Are we in the European Union: the heir of the Roman Empire?
It falls short, because, in addition to the EU, the heirs of the Roman Empire are those of the Byzantine Empire – remembers Putin displaying a Roman amphora from the Black Sea? – and 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 this: this is the EU – still identify with the empire. The EU begins, remember, with the Treaty of Rome…
But you Brits prefer your empire to the Roman one, today the EU.
And it is no coincidence that the Protestant reform before the authority of Rome triumphed in the regions, such as England or Scandinavia, which were further away or outside the Roman empire and which are today the least integrated in the EU or already they have abandoned
Is it better to live in an empire?
And the Romans are the best at proving it. They did it so well that we inherit the idea of ??empire as positive. And the English and the French – Napoleon dreams that he is Caesar – raise statues to the resistant Gauls or Britons in the Roman Empire; but they also imitate its architecture and maintain a love-hate relationship with their heritage.
And Hispania now feels proud of Numancia, now as Trajan’s Roman homeland.
Ambivalence that we still feel today when we think of Rome: was the empire roads, baths, architecture, civilization… or gladiators, slaves, torture and lions in the arena?
Did the empire give us aqueducts or did it only enslave when we were free people?
This tension between empire as civilization or as retrograde submission endures and makes Rome continue to fascinate us.
Without a national Church against Rome, like the Anglican, is there no independence?
There is another issue and that is that Christianity acts on Rome’s heritage in a contradictory tension: on the one hand, it allows it to survive as an empire by unifying it; and, on the other hand, distorts its essence. Rome cannot be understood without gods; with Christianity Rome endures, yes, but not the same.
What is it that we struggle to understand today?
We are more materialistic than the Romans and it is difficult for us to conceive of their intimate and daily relationship with their gods, from their homes, their dead relatives, to the smallest detail of their daily life.
The goddess Barbata made them grow their beards and Fluonia, their menstruation.
The Romans thus found ways to mediate between the supernatural and the human.
The Romans did not believe in God: they negotiated at every moment with their gods.
And Christianity and the materialism in which we have been educated prevent us from understanding this enormous difference today.
Don’t you see the 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 are not understood today in the Middle East and as they reverberate throughout the planet.
How difficult to see peace in the Roman legacy!
It is like trying to discover the Roman statue of 2,000 years ago under the paint with which each new culture and each generation have been repainting it at their convenience… to find the truth in the end; 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.
And so, why should we be interested?
Because it shows us the infinite ways of being human beyond our own, which we Westerners think are unique.
How can you enjoy the infinite diversity of humanity in the barbarism of the Romans?
It is true that they ritualized murder and torture as entertainment and blessed slavery, because for them it was not obviously immoral. Look at the Colosseum…
Holy temple of martyrdom?
We don’t even know for sure if the Christians were thrown to the lions there; but he will not understand Rome if he does not try to see it as the Romans do: the Colosseum is the place where any citizen judges – with the gods – the criminals who debate there.
Thumbs up to the sky, then.
Rome began as a band of criminals who clustered between 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 do 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 – never – admitted defeat. I summarize it in an image…
Rome conquers! Does Rome rule?
In the desert of Arabia, a 2,000-year-old graffiti has appeared in which you can still read: “The Romans always win”.
