Apart from vomitoriums and orgies, what did the Romans do for us?

Guardian (U.K.) ^ | Saturday October 29, 2005 | Mary Beard

[bigsigh]

lol

[bigsigh]

reminds me of a line I heard in the 70s. There were 98.9% of US houses with indoor plumbing and 99.6% with TVs. So there was more crap coming into the home than capacity to carry it out.

[Watery Tart]

Anyone shocked a poster named "Watery Tart" did it.

I won't lob a scimitar at you...
;o)

[jude24]

If I went 'round saying I was an emperor because some moistened bint lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!

[Graymatter]

They gave us garum, a great fish sauce, and a number of useful political precedents.
Now let's think about what they spared us. Etruscan kings. Carthaginian culture. Mithraism. And more inbred descendants of Cleopatra and Ptolemy.

[MikefromOhio]

The Roman aqueducts were about 1000 years ahead of their time...

[Savage Beast]

I discontinued HBO a long time ago. There seemed to be more sex and violence, but I found that less disgusting and less offensive than the perversion of truth by network TV.

[nopardons]

Poor, poor Mary Beard, the wacky intellectual prof. If only she had bothered to read Dian Phillips' excellent bio, she would have learned that I,CLAUDIUS was designed to be a SOAP OPERA of sorts, with the family battles treated as what the director thought Jewish family squabbles were like.

Robert Graves was not only a poet and an expert on mythology ( not to mention the forerunner of what Joseph Campbell did become, decades later ), he was also a writer who delighted in writing fiction, fiction based on Greek and Roman myths and poems, with lots of historical facts thrown into the mix. Unlike his contemporary and fellow author, George Orwell, Graves' fiction was just that...FICTION, to be read and enjoyed, without any roiling, present day political overtones nor undertones.

This article is just supercilious poppycock.

[Drammach]

Cement

Actually cement goes back much farther..
The egyptians used cement..

What the romans contributed was the addition of "aggregate", i.e., gravel, etc.. to the cement..

In other words, Romans invented CONCRETE..

Some other interesting things they did with this building material..
They added other minerals, like pumice, to make a water proof concrete.. Then used it to make their shipping docks, canals, and fisheries...
They used Forms, to cast the concrete in a desired shape..
Another additive was wheat gluten.. It acted as an adhesive, allowing the concrete (or cement) to stick to a surface better..
Amazingly, it also increases the life of the concrete/cement as well..
Interestingly, the Chinese used rice paste in exactly the same way.. as an adhesive additive to cement..
Parrallel technologies developing in two seperate societies, thousands of miles apart..

[Watery Tart]

Oh, what a giveaway! Did'j'hear that, did'j'hear that, eh? That's what I'm all about! Did you see 'im repressing me? You saw it, didn't you?!

</convenientchangeofcharacter>
;o)

[wolfcreek]

Roman noses ane the origins of our "Pagan" holidays.

[Vicomte13]

Or America, for that matter.

At her height, Rome embraced between a quarter and a third of the world's population, and was surrounded by regions so weak and poor that the Romans actually rejected admission into the Empire of many tribes and territories.

Geographically, the Romans welded together a practically impossible array of tribes and cultures. America has that effect because of immigration, but immigrants (other than black slaves) are in the US voluntarily. Incorporating whole vast regions and cultures root, stalk and branch is a different thing.

The American influence and power are great, but they are not comparable to what Rome was within its world.

There's never been anything like Rome.

[Vicomte13]

"Bathing!! The Roman baths are everywhere. They were important.
As you see, the Romans didn't spend much time in Gaul."

Actually, soap was invented by the Gauls and was something the Romans were introduced to in their interactions with the Gauls. Before Gallic soap, the Romans used olive oil.

[Docbarleypop]

which was definatly nice while i was in the military, rarely had to get off the beaten path. when i was living in england, unless i was driving, i would get sick if i wasnt on a roman road, they were the only roads that were straight!!!

[toddlintown]

Spartacus?

[SunkenCiv]

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