Rome, latin Roma, was the city and then the empire with ruled the ancient world. No modern empire has rivaled it in size, complexity or civilization. When we in English say the words July, August, September, Caesar, Kaiser, calendar, religion, secular, ode, poem, art, history and so on, we are speaking in the Roman tongue. When we understand law, the courts, jurists, lawyers, and justice, we are again indebted to Rome. When people speak French, Spanish, Romanian, and even English, they are speaking a form of Latin which was filtered through local tongues into modern language.
When men write histories, novels, satires and plays; we have Roman precedents. When we view the majesty of the Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church, we are seeing a direct descendent of Rome. When we study architecture, plumbing, the arts, sculpture and music, again Rome (through Greece) was in the vanguard. Finally, our politics owes much to Roman precedent. It's not by accident the modern Senates, Assemblies, Emperors, leaders, Presidents and all the panoply of modern government was first tried out in Rome.
Thus it is right that we should study the greatest civilization that ever was on the earth before our own. This function I give to this blog. It will proceed slowly, but I hope to raise an edifice that will be worthy of the civilization that it studies. It can never be fully encompassed. It's too large and too varied. But if I am granted the time to finish this project, then the civilization on the Tiber River will have a new life in a new age in a new medium. We will study history, military history, politics, language, beliefs, culture, religions, justice, slavery, the arts and much more on this site.
