. This episode is one of the first 100 ideas I came up with When I first attached the idea of this podcast I almost six years ago and it's been sitting at the top of my list for a long time now. So I figured it was time to finally do it. There are bits of this episode that appear in dozens of previous episodes, so I'm not going to individually go through every previous episode when it comes up, but suffice it to say, there are a lot of them. What I want to do is provide you with some understanding of why this civilization that existed over 2000 years ago still influences our world today and and still has people interested in it. And this shouldn't be taken as a love letter to ancient Rome. While I think it's worth studying and there are things we can learn, I wouldn't want to live there. They had a host of cultural practices that thankfully died out that everyone listening to this would find abhorrent today. Also, many of the things that have been handed down from Rome aren't in the same form as they were back then. They've evolved over time into modern institutions. And so with that, the first and perhaps biggest way in which Rome has influenced the modern world is law. Law certainly didn't originate with the Romans. There are examples of written laws going back thousands of years in other civilizations. However, the Roman approach to law was unique and still exists in most Western or Western influenced countries today. The idea that law should be written, organized, interpreted by specialists, and applied through recognized procedures owes an enormous amount to Rome. Important Roman legal concepts include contracts, property rights, wills, corporations or legal associations, citizenship, legal personhood, public law, private law, and the distinction between civil and criminal matters. Even when modern legal systems are not directly Roman, they often use categories that Roman jurists help define. Rome's legal influence begins with the 12 tables. Traditionally dated to the mid 5th century BC, these were Rome's first major written laws, and their importance lay not in being especially humane or even complete, but in making the law public. The rules were no longer supposed to exist only in the memory or discretion of aristocratic officials. Another major Roman legacy is the concept of legal Personality. Roman law recognized that certain associations, municipalities and institutions could have legal identities distinct from the individuals composing them. This helped lay the groundwork for later ideas of corporations, municipalities, universities, churches, non profit organizations and other entities that can own property, sue, be sued and continue beyond the lives of their members. Rome's idea of citizenship was also crucial. Roman citizenship was a legal status carrying rights, duties, privileges and protections. Over time, it expanded from just the city of Rome to Italy, and then eventually to nearly all free inhabitants of the empire. This helped establish the idea that political belonging could be defined by law rather than by tribe, ethnicity or birthplace. A major turning point came under the Emperor Justinian in the 6th century. His government compiled centuries of Roman legal material into the corpus juris civilis, or the body of civil law. It included the Code, which collected imperial laws, the Digest, which gathered opinions of major Roman jurists, the Institutes, a legal textbook, and later laws called the novels. This compilation preserved Roman law after the Western Empire had collapsed. The rediscovery and study of Justinian's laws in medieval Europe, especially at universities such as Bologna, transformed Western legal history. Medieval scholars treated Roman law as a rational system that could be studied, analyzed, taught and applied. And this helped create the modern legal profession, legal education and the idea of law as an intellectual discipline. Rome's contribution to modern republican government was not that it created democracy as we understand it, because it didn't. Rather, it gave political theorists one of history's most influential working models of a state without a king, governed through offices, assemblies, laws and competing centers of authority. The word republic itself comes from the Latin res publica, meaning the public thing or public affair. The idea was that the state was not the personal property of a monarch. It belonged to, at least in theory, to the community of citizens. That concept became one of Rome's biggest political legacies. Rome's most important contribution to this was the idea of mixed government. The Republic had consuls, which served as executives, the senate, which was an aristocratic body, and popular assemblies that gave citizens a formal role in elections, legislation and public decisions. Rome also gave modern republics the idea of checks and balances. No single office was supposed to hold all power permanently. Consuls served limited terms. There were usually two consuls at a time, so each could restrain the other through vetoes. Tribunes of the plebs could veto certain actions to protect ordinary citizens. Magistrates had defined powers, and offices were arranged in a hierarchy known as the cursus honorum. Law and government weren't the only contributions to the modern world by the Romans. They have also heavily influenced language The Romance languages all developed from spoken Latin, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Romanian, and others through the Roman Empire, the Catholic Church, scholarship, law and science. Latin also became a major source of vocabulary for English and many other languages. English is Germanic in structure, but much of its formal, legal, scientific, religious and intellectual vocabulary or all comes from Latin, often through French. The biggest contribution comes from the Latin Alphabet. The Latin Alphabet is used in some form by most languages in the world today, even those that are not descended from European languages. The Latin Alphabet has become a widespread linguistic operating system, adapted for languages as diverse as Vietnamese, Swahili, Hawaiian and Navajo. Another major innovation used almost everywhere in the world today is the calendar. The calendar that almost the entire world uses is the Gregorian calendar, which is a slight modification of the Julian calendar which was implemented by Julius Caesar. It was a solar calendar which made it much easier to time the planting and harvest seasons. Moreover, all of the names of the months that we use in English are come from the Roman names of the month. Rome also had major contributions to modern roads and infrastructure. Roman roads were among the most important infrastructure systems in history. They connected cities, forts, ports, mines, farms and provincial capitals across the entire Empire. At their height, the Romans built tens of thousands of miles of paved roads with many more miles of secondary roads. These roads allowed armies to move quickly, officials to administer distant provinces, merchants to transport goods and information to travel with unusual speed for the ancient world. Not every Roman road was a perfectly paved stone highway. But the best ones were durable enough that some routes remained in use for centuries after the Empire fell. Many modern roads in Europe today still follow Roman alignments because the Romans often chose the most practical routes through the landscape. Rome also helped establish the idea of a road network rather than isolated roads. The famous saying all roads lead to Rome reflects the fact that the Empire's roads were part of an integrated system. Roman bridges were another major legacy. They made heavy use of the arch, which allowed them to span rivers and valleys with great strength and durability. Roman bridge building influenced later European engineering, and some Roman bridges still stand or remain in use today. Roman aqueducts, sewers and baths influenced the modern world by less providing exact technologies to copy and more by establishing a civic ideal. A city should provide large scale public systems for water, waste and hygiene. Roman aqueducts showed that cities didn't have to depend only on nearby wells, rivers or rainwater. Fresh water could be captured from distant springs and carried into urban centers through carefully engineered channels to tunnels, bridges, reservoirs and distribution tanks. The modern city water system, with reservoirs, main pipes and public distribution Is not a direct copy of Roman aqueducts, but it follows the same basic water supply is an engineered public network. Roman sewers had a similar influence. The Romans didn't understand germs as we do, and their sanitation systems were at best uneven by modern standards. But they did understand that dense cities needed drainage and waste removal. The Colloqua Maxima in Rome became a famous symbol of urban engineering. A massive drainage system that helped remove stormwater and sewage from parts of the city. The Colloqua Maxima is the world's oldest man made object that is still used for its original purpose. The key Roman contribution here was the idea that sanitation is part of urban planning. Streets, latrines, drains, sewers and water supply all had to work together. Roman public baths were perhaps the most culturally influential institutions. They weren't just places to go and get clean. They were social centers, athletic facilities, libraries, meeting places, business venues and symbols of civilized urban life. Their influence can be seen in later public bathhouses, Turkish baths, hammams, spas, saunas, health resorts, gymnasiums, and even modern recreation centers. Rome also created some of the world's first planned cities. Rome itself was not planned, but many of its provincial outposts were. They were created with a grid like layout of city streets. Many cities like Merida, Spain still use the same street layout created 2,000 years ago. In well preserved Roman cities such as Timgad, Algeria, you can still see the original layout. The grid system used in places like Manhattan is the same basic system as the ones the Romans used. Rome's influence on modern armies is less about battlefield tactics and more about organization, professionalism, logistics and engineering. The Roman army helped establish the idea of a professional standing army. Earlier, citizen militias were often raised for a campaign and then disbanded. Over time, Rome developed long service soldiers who were trained, paid, equipped, stationed, promoted and retired all through the state. Modern armies are much closer to that of the Roman model than to temporary ancient armies. This model was very different than even cultures like Sparta. In Rome, you could pursue the military as a career. They had contracts that soldiers had to sign, tours of duty which were often quite long, and pension plans that were usually in the form of land. Rome's legacy isn't found in a single invention or institution, but in the systems that it left behind. Modern law, republican government, roads, urban infrastructure, language, architecture, calendars, citizenship and military organization all still bear Roman fingerprints. The Romans were not always original and they certainly were not always admirable. But they were unmatched at taking ideas, organizing them, scaling them, and then making them last. More than 15 centuries after the fall of the Western empire, we still live in a world partially built on Roman foundations. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. My big thanks go to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible. And I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord. That's where everything happens that's outside the podcast, and links to those are available in the show notes. As always, if you leave a review on any major podcast app or in the above community groups, you too can have it read on the show.
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B
And what have they ever given us in return? The aqueduct. What? The aqueduct. Oh, yeah, yeah, they did give us that. That's true. Yeah. And there's sanitation. Oh, yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like? Yeah, all right, I'll grant you, the aqueduct and sanitation are two things the Romans have done. And the roads. Well, yeah, obviously the roads. I mean, the roads go without saying, don't they? But apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct and the roads. Irrigation, medicine, education. Yeah, yeah, all right, fair enough. And the wine. Yeah, yeah, that's something we really miss, Reg. If the Romans left public baths. And it's safe to walk in the streets at night now, Reg. Yeah, they certainly don't have to keep order. Let's face it, the only ones who could in a place like this. 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?
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Brought peace.
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Oh, peace. Shut up.