"What did the romans ever do for us." Topic

Nothing but they stole alot of stuff.

I'm trying to figure out if the romans ever did anything original, I'm thinking mostly military, but also general.

Romans stole.

Hoplite
Gladius.
Manipler system.
Verious shields.
Verious helmets
Mail
Ect.

So was the marien revolution original or did they steal that too? What about the legmenta?

The Romans invented the phrase …

"It's never over till it's over" … Yogi Berra stole it from them

Caesar

Roads
Aquaducts
Public baths …

YouTube link

NOT TO MENTION THE SANITATION.

They gave us state-sponsored Christianity and stamped out all those nasty pagans.

The Romans invented Mafia rule, which they called the mos maiorum.

Also, while the weapons used by the legionaries used were invented by others, the Romans improved them, mass produced them, and above all trained their troops to use them in ways that had not been used before. Legionary equipment was not new, but legionary organization was revolutionary.

Really straight roads?

Pax Romana.

Latin.

… if the romans ever did anything original…

"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." – - Isaac Newton

Very little is original, most of what we do is improves on what has previously be done.

It's actually a lot easier to list what the Romans didn't figure out, improve, or adapt for their uses. Even more remarkable, given their profound chauvinism, is how willing they were to scrutinize practically every foreign thing or idea they came across for potential merits.

I would recommend reading a good history book, rather than establishing theories on video games and wargaming material. Boatwright et al's The Romans: From Village To Empire is an excellent and accessible introduction.
link

Discovered how to make Concrete!

Apart from the aqueducts, roads, sanitation, etc:

May not have invented, but perfected the lorica segmentata.

Did not invent ballistae nor carts, but the first to put the two together.

Many surgical tools and battlefield surgery.

Engineering techniques to build the first 2 bridges over the Rhine.
link

Naval Corvus.

Concrete, if they didn't invent it they made it better than everyone else, including a recipe that sets under water allowing the construction of
the largest open sea harbor at Caesarea.
link

Acta Diurna — daily physical news postings, including reports from the wars.

Codices, the first bound books.

Orgies!..I mean, you all missed it????????

Did I say Latin?
Not JUST Latin, but they gave us irregular verbs!

And dirty words for graffiti in HBO series!

Real good quality marching sandals with hobnails :) the simple ideas made the bigger complex ideas possable :)
Virtus tibi ac fortitudo.

Orgies!

Probably one of the first human inventions.

Though like much knowledge the Roman's undoubtedly improved on it.

Paid, standing citizen armies in place of citizen militias and collections of mercenaries.

link

The Roman armies were able to take major defeats and still keep coming. Something other civilizations were unable to do back then.

How about advances in medicine, architecture, and civil government; encouraging world commerce; generally keeping stability for the residents of most of Europe; great strides in law civil and criminal law codes; great strides in the Latin literature and the spoken language, which gave us Romance languages. The list could go on.

Sure, they did some bad things, too. The beauty of the Romans is that they encompass the capacity to do great good and evil at the same time.

I wish I could find the exact attribution for this quote, but it's supposed to be from a Roman engineer:

"Any idiot can stack big blocks of stone. Try designing the plumbing for a city of a million people."

the arch

The Romans were successful because they were paranoid. They borrowed much from others, hired enemies from auxiliaries, copied weapons, tactics, borrowed Greek literature and warcraft wholesale and did the war bit better.
They did not negotiate with an enemy until they had beaten him (well that was the theory) and they punished treaty breaking severely. It seems incredible that the most powerful state in the West thought itself vulnerable, but then at its heart it was one city that grew to rule over much greater populations. Once they stopped being paranoid they lost drive , energy and the ruthless greed that backs power…same as all the other Empires afore them. Once you think you have won you start to lose.

A substantial amount of "Roman" art, literature, and engineering was in fact Greek, either adapted from earlier Greek knowledge or created by Greek subjects of the Roman empire.

Also coined the phrase "sub sole nihil novum." ("nothing new under the sun".)

Not to take away anything from the Greeks, but they didn't invent everything they used, either. There were a lot of Near Eastern influences there as well.

Roman literature started inferior to Greek, certainly; but by the end of the Augustan age, and certainly by what's known as "Silver Age" Latin literature, Latin could hold its head up proudly, even to Greek.

A lot of what Lewisgunner said about ROmans could well be applied to Alexander and Philip. The Roman advantage was inclusiveness in their empire. Not sure they did war "better" (maniple did win out), but they could afford losses that Hellenistic kingdoms – with their exclusivity and prejudice toward foreigners – couldn't. For a long period there was buy-in for (at least some segments of) foreign peoples. Simply look at the Greek unwillingness to let foreigners serve in the phalanx vs. the Allies serving in the Republican army and getting eventual citizenship for some cities. Greek culture in conquered areas out east didn't stick long when the Greek upper class were expelled or replaced. Latin stuck around a long time after the West collapsed and foreigners modeled themselves on Roman customs and the basic infrastructure.

We should never forget that these vile people enslaved the world. They destroyed communities wherever they went, killed thousands and made the rest into slaves who were, literally, worked to death.

So did most other major powers of that time.

Also not all slaves were worked to death, mining and galley slavery was a death sentence, while most other slaves did have it conciderably better then those that lived through the north atlantic slave trade.

Also for most of the time of rome, they did have freedom of religion, nobody was forced to worship this and this god, or gods.

There was alot of rotten stuff i Rome(more so in empire then republic(by my standard) but compeard to others of the same period they were no worse.

Well in Wales – they took most of the gold! So they did that for us – trouble was, we never got it back :)
Some pictures from our recent family trip to a Roman gold mine in Wales can be found here

facebook.com/rob.broom.5074

(you need to scroll down a bit as theres a few other posts since I did that one earlier this week. Scarabs facebook page, which also have a couple of gold mine pics can be found here link

Fantastic place to visit

kind regards
Rob Broom
scarabminiatures.com
warandconquest.co.uk

The idea of a rule of law (often in breach but there never the less)

Extending citizenship to conquered people, hence their expanding citizen base enabling them to rebuild armies

Roman concrete is better than modern concrete. our concrete has more water in it and will break down faster over time

YouTube link

The corvus?

This time wasting thread.