"The Roman Legacy by Will Durant"

the Roman achievement it is easier to explain Rome's fall than to account for her long survival this is the essential accomplishment of Rome that having won the Mediterranean world she adopted its culture gave it order prosperity in peace for 200 years held back the tide of barbarism for two centuries more and transmitted the classic heritage to the west before she died Rome has had no rival in the art of government the Roman state committed a thousand political crimes it built its edifice upon a selfish oligarchy and an obscurantist priesthood it achieved a democracy of Freeman and then destroyed it with corruption and violence it exploited its conquests to support a parasitic Italy which when it could no longer exploit collapsed here and there in East and West it created a desert and called it peace but amid all this evil it formed a majestic system of law which threw nearly all Europe gave security to life and property incentive and continuity to industry from the December's to Napoleon it molded a government of seperated legislative and executive powers whose checks and balances inspired the makers of constitutions as late as revolutionary America and France for a time and United Monarchy aristocracy and democracy so successfully as to win the applause of philosophers historians subjects and enemies it gave municipal institutions and for a long period municipal freedom - half a thousand cities it administered its empire at first with greed and cruelty then was such tolerance and essential justice that the great realm has never again known alike content it made the desert blossom with civilization and atoned for its sins with the miracle of a lasting peace today our highest labors seek to revive the Pax Romana for a disordered world within that unsurpassed framework Rome built a culture Greek in origin in an application and result she was too engrossed in government to create as bountifully in the realms of the mind as Greece had done but she absorbed with appreciation and preserved with tenacity the technical intellectual and artistic heritage that she had received from Carthage and Egypt Greece and the East she made no advance in science and no mechanical improvements in industry but she enriched the world with a Commerce moving over secure seas and a network of enduring roads that became the arteries of a lusty life along those roads and over a thousand handsome bridges there passed to the medieval and modern worlds the ancient techniques of tillage handicraft and art the science of monumental building the processes of banking and investment the organization of medicine and military hospitals the sanitation of cities and many varieties of fruit and nut trees of agricultural or ornamental plants brought from the East to take new route in the West even the secret of central heating came from the warm south to the cold north the South has created the civilizations the North has conquered and destroyed or borrowed them Rome did not invent education but she developed it on a scale unknown before gave it state support and formed the curriculum that persisted till our harrassed youth she did not invent the arch the vault or the dome but she used them with such audacity and magnificence that in some fields her architecture has remained unequaled and all the elements of the medieval cathedral were prepared in her basilica's she did not invent the sculptural portrait but she gave it a realistic power rarely reached by the idealizing Greeks she did not invent philosophy but it was in Lucretia and Seneca that epicureanism and stoicism found their most finished form she did not invent the types of literature not even the satire but who could adequately record the influence of Cicero on oratory the say in prose style a Virgil on Dante Tasso Milton of Libyan Tacitus on the writing of history of Horace and juvenile on Dryden Swift and Pope her language became by a most admirable corruption the speech of Italy Romania France Spain Portugal and Latin America half the white man's world speaks a Latin tongue Latin was till the 18th century the Esperanto of science scholarship and philosophy in the West it gave a convenient international terminology to botany and zoology it survives in the sonorous ritual and official documents of the Roman Church it still writes medical prescriptions and haunts the phraseology of the law it entered by direct appropriation and again through the Romance languages regalis regal royal pagano's pagan peasant to enhance the wealth and flexibility of english speech our Roman heritage works in our lives a thousand times a day when Christianity conquered Rome the ecclesiastical structure of the pagan Church the title investments of the Pontifex Maximus the worship of the Great Mother and the multitude of comforting divinities the sense of supersensible presences everywhere the joy or solemnity of old festivals and the pageantry of a memorial ceremony passed like maternal blood into the new religion and captive Rome captured her Conqueror the reigns and skills of government were handed down by a dying Empire to a virile papacy the lost power of the Broken Sword was rihwan by the magic of the consoling word the armies of the state were replaced by the missionaries of the church moving in all directions along the Roman roads and the revolted provinces accepting Christianity again acknowledged the sovereignty of Rome through the long struggles of the age of faith the authority of the ancient capital persisted and grew until in the Renaissance the classic culture seemed to rise from the gray and the immortal city became once more the center and summit of the world's life and wealth and art when in 1936 Rome celebrated the 2680 ninth anniversary of her foundation she could look back upon the most impressive continuity of government and civilization in the history of mankind may she rise again