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Roman Empire had pretty tolerant culture as well...
by jkot 11y ago
Roman Empire had pretty tolerant culture as well...
- btilly 11y agoThe Roman Empire was traditionally willing to tolerate you if you were willing to worship the Emperor as a god. This version of tolerance famously didn't work out very well for Jews and Christians. Particularly since they were OK with private human sacrifice and public executions for entertainment. We owe a lot to the Roman Empire. But I wouldn't romanticize it too much.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoOwe? A thousand years of stagnation? A repressive regime that enslaved half the world for the benefit of a handful of their own rich?
- paganel 11y agoWhat did the Romans ever do for us? In all seriousness, though, we tend to ignore how advanced the Roman civilization was compared to the "barbaric" ones outside of its borders. For example, when the Romans invaded Dacia around year 106 they created a new capital, at Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulpia_Traiana_Sarmizegetusa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulpia_Traiana_Sarmizegetusa), which became a proper Roman city, with an amphitheatre, a forum, several temples, Roman-built villas. The Romans evacuated Dacia and its capital around year 270, and then everything collapsed. Around Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa writing just vanished, for the next 800 years or so there are no archaeological finds involving written texts (either in stone or on the buildings' walls). Stone churches started to get built around year 1100-1200, many of them using stone from the Roman ruins. Theater as an art form would only return to the region around year 1600-1700, that's almost 1500 years after the Romans had left.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoThat makes me wonder what the Romans DID to those people, to blast them back to the stone age.