The last Romans are still around • Hacker News Board

Re: The last Romans are still around

#41

Post by FergusArgyll » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 10:47 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #18

coldtea wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't glorify Rome too much. It was a slavery based society that progressed sciences, technology and civilization little from what they inherited from the Mesopotamian's/Greeks. It progressed civic life, institutions, law, infrastructure, and other things, a lot. Modern law is a heavy percentage ancient roman law in basis. Slavery-based society doesn't say much for 2 millenia ago. Most where. The US had slavery unt…

> forced prison labor I'd rather work than be in a cell.

You should read a day in the life of ivan denisovich. In my understanding, the whole book is making your point

Re: The last Romans are still around

#42

Post by quibono » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 10:48 PM UTC

Shitty-kitty wrote: post #34

quibono wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a slavery based society As opposed to the Greeks, Parthians, Ptolemaic Egypt and Judea? Unless you mean "fully dependent on slave labour" - then I guess we can mention Sparta and Athens. > that progressed sciences, technology and civilization little from what they inherited from the Mesopotamian's/Greeks What does "little" mean in this context? This is a very fuzzy concept but this doesn't sound right.

Sparta is known for little other than their military prowess, which was a necessity for managing their much larger slave population. Athens had a rather strange system of slavery. The majority of slaves, owned by State, earned wages and worked and lived unattended. It was much more similar to indentured-servitude.

My point was that Sparta was far more dependent on slave labour for its existence than either Rome or Athens.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#43

Post by TheCoelacanth » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 10:49 PM UTC

Shitty-kitty wrote: post #36

beloch wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Go stand in the Hagia Sophia and tell me the Romans did little to improve architecture and engineering. - I won't defend the Roman record on slavery, but I will point out that the Greeks (particularly the Spartans) were slave societies too. - The Greeks were significantly more xenophobic and sexist than the Romans. If you washed up on the shores of ancient Greece, you could never have become a citizen. The Romans w…

Sparta is not exactly known as the pinnacle of civilization. As for the rest of your comment, you make some good points.

Sparta is quite possibly the pinnacle of horribleness for civilization, which is why I think they emphasized that it particularly was a slave society (80%+ slaves and a majority of the remainder were non-citizens).

Re: The last Romans are still around

#44

Post by flir » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 10:49 PM UTC

Shitty-kitty wrote: post #23

comrade1234 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

REG: "All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?" To me, what would suck the most is living in a place after the Romans where you can see signs of their civilization but you're living a rural peasant life.

Brewing alcohol was known to hunter-gatherers. Irrigation, sanitation and water-systems were invented in Mesopotamia (as were cities). Medicine/education, that's the Greeks.

> Medicine/education, that's the Greeks

Egyptians, Shirley?

(Although they're such abstract concepts, I'm sure everyone had them to some degree).

Re: The last Romans are still around

#45

Post by fcatalan » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 10:51 PM UTC

My grandfather was a smith in deep rural Spain. He made and fixed many roman ploughs, well into the 70s. They were called that because they were pretty much the same tool the Romans used.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#46

Post by adolph » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 10:52 PM UTC

dpe82 wrote: post #37

epolanski wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every modern law system has its roots in Roman one.

> *English Common Law* has entered the chat

This brings to mind the wonderful Econtalk episode about Bruno Leoni [0]. The beginning of the podcast describes his untimely passing, which almost seems a Cohen brothers movie plot.

  So, we pore over Supreme Court cases on the First Amendment, for example, to 
  try to interpret what tests we will use to determine whether something is 
  going to be unconstitutional law. Leoni didn't want that. He argued that--and 
  again, he was proud of the Roman law contribution. He said that the Roman 
  jurist was a sort of scientist: that the object of his research was a 
  solution to cases that citizens submitted to him for study. So, an 
  industrialist or a scientist might look to a physicist to engineer a 
  technical problem. So, private Roman law was something to be described or 
  discovered, not something to be enacted. So, over time, these principles 
  emerge.

0. https://www.econtalk.org/the-underrated-bruno-leoni-with-mic...

Re: The last Romans are still around

#47

Post by Insanity » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 11:12 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #14

Insanity wrote: post #2

Just wait for Hollywood to create a film about Roman mythology and not cast a single Roman! But less tongue-in-cheek, the other thing is that the legacy of the Romans is pretty much all around us. The Roman Calendar (with July and August both referencing a Roman leader), the Latin alphabet (with the additional letters like 'y' being added later on to support Greek), the roads we can travel, etc.

It's not only July and August; January, May, June, and Mars, are named after Roman gods; February and April after Roman rituals; and September to December after Roman numerals (7 to 10th month, as they were when the calendar first started).

Yup exactly :) I named July/August for the connection to real people, but yeah it’s pretty much all around us.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#48

Post by coldtea » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 11:40 PM UTC

Shitty-kitty wrote: post #29

coldtea wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't glorify Rome too much. It was a slavery based society that progressed sciences, technology and civilization little from what they inherited from the Mesopotamian's/Greeks. It progressed civic life, institutions, law, infrastructure, and other things, a lot. Modern law is a heavy percentage ancient roman law in basis. Slavery-based society doesn't say much for 2 millenia ago. Most where. The US had slavery unt…

Slavery was legal in most society's 2 millennia ago but most society's were not built to be depended on slavery the way it was in Sparta, Rome and the American South.

They swept it under the carpet, keeping the benefits, but keeping it a side part of their economy. Kind of like a modern country depending on unprotected labor and even child labor in the third world for its minerals or even for its Nikes.

And a lot the later 19th-20th century "englightened" countries that didn't have explicit slavery in their midst, have enslaved and exploited whole countries as colonies.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#49

Post by coldtea » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 11:44 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #18

coldtea wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't glorify Rome too much. It was a slavery based society that progressed sciences, technology and civilization little from what they inherited from the Mesopotamian's/Greeks. It progressed civic life, institutions, law, infrastructure, and other things, a lot. Modern law is a heavy percentage ancient roman law in basis. Slavery-based society doesn't say much for 2 millenia ago. Most where. The US had slavery unt…

> forced prison labor I'd rather work than be in a cell.

I'd rather have a civilized prison system with human conditions, instead of an medieval revenge, profiteering, racism and exclusion, a prison-labor complex, and the death penalty - all created, ran, and cheered by bigoted Old Testament-types of human scum.

Especially if I get far far worse crime outcomes than countries with much healthier prison systems.

But, hey, that's just me.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#50

Post by rob74 » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 11:45 PM UTC

I'm a bit surprised that the "people from modern Rome" only got an honorable mention. After all, Rome still sees itself as the successor of the Roman Empire. When first visiting it, I was surprised to see the famous SPQR (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPQR) acronym all over the place - on trash cans, manhole covers etc. etc.