My A-Z Challenge series is about Italy, it's lifestyle, the country and other miscellaneous things in regard to it.
The Romans, as mentioned in a previous post, did appropriate or rather steal lots of land in and around Europe. They did take taxes from the peoples of those countries, turn some into slaves and generally ruled the natives of those countries in the way the Romans wanted which was not necessarily the way it had been previously done or that was appreciated. So, yes, not good. But on the other hand, as the clip from the film The Life of Brian (one of my favourites as it happens) shows, they did give things back.
The ones listed in the film are medicine,
Roads -famed for their long and very straight roads which are still in place in many cases,
Aquaducts - bringing water to the towns,
Sanitation - not too dissimilar to what we have today including latrines with a sewage system to take waste away,
Irrigation - making channels from rivers
Education - this was in part taken from the Greek ways of doing it but passed further abroad by the Romans. The methodology and curriculum came from them, as well as starting at an early age and putting pupils into tiers or bands
Health - related to keeping clean and the sanitation systems, public baths - they also had baths in some private homes,
Peace - they were good on peace keeping, maybe through force but still...
and of course wine making.
Other things they did for us were bringing in the calender used today which gives us 365 days, names of the months and leap years,
Certain types of material used in building such as cement, glass and even bricks,
Plumbing - they made pipes to bring and remove water out of lead. The word plumber comes from the Latin of plumbum.
So the Roman's did do quite a lot for us, as is shown by the legacy they have left. If you've never seen it do watch the clip from The Life of Brian.
5 comments:
monty python was the best! enjoyed watching that and being reminded of what the romans did, too! ha!
happy a to z-ing!
Romans definitely set the standard for a great deal of modern day living. The only thing I disapprove of in their governing system was the citizenry and tiers--where yes, there were slaves, and countries were assigned secondary or tertiary status and had less rights than others. Just not cool.
True Heroes from A to Z
Tara, Monty Python almost always have me guffawing.
Crystal, they did do a lot which we must think is good now as it's still ongoing but so much was wrong at the time. Thank goodness times can be said to better in so many ways now.
Hi Daydreamer .. The Life of Brian is just brilliant ..
While the Romans did an awful lot for us .. which of course 2,000 years later many forget or don't realise ..
Great list of pluses they gave us ... thanks and cheers Hilary
Thanks for your comment, Hilary. They did leave us some good legacies.
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