Are you a child of the Roman Empire?

Question

Do you see any similarities b/t the culture, art, architecture, philosophy, government, or other practices done during the Roman Empire and today? If so what? Is there a strong connection b/t the two? If so why?

Answer 1

I think it would be difficult not to see similarities between the RE and U.S. culture/society/politics, etc. (I'm assuming you're asking about the relationship between the RE and the U.S. specifically.)

First of all the creators of the U.S. system of government were "children" of the "Age of Enlightenment" which means that their philosophies about politics and culture were heavily grounded in the traditions of Humanism and drew heavily on classical thinking and learning. Look at a one dollar bill and you'll see lots of symbolism drawn from the Romans.

Here are some ways I think the two societies are similar:

Government: like the Romans, the U.S. appoints a "dictator" for a specified term (1 year for the Romans, 4 years for the U.S.) in which that ruler has preeminent power over the nation's governance. Like the Romans, the U.S. has a senate whose members represent "the people" and who mitigate the power of the dictator, although for the Romans "the People" included only the upper classes. If you think about it, though, in the U.S. today members of the Senate and the House are drawn mainly from the upper classes, i.e. rich, educated lawyers, business leaders and professional politicians.

Architecture: take a look at the various monuments around Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and elsewhere, especially among the original 13 colonies, and you'll see the influence of Roman architectural traditions, again because of the Enlightenment. Public buildings as symbols of political and economic power are common to both societies (think the White House, Empire State Building, WTC, etc.), although that's probably true of most societies. You might also thrown in things like the huge sports arenas around the country (often called "coliseums" interestingly enough). Professional athletes were present in ancient Rome and had similar popular standing to those of today.

Imperialism: I think it's safe to say that both Rome and the U.S. are imperialistic cultures, although perhaps you might say that American imperialism is somewhat more economic than militaristic (although recent events in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., might belie that notion, too). Either way, cultural imperialism certainly can be taken as a truism, since the effects of both cultures were/are felt widely in their respective worlds.

Language: You'd be amazed if you look into word origins how many words that we use every day have come down to us from Latin. Our calendar is based on the original Julian calendar created by Julius Caesar, who also gave us the month name Julius or July as we now call it. His nephew Octavian better known as Caesar Augustus gave us the month of August. September, October, November and December were originally the seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth months of the Roman calendar.

Anyway, this is a huge topic and difficult to answer with the sweeping generalizations that I've offered.

Answer 2

I read a book 'How the Irish saved civilization', which discussed how Irish Catholic monks saved writings from destruction through the dark ages. In it the author Thomas Cahil compares the invasion of the US by illegal immigrants to the Roman Empire by writing' the only other time such a large group of people gathered on a border for invasion was during the Roman Empire'. He makes the point that both now and then the invasion wasn't to fight and conquer, but because the invaders wanted to be like the country they were invading. This 'friendly' invasion led to the collapse of the Roman Empire.

Answer 3

Well structures are kind of like how they had it in Roman times. The buildings now a days a huge massive structures like the Roman strucutres. The buildings were beautiful. The buildings now a days are too. That is one similarity. I am a godess from Rome.

Answer 4

There are only five countries in the world which have direct roman ancestry: Italy, France, Spain, Portugal and Romania (each of the five distinct languages spoken in these countries has evolved from Latin)

Answer 5

I'm a Gladiator

Answer 6

nope..sorry