Understanding the Contemporary West through a Closer Study of the Roman Empire (by Oliver Merkner)

Twelve years ago, when I was perhaps five or six, I walked into a Catholic Church with Grandma in Lancaster PA. My family and I are not religious, but my Grandma is, so we always pay the respect of attending church with her when we visit. As we entered the large building, I recall being awestruck by the interior of the cathedral. I had never seen anything like it. The tall arches rose sixty feet up into the sky. The elaborate mosaics and stained-glass windows painted ancient biblical imagery from another time. And the priests and acolytes stood in unison, wearing toga-like robes and carrying imposing crosses and torches.
Looking back on the experience, it felt like I was stepping back into the period of antiquity, a time and space which was distinct from the corporate and uniform nature of the modern world. Little did I know then that this feeling on my part was actually based in fact: the unique ceremony, tradition, and architecture of the Catholic Church that so intrigued me in my young years originates not from any contemporary or current trend or architectural movement. It originates from the Roman Empire.
The towering grandiose architecture of the Church is inspired from the designs of Basilicas, which filled prominent cities across the Empire. The liturgy of the Church is often spoken in Latin, the premier language of the former empire. And the elaborate robes worn by church leaders originate from the togas and the flowing garb of upper-class Romans during later antiquity. The Catholic Church is just one element of Western society influenced by Ancient Rome. The practices, beliefs, and policy of the Roman Empire have had a significant influence on the religion, language, commerce, citizenship, and identity of Western nations in the modern day.
Religion
One of the most important elements of modern day culture that has been influenced by the Roman Empire is religion, and specifically the spread of it. As I mentioned earlier, Catholicism and Christianity were influenced by the Roman Empire in terms of aesthetics, and both spread under the Roman empire, eventually becoming the official religion of all Romans. But another religion whose worldwide reach can be traced back to Rome was Judaism. Before the Roman Empire, the Jewish people almost lived exclusively in the Levante, in the Kingdom of Judea, now modern day Palestine. As the Romans began expanding across the Eastern Mediterranean, Judea was conquered. Judea would become a “client kingdom,” a kingdom that would appear to be independent but would in fact be dependent on Rome; later, Judea would become a province in the mid-first century.
The spread of Judaism outside of the Levante can largely be traced to the Judea’s conquest by the Romans and their brutal subjection of the Israelites. Jewish revolts of 70 and 135 AD were crushed by the Romans and resulted in “tens of thousands of Jews being sold into slavery…who were brought to the west” (Price 5). Indeed the Jewish Diaspora was “largely a result of Roman enslavement” (Price 4) , which displaced hundreds of thousands of Jewish people to every province of the empire. These involuntary migrants joined Jewish merchants and urban folk who had flocked to Eastern port cities well before the Roman conquest (Price 4). This total diaspora from the First Century BC to the Second AD resulted in a population of seven million Jewish residents across the entire empire, which included a sprawling domain that ran from modern day Scotland to Iran. The population dispersal led to the establishment of Jewish communities across Europe, Africa, and Asia, making Judaism a worldwide religion. Today Judaism has 15 million followers worldwide, 6 million of whom reside in the US, a central Western nation.
The dispersal of the Jewish population across the empire created the conditions for the Jewish religion to spread not just regionally, but worldwide to the point where it is today. Today Judaism is a key religion in the west and its important role in Western society today can be traced back to its spread under the Roman Empire.
Language
A second way that Rome has influenced Western society today is through language. The Roman Empire incorporated a wide variety of diverse languages within its boundaries, but to communicate universally, Latin and Greek were adopted as Lingua Franca. Although Latin was the official language, Greek was also widely spoken across the entire empire, and specifically the East. In fact, Greek became the primary language responsible for the spread of Christianity. Paul the Apostle, spread Christianity across a “unified roman…geographical region” which adopted the “lingua franca” of Greek (Ehrensperger 10). By speaking the common language of Greek, Paul was able to expand Christianity out of the Levant to a diverse range of groups and ethnicities, demonstrating the powerful ability of language to unite people even as it subjugated them.
This concept of an imperial-scale universal language which allows for the communication across differing groups began in the Roman Empire, with the widespread use of Greek and Latin. This is seen today in the modern West, where both English and Spanish allow people of all different races, ethnicities, and religions to communicate with relative ease. On the one hand, this universalizing of language allows for increased trade, ease in moving across land-masses, and in the brightest of possible lights it allows for the exchange of ideas and cultural values. On the other hand, of course, the universalizing of language eliminates localized languages within nations. Words specific to specific experiences of existence are squelched–and often lost entirely–in the service of extending a common language. Nuanced understandings often give way to a bigger and more generic understanding of place, time, and experience. There are benefits to this, and there are consequences to this, but what cannot be unclear is the important role the Roman Empire played in the development of a common language across much of the globe.
Commerce
Another way which the Roman Empire has influenced modern Western nations today is through its extensive commercial activities and capitalistic urban culture. Once the Romans had established themselves as the primary power in the Mediterranean they sought to expand their trade and influence globally. In the 1st century AD, Rome took control Egypt from Cleopatra, incorporating it as a province (Fitzpatrick, 31). Roman trade in the red sea “accelerated markedly” (Fitzpatrick 31), allowing the Romans access to the Indian Ocean trade, expanding their economic influence to the East where they gained access to the spices and luxury goods of Southeast Asia.
The wealth that came from these far reaching trade routes mostly flowed into the large urban centers of the Empire, which were built off of a market economy. Roman “towns” functioned as centers of “exchange,” and they were instrumental in the trade and economic growth of Eurasia at the time (Jones 51). Indeed, cities such as Alexandria, Constantinople, Milan, and even Rome itself were outlets of economic activity across the empire.
As a result of the capitalist nature of these cities, a sharp divide developed between the rich (those with access to capital) and poor (those without access). While the rich lavished in expensive villas and urban estates, poorer classes were cramped into large tenement homes called insulae (Neumeister 26). These insulae were built as cheaply as possible and were very crowded, creating a low living standard for poor Romans that further prevented them from meaningfully pursuing access to capital, power, and social or political currency.
This commerce-oriented economy and urban complexity can be seen widely in Western nations today. The “economic imperialism” practiced by Rome in its trade practices abroad mirrors how Western nations such as the US and UK have economic investment in the Middle East. Indeed, just as they were important in Rome, Western cities today are also centers of commerce and finance, such as New York City, which is the capital of the stock market. The most telling symbol of a city is of course its skyscrapers, its hulking and towering buildings: just as the wealthy and powerful in Rome built their buildings toward the heavens and further from the ground and the poor who walked and dirtied and busied themselves in the streets, so too do cities today soar higher and further away from the poor. Likewise, the higher these buildings go, the further those in the top floors can see: the imperialist reach of Rome could extend as far as it could see, and today this very same impulse drives the vision of tycoons and titans of wealth and power in cities of the West.
Citizenship
A final way in which Rome influenced the modern day is through citizenship and identity. The Romans overwhelmed and absorbed a sweeping and diverse variety of ethnic and religious groups in their claim to power and control, and over time they homogenized these people and groups into citizens of one cohesive empire. Many recently conquered groups, such as Libyans, Egyptians, and Carthaginians, eventually adopted Latin and Greek, often with a unique accent or dialect (Millar 3). Despite being conquered, these groups began to assimilate with a “Roman identity” while still maintaining their cultural roots. This “Identity”, expanded in the early 3rd century AD when emperors attempted to “maximize the amount of people” to whom “Roman citizenship applied” (Mathisen 1003). This incorporated many different groups into the Roman sphere, building a concept of universal citizenship despite background. Around one hundred years later, this newly found universal “Roman” identity began to be replaced with a universal “Christian identity”. During the 4th century AD Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity, promoting its widespread adoption throughout the Empire. By the 5th century, it was both the official and majority religion of the empire, and people began to identify with their Christianity more than anything else. Self identity at the time was defined by personal conviction and self sacrifice under the tutelage of Christ’s message (Stroumsa 4). Again, as with Roman citizenship, this identity transcended ethnic divides. This construction of citizenship and later Christian identity lives on in the West today. Prominent Western centers such as the US and Europe incorporate many different ethnic and racial identities into a singular citizenship, a concept which is instrumental to a modern day liberal democracy, ideas of citizenship and common unity connecting people across a far-flung empire. As with identity, which transformed into Christianity for many Romans during the late empire, religions such as Christianity still serve as a form of “citizenship,” transcending boundaries. Christianity today is practiced in all parts of the world, from Bolivia, to Nigeria, and the US, and despite these areas being very different ethnically and racially, they all find unity under the same religion, just as Christians had once done under the auspices of Rome.
Oftentimes when history is assessed to contrive what period had the most effect on the world today, the 19th and 20th are always viewed as the key years of events that gave us modern Western society. But it is fascinating to understand that many of the key tenets of Western society today originated from ancient times rather than prominent history of the 20th century. Ideas of “universal citizenship” based on a set of ideas rather than sole ethnicity find their roots in the Roman Empire, a concept so central to the democracy of the Western world today, which prides itself on the liberal nature of citizenship. The urban market-based economy centering around international trade which we associate with the globalist superpowers of the modern day, originated with the Roman Empire from their economic expansion into the east. And the two of the three Abrahamic religions, can trace their spread and prominence to the period of the Roman Empire.
As I looked up to the top of the large encompassing arches and pillars of that cathedral in my Grandma’s church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania twelve years ago, it dawned on me that our society wouldn’t be where it is today without the events and actions of the past. And I felt very small and insignificant in that church, in that moment. I believe now this may well have been the very point of architecture like this, and it is the Romans to whom we give thanks for such an experience.
 
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