We are in the European Union: the heir to the Roman empire?
It falls short, because, in addition to the EU, the heirs of the Roman Empire are those of the Byzantine Empire – remember Putin exhibiting a Roman amphora from the Black Sea? – and, finally, the Caliphate, erected on the ruins left by Rome.
Well, I don’t know if Muslims appreciate them.
Because only the Christian heirs of Rome – and you are right about that: that is the EU – still identify with the empire. The EU begins, remember, with the Treaty of Rome…
But you British prefer your empire instead of the Roman one, which today is the EU.
And it is no coincidence that the Protestant Reformation against the authority of Rome triumphed in regions, such as England or Scandinavia, that were furthest away from or outside the Roman Empire and that is why they are today the least integrated into the EU or have abandoned it.
Is life better within an empire?
And the Romans are the best at proving it. They did it so well that we inherited the idea of ??empire as positive. And the English and the French –Napoleon dreams of himself as Caesar– raise statues to the Gauls or British resisters to the empire of Rome; but they also imitate its architecture and maintain a love-hate relationship with its heritage.
And Hispania feels now proud of Numancia, now the Roman homeland of Trajan.
We still feel that ambivalence today when we think about Rome: was its empire roads, baths, architecture, civilization… or gladiators, slaves, torture and lions in the arena?
Does the empire give us aqueducts or did it only enslave us when we were free people?
That tension between empire as civilization or as retrograde submission endures and makes Rome continue to fascinate us.
Without a national Church facing Rome, like the Anglican Church, is there no independence?
There is another previous issue and that is that Christianity acts on the heritage of Rome in a contradictory tension: on the one hand, it allows it to survive as an empire by unifying it, but, on the other, it distorts its essence. Without gods Rome is not understood; With Christianity, Rome endures, yes, but not the same.
What is difficult to understand about Rome today?
We are more materialistic than the Romans and it is difficult for us to conceive their intimate and daily relationship with their gods, from those of their homes, their dead relatives, to those of the smallest detail of their daily life.
The goddess Barbata made them grow beards and Fluonia made them menstruate.
The Romans thus found ways to mediate between the supernatural and the human.
The Romans did not believe in God: they negotiated with their gods at every moment.
And Christianity and the materialism in which we have been educated prevent us from understanding today that enormous difference with respect to them.
Don’t you see the Roman Empire still fighting today in Ukraine and Palestine?
Palestine today is not called Judea, because the Romans changed its name after the Jewish revolts and without the submission of the Jews to Rome and its legions after terrible wars, today’s wars in the Middle East and how they reverberate throughout the planet cannot be understood.
How difficult to see pax in the Roman legacy!
It is like trying to discover the Roman statue from 2,000 years ago under the paint with which each new culture and each generation has been repainting it at their convenience to finally find the truth; but I try.
Does history repeat itself or at least rhyme?
But what happened doesn’t have to be relevant today to be interesting to us.
Why should we care, then?
Because it shows us the infinite ways of being human beyond our own, which we Westerners believe are unique.
How to enjoy the infinite diversity of humanity in the barbarism of the Romans?
It is true that they ritualized murder and torture for entertainment and blessed slavery, because to them they were not obviously immoral. Look at the Coliseum…
Holy temple of martyrdom?
We don’t even know for sure if Christians were thrown to the lions there; But she will not understand Rome if she does not try to see it like the Romans: the Colosseum is the place where any citizen judges – with the gods – the criminals who debate there.
I raise my thumb, then, towards the sky.
Rome began as just a band of criminals who gathered among hills and swamps; but they knew how to organize themselves in such a way that they came to dominate from Scotland to the Sahara and from the Atlantic to Arabia.
How did they achieve it? Organization?
Developing a militarism as simple as it was effective: they were simply better than anyone else at killing, because they were the most disciplined at dying; and they never – ever – admitted defeat. I’ll summarize it in one image…
¡Rome conquers! Does Rome rule?
Graffiti from 2,000 years ago appeared in the Arabian Desert that still reads: “The Romans always win.”
