What The Romans Did For Us
How much of the world we live in and enjoy today can be credited back to this ancient empire?
At its height, the Roman Empire was sprawled out over more than five million square kilometres. It was the main state on the Mediterranean Sea, and reached as far north as Scotland. It stretched down into North Africa and came to dominate the Middle East and beyond. A nation that big never really disappears
– its culture and traditions seep into the people and the landscape, leaving a legacy that can never truly be scrubbed out.
A lot of Roman ways did disappear over time: paganism died out, with temples being converted into churches or falling into disrepair; gladiators stopped battling it out in the arenas; and phalluses stopped being used as lucky charms. But the Romans had been around so long, and their customs proved to be impossible to leave behind. It’s nigh on impossible to count the ways in which the Romans shaped modern Europe both physically and culturally, so here are just ten of the multitude of things that they left behind after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
ROADS How to travel around Europe
Not all roads lead to Rome, but some made by the Romans are still in use today. While building materials differed across the empire, the formation was always the same: the road itself was raised, built up in layers of rocks, stones, gravel and sand, with ditches on either side for drainage. Roads were incredibly important in such a vast territory – they sped up movement, allowing troops to get around quicker, and they boosted trade and communication.
Perhaps the most famous example of this in Britain is Watling Street, a name derived from what the Saxons called it. Stretching from modern Dover, though London and up Wroxeter, it connected the port closest to mainland Europe with the rest of Britannia. It also saw its fair share of history – it was the site of Boudicca’s final defeat to the Romans, and it’s thought that the pilgrims in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales used it, too. Today it exists as the A2 between Dover and London, and the A5 from London to Wroxeter.
LANGUAGE You’re probably already talking like a Roman
Spoken by the majority of Romans, Latin was the foremost language of the empire and is often referred to as dead. Really, it’s anything but. Europe’s Romance languages – French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish, among others – have all stemmed from Latin, thanks to the widespread Roman occupation. Thanks to their common root, there are a lot of similarities between them, meaning that if you know one, it’s easier to learn and understand another. Of course, Germanic languages like German, Dutch and English have also been influenced by Latin.
But Latin itself was widely used across Europe until the Middle Ages as the administrative language for states like the Holy Roman Empire and the kingdom of France. It was also, and still is, the language of the Roman Catholic Church, with services conducted in Medieval Latin. The Renaissance didn’t stop this, with theological and scientific tomes being written in Latin.
Latin is still used today – animals all have Latin classifications, and bones in the body often have Latin names, like scapula and coccyx. But one country still uses Latin as its official language: the Vatican City. In fact, it’s the only country in the world where you can use an ATM in Latin.
FAST FOOD Ancient Rome’s answer to Burger King
If you enjoy your food and you like it quick, you should thank the Romans. In Pompeii alone, more than 80 thermopolia (literally cook shops) have been found, each one a stone counter with earthenware jars, or dolia, slotted into them to help food and drink stay warm. Often located in marketplaces, they provided a place to grab a quick bite to eat on the go, much like Mcdonald’s or KFC do today.
A Roman thermopolium often sold spiced wine, meats, cheese, fish, lentils and nuts. Classicist and ancient historian Mary Beard has commented that these fast food bars lined the streets in Pompeii – they were the alternative to a meagre diet of bread, cheese and fruit for the poor, as they didn’t really have the facilities to cook anything else. While some thermopolia just provided food, others had outdoor seating areas for those who wanted to take their time.
LARGE-SCALE CONSTRUCTION The Romans were more innovative than people realise
If there’s one thing the Romans are remembered for today, it’s their buildings. Palaces and theatres already existed before them, but what the Romans added to architecture was astounding. Amphitheatres were born for the infamous gladiator bouts (which the Romans actually adopted from their Etruscan predecessors). Triumphal arches and columns sprang up all over the empire, commemorating the victories of emperors like Trajan and Titus. Aqueducts carried water to towns and cities that didn’t have their own water sources. Hadrian built a wall across northern England as a barrier against the barbarian Picts in modern-day Scotland.
One understated achievement, though, was the Pantheon, which still stands in Rome today. Completed in 125 CE, it is possible that it was the first building ever created where the inside is deliberately designed to outshine the outside. The rotunda stretches 43.2 metres in diameter, and is a perfect hemisphere. At the very top is an 8.8-metre-wide oculus, or opening, and the whole dome is crafted from pumice and concrete. It stands as a testament to Roman architecture and building prowess.
LAWS Time to update the legal system?
It seems crazy that we still use laws created over 2,000 years ago, but it’s the truth. The Twelve Tables, which is usually cited as the foundation of ancient Roman law, was a heavy influence on the Bill of Rights at the founding of the United States, and both South Africa and San Marino still base their legal systems on the idea of Jus Commune, or civil law. Fragments of the Twelve Tables still survive today, and we can see that it covered family law and torts, both of which are still extant.
Rome boasted the world’s first advanced legal system, and thanks to its far-reaching influence, it’s no wonder that it has affected so many others. Law students today can still study it, and it often helps them to understand our own complex legal system.
THE JULIAN CALENDAR We’ve got one man to thank for leap years
Calendars already existed by the time Julius Caesar came to power – the Greeks had created their version, while other civilisations had theirs. Rome had its civic calendar, but it was out of sync with nature, so Caesar decided to change that. He added one extra day every four years because of a calculation that showed it took 365 and one-quarter days for Earth to go around the Sun, not 365. So it was that the so-called Julian calendar had created leap years.
However, the calculations were slightly off – it actually takes us a further 11.5 minutes to go around the Sun each year, so Caesar’s calendar was over-correcting to the tune of eight days each millennium. This was finally fixed in the 16th century with the introduction of the Gregorian calendar, named after Pope Gregory XIII, but the idea of leap years stayed. Unfortunately for historians, different countries adopted it at different times, making it very confusing to date some events.
CENTRAL HEATING Keeping your house warm isn’t a new idea
How to keep warm in the Roman Empire? With central heating, of course. The Romans were pioneers, and they invented an ingenious way to keep their buildings warm with underfloor heating. A fire or furnace heated the air below the floor in a room, and the air then escaped up the walls. Under the ground floor was a basement hypocaust, which saw stacks of terracotta tiles piled up in a bed of concrete.
Baths across the Roman Empire used this method to heat their hot rooms, or caldaria, and houses in the northern provinces employed it to keep them warm in the colder winter months. The rooms that needed the most heat would be placed closest to the furnace, but it was by no means a cheap option. Only the wealthy could really afford it as it required skilled engineers to build it, and slave labour and copious amounts of fuel to keep the furnaces burning. When the Western Roman Empire fell, central heating in the western provinces fell out of use – it’s only been in the past 100 years or so that it has come back.
CONCRETE The reason 2,00-year-old structures are still standing
It may not be the most interesting item on this list, but its importance can’t be overstated: Roman concrete was nothing short of fantastic. While our concrete has a lifespan of about 50 years before it begins crumbling, the Roman version has lasted for over 1,000 years and is still going strong. Made to a recipe whipped up by the architect and engineer Marcus Vitruvius around 30 BCE, it’s comprised of volcanic ash, lime and seawater, all mixed together with volcanic rocks and spread into wooden moulds, before being plunged into more seawater.
While concrete was used for buildings, it was also used to create piers and harbour walls for one very important reason: it got stronger over time. As seawater reacted with the volcanic ash, it created new minerals that reinforced it. It’s for this reason that people have recently started suggesting that we should go back to this ancient concrete – after all, why fix something that hasn’t broken for a millennium?
SANITATION AND PUBLIC HEALTH Keeping clean was an important task
While the Romans weren’t the first to build sewers in Rome – that credit goes to the Etruscans – the Romans were happy to take them over and keep them in use, even building their own in the city and beyond. But contrary to popular belief, Roman sewers weren’t to do with sanitisation; they removed water from the streets to prevent flooding. The Romans also had public toilets; dank and dirty, they weren’t pleasant to use, but they served in a pinch. Unlike toilets at home, these were connected to the sewers.
But the most impressive example of public health comes from the Roman baths. Situated in most towns and cities, it was the weekly, or sometimes daily, trips to the thermae that kept Roman citizens clean. A trip included traipsing around rooms of different temperatures and a good scrub, and an exercise ground was attached. This could perhaps be the precursor of the modern gym, with its exercise rooms, swimming pool and sometimes steam rooms and saunas.
BOOKS The Romans probably created the first page-turners
We wouldn’t necessarily have recognised Roman books as books. Until around the 1st century BCE they were papyrus scrolls that measured anything from 4.5 to 16 metres in length, but they were difficult to read properly and in colder climates they tended to deteriorate. So a new book was created: the codex. A codex had pages, with text running from the front to the back, and these pages were made from parchment. Invented by the Greeks a few centuries prior, parchment was ideal to write on. These pages were then bound between wooden covers, and they could hold more information than the scrolls. It was now easier to disseminate a hefty amount of information in one go, and these new books would last much longer than their predecessors.
But that wasn’t the only Roman innovation to do with writing – they’ve also been credited with creating the first newspaper. Acta Diurna, or Daily Events, was also made from papyrus and distributed around Rome so that citizens could keep up to date with weddings, births, deaths, crimes, trials and even the adventures of the rich and famous. Newspapers today haven’t really changed that much.