Rome and the Roots of Western 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… 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.

Pompeii

August 24, AD 79

From a bar

Graffiti

What Rome gave us

• Language

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

Maps of aqueducts going into Rome.

• Pantheon The 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.