if homosexuality and orgies and sadistic perversions is your idea of high personal integrity, then i pass... they collapsed after few hundred years and completely disappeared. Present italians are NOT their descendants.
Abraham is entirely different story. I am his direct descendant ;-)
Roman debauchery is greatly overstated. Certainly, many members of the ruling classes lived lives of excess (many, however, did not, such as Pliny the Elder, who died trying to rescue the people of Pompeii), but that does not reflect on the values of the average Roman any more than Paris Hilton's antics reflect the values of the average American.
they collapsed after few hundred years and completely disappeared.
The Roman Republic and Empire had an uninterrupted run of about 1000 years. You can add another 1000 years to that if you consider the Byzantine Empire. Our country should consider itself lucky if we last that long.
There is no more important influence on the Western world than the Romans.
Present italians are NOT their descendants.
There are other groups that intermixed with Italians after the fall of Rome, but modern Italians are mostly descended from the Romans.
You prove my point - the perversions were a phenomenon of late, indisciplined Roman culture, a culture that the founders of the Roman Republic would have found horrifying in the extreme.
Rome in 500 BC and Rome in 100 AD were as different as the Plymouth Colony in 1700 and Provincetown today. I am talking about Cincinnatus and you are talking about Caligula.
they collapsed after few hundred years and completely disappeared.
No, they did not, in point of fact.
Of course, the same arguments could be applied to the kingdom of Israel with greater justice.
Present italians are NOT their descendants.
Present Italians are indeed their descendants, in fact, prominent Italian families like the Orsinis can trace their ancestry back to the early Empire.
Of course modern Italians also have Norman, Lombard, Gothic and other ancestry as well.
Abraham is entirely different story. I am his direct descendant ;-)
Spiritually, absolutely. But you might be the descendant of some convert in the direct line and only descended from Abraham in the collateral line.
They lasted for four times the history of the United States. That's not unimpressive even if they had some bloody pastimes.
And the Romans provided the groundwork for all of Western Civilization.