[Antoninus]

Just like your last post, your claims to Christian greatness lie only in preserving the ancient world, not surpassing it.

Ok, now you're just getting silly. At the end of the Roman Empire in the West, there could be no thought to surpassing anything. With wave after wave of illiterate barbarians sweeping through, burning and pillaging for four centuries, just preservation was enough. When things settled down somewhat after the 9th century, only then we can talk of surpassing. And indeed, the High Middle Ages were a time of reawakening in terms of the arts and sciences--all under the auspices of the Catholic Church. It could well be argued that Thomas Aquinas took Aristotle and surpassed him. Or that the great cathedrals of Western Europe surpassed the architecture of Ancient Greece and Rome. Or that Dante surpassed (or at least equaled) Virgil.

I'm sorry you misunderstood my posts. I can't blame you. They don't teach this stuff in most high schools and colleges any more. Too salutary of Christianity.

[ffusco]

The great churches often took centuries to build, while they were beautiful works they can not compare to the ancient engineering where roads and acquaducts went through mountains and over gorges. In Rome entire cities with sewers and plumbing were built as well harbours and other infrastructure. Only in painting did the Rennaissaance ever surpass Rome.

[TheAngryClam]

Having read both Dante and Vergil in the original, I'd pronounce Vergil the winner- he's more succinct, and yet more descriptive, his allusions to the present are less clumsy and forced (as Dante's contemporaries in Hell are), and his translation of the old Homeric and Alexandrian epic traditions into a new language (Latin) is far more successful than the comparatively easier task of adapting Latin style to the Tuscan dialect. Not to mention that Vergil died and the Aeneid is a rough draft, while the Divine Comedy is a finished work and that the less read portion of the Aeneid (Books VII-XII) is still more widely read than the Paradiso of the Divine Comedy. Rome wins.

As far as Aquinas's Summa, I wasn't particularly impressed when I read it (or with the town of Aquino when I went there). And, furthermore, it's not a fair comparison to Aristotle from our modern vantagepoint, since the only intact work of Aristotle's (rather than the lecture notes that comprise the bulk of the Aristotlean corpus) is the Poetics.

Finally, the best structure to compare the cathedrals to, the Basilica Julia, no longer stands. However, the open space of its interior surpasses many of the cathedrals, and without the use of exterior butresses or foreign imported pointed arches, I might add. Add to that the fact that it was built in only a few years, as opposed to the centuries required for the cathedrals, and once again Rome is the winner.

And the Western scriptoria managed to preserve an estimated 4%-6% of all writing from the ancient world, and did such things as lose the only copy of Callimachus' Aetia in the 1200s.

Compare this to the preservation of works from the archaic period of Greece (600-500 BC) well into the Empire. Rome once again triumphs over anything that the Christians could accomplish.