Roads
The old proverb “all roads lead to Rome” (usually interpreted as “many paths may lead one to the same goal”) stems from the fact that originally they sort of did, or rather they came from Rome.
In Britain there were no roads prior to arrival of the Romans who created a network of straight, solid highways built on foundations of clay, chalk and gravel with larger flat stones laid on top.
These roads were slightly raised in the middle, sloping down to either side so that rain and surface water would drain off into ditches to either side.
It's not merely the concept of roads that we got from the Romans, however; twenty five A roads and several B roads in use in the UK today are overlying original Roman roads, while many other modern roads follow very similar paths to those they created.
Central heating
British Winters (and sometimes Summers too) would be all but unbearable for many of us were it not for our hard-working boilers and radiators.
Roman central heating worked slightly differently, but the goal was the same. A ground level furnace was used to create hot air which circulated beneath a thin floor raised up on pillars of tiles – this system was called a hypocaust. Not only was this central heating, it was underfloor heating!
Smoke and fumes from the furnace were channelled off via flues so as not to pollute the heated space above. The same method was used to heat the waters in bath houses (yes, the Romans gave us hot baths too).
Concrete
Opus caementicium (Roman concrete) was made from quicklime, pozzolana and an aggregate of pumice.
Its widespread use in many Roman structures was a key part of what is now known as the Roman Architectural Revolution.
Although concrete was used for many things (roads included), one of the most impressive applications was the construction of the 4535 metric ton, 21 foot (6.4 metre) thick dome at the Pantheon in Rome, which can still be visited.
Today, historians and scientists alike are looking deeper than ever into Roman concrete's secrets because it seems it may actually have been better than the stuff we use today. The Pantheon's dome is nearly two thousand years old after all, while some modern concrete constructions are already crumbling.
The calendar
That's right, without the Romans you wouldn’t even know what month it was, let alone day.
Well, maybe you would but they'd be called something different, and there might be less of them. The Julian calendar, introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BC, was a reform of the Roman calendar, taking effect shortly after the Roman conquest of Egypt.
The Julian calendar split the year for the first time into 365 days, divided into 12 months, with a leap day added to February every four years. It was revised in 1582 to the Gregorian calendar (in use today) which is actually only 0.002% more accurate.
Flushing toilets and sewers
In Rome large pots were often left on street corners for people to urinate into so that the liquid could be collected and used in the tanning of animal hides and in cleaning (no, really).
In some multi-storey dwellings a system of pipes channelled faeces down to ground level where the Night Soil Men could collect it and take it to be used as fertiliser. Roman public toilets where rather more sophisticated, though admittedly not nearly so useful for industries hoping to capitalise on freely available human waste.
Ancient Roman public bathrooms consisted of long stone benches with holes every few feet for people to seat themselves over. Beneath the toilets flowed a system of plumbing that rivalled modern day cities; constant running water flushed away the waste into an enormous sewage system called the Cloaca Maxima (Great Drain).
This system was made possible by several aqueducts (another Roman innovation, of course) that flowed into the city, giving its citizens a constant supply of fresh running water.
Source: https://www.history.co.uk/shows/ancient-impossible/articles/5-things-the-romans-gave-us
Rome transitioned from a republic to an empire after power shifted away from a representative democracy to a centralized imperial authority, with the emperor holding the most power.
The Roman Republic was founded in 509 B.C.E. after the last Etruscan king that ruled Rome was overthrown. Rome’s next government served as a representative democracy in the form of a republic. Initially, Rome’s wealthiest families, the patricians, held power and only they could hold political or religious offices. Everyone else was considered plebeian, and no member of this group could hold office. Over a period of nearly 200 years, however, the plebeians fought for and gained power within the government.
At the heart of the Roman Republic was the Senate. The Senate advised on matters pertaining to rules governing the city and population. In the republic, members of the patrician class served as advisers to the other governing bodies of the republic. Although the Senate did not formally make laws, the prestige of its members gave the Senate great influence over Rome’s law-making bodies.
The Senate lasted as a sole governing body for the republic for only a brief time, lasting from the republic’s founding in 509 B.C.E. until 494 B.C.E., when a strike orchestrated by the plebeians resulted in the establishment of the Concilium Plebis, or the Councilof the Plebs. This gave the plebeians a voice in the government. As a result, new legislative, or law-making, bodies of the Roman Republic were formed. Called assemblies, these legislative bodies shared power in the following ways:
Leading the republic were two consuls who were elected by legislative assemblies. They served for one year, presided over the Roman Senate, and commanded the Roman military. Though their power was somewhat limited by the establishment of other magistrate positions, the consuls were effectively the heads of state.
The republic stood strong for several centuries. However, as Rome’s power and territory expanded, internal conflicts began to emerge as citizens and families struggled for power. For example, in the 1st century B.C.E., the famous Roman orator Marcus Cicero uncovered a plot by a Roman senator, Lucius Catiline, to overthrow the Roman government. Some citizens, such as the Gracchus brothers, attempted to institute government reforms and social reforms to help the poor. Ultimately, factions emerged (loyal to either the patrician or plebeian classes or to a specific military general), hostilities erupted, and a series of civil wars plagued the republic. During these civil wars, a prominent general and statesmen named Julius Caesar began gaining significant power. He commanded the loyalty of the soldiers in his army and enjoyed access to substantial wealth after conquering the province of Gaul.
To read the whole National Geographic article, click HERE.
It’s easy to assume the ancient Romans always had an empire, that it was the default from the mythical days of Romulus and Remus, to the eventual collapse in 476 A.D.
In actuality, Rome spent less time as a fully fledged empire than it did as a monarchy in the very early days (753 B.C. to 509 B.C.), and as a republic in the centuries before empire (509 B.C. to 27 B.C.). It became an empire after Augustus (Julius Caesar’s adopted son) established autocratic rule, effectively ending one of the world’s earliest experiments with representative democracy.
For another half a millennia, the Romans spread across the then-known world. Their empire stretched from the borders of Scotland in the UK (marked by the famous Hadrian’s Wall), all the way to the edges of modern day Iraq. Eventually though, repeated invasions from so-called barbarians, intense economic strain, and mismanagement of resources/populations caused the empire to collapse.
It wouldn’t be until the Renaissance (beginning roughly 1300 A.D.) that Europe would see anywhere near the level of art and innovation experienced under the Romans. And for the environment, Europe wouldn’t see a comparable impact on it until the start of the Industrial Revolution!
Source: https://www.theecoexperts.co.uk/blog/roman-environmental-impact#:~:text=Mary%20Beard%2C%20classicist-,
Deforestation
%20in%20the%20Roman%20Empire,
we%20associate%20with%20deforestation%20today.
Trade Routes of the Roman Empire. As this map demonstrates, the Romans were able to harness an extensive system of roads and waterways to import and export both practical and luxury goods. (attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY 4.0 license)
Defined by the men in their lives, women in ancient Rome were valued mainly as wives and mothers. Although some were allowed more freedom than others, there was always a limit, even for the daughter of an emperor.
Not much information exists about Roman women in the first century. Women were not allowed to be active in politics, so nobody wrote about them. Neither were they taught how to write, so they could not tell their own stories.
Source: https://www.pbs.org/empires/romans/empire/women.html
Most world history books feature the successes of the Roman Empire during the first and second centuries. During the third and fourth centuries, they turn to the events leading up to the empire's collapse. Explanations of the Roman Empire's decline and fall often cite external military threats, governmental failure and instability, people fleeing the empire due to diseases and plagues, rapid inflation, and overall moral decay. Insufficient attention is given to the underlying economic problems that were the long-term causes of the empire's collapse. At the height of the ancient world's wealth, the Roman economy was driven largely by notable growth in agriculture. However, over time, an increasing number of goods and services produced by peasants, artisans, merchants, and others had moved onto the list of taxable items. The consequential increase in the costs of producing and transacting pushed prices upward. Roman suppliers responded by slowing or stopping the production of items that were priced artificially low. Higher taxes, combined with unstable money, discouraged commercial transactions. Roman traders and their foreign partners found it difficult to plan ahead across the empire, and uncertainty swirled around governments, thus making long-term investments in Rome increasingly risky. The time of the Roman Empire is an important period in world history that illustrates ways in which governments can and do support economic growth, but also ways in which they fail.
Source: National Council for the Social Studies. 8555 Sixteenth Street #500, Silver Spring, MD 20910. Tel: 800-683-0812; Tel: 301-588-1800; Fax: 301-588-2049; e-mail: membership@ncss.org; Web site: http://www.socialstudies.org
Traditionally, Roman society was extremely rigid. By the first century, however, the need for capable men to run Rome’s vast empire was slowly eroding the old social barriers.
The social structure of ancient Rome was based on heredity, property, wealth, citizenship and freedom. It was also based around men: women were defined by the social status of their fathers or husbands. Women were expected to look after the houses and very few had any real independence.
Dressed to impress
The boundaries between the different classes were strict and legally enforced: members of different classes even dressed differently. Only the emperor was allowed to wear a purple toga, while senators could wear a white toga with the latus clavus, a broad purple stripe along the edge. Equestrian togas had a narrow purple stripe (clavus augustus).
Although the classes were strictly defined, there was a lot of interaction. Slaves and some freemen worked the in homes of the upper classes, like the senators and patricians. Soldiers also mixed with their officers.
To read the full pbs article, click HERE.
Source: https://www.pbs.org/empires/romans/empire/order.html
Before we break down the ways in which the Roman Empire impacted the environment, it’s important to get an idea of how an ancient civilization could actually cause meaningful damage.
They had no electricity, no coal-guzzling factories, none of the things we typically associate with causing damage to the environment. So how did the Romans shape their world so significantly?
Well, it was quite literally the sheer scale of the empire, both in terms of logistics and the simple fact that the empire had to keep expanding in order to exist. Never before in the history of the world had an organisation of humans reached this size or prosperity.
They achieved a cosmopolitan culture that required massive amounts of land to be transformed, whether for mining, agriculture, or general infrastructure.
The speed of which the Romans changed their world was helped by things we heavily associate with them, such as their comprehensive road network.
This made it much easier and faster to organise large-scale operations and subsequently, how quickly they could impact their environment.
Source: https://www.theecoexperts.co.uk/blog/roman-environmental-impact