Why Do You Like Rome?

[TwoMinutesHate]

There are a lot of knowledgeable people here who are deeply interested in Roman history.

 

My question is: What got you interested in Roman history? Why do you like it? What fascinates you?

[Dominus Rex]

I really don't know why I personally like Rome. My dad likes Roman history, and I guess he just sort of passed it on to me.

[Gaius Paulinus Maximus]

i just find everything about Rome so interesting, the place , the people, the achievments, the culture, the army, the battles, the famous men of rome over the years like scipio africanus, marius, sulla, pompey, caesar, cicero, augustus , tiberius etc etc, the list goes on and on.

 

I just think its a pretty amazing story of its rise to the most powerful city in the world to its eventual decline.

my favorite period in roman history is probably the late republic to the end of the 1st centuryAD

[Q Valerius Scerio]

It's the best attested period of the ancient world, thus we can get far more detail out of the Romans than any other ancient culture in the world.

[Rameses the Great]

The way they created an empire and brought it to a level that had never been seen before. Taking lands, politics, the Senate, conflicts, infrastructure, etc was amazing. Not to mention Roman engineering, which is unrivaled even today. Basically you name it, they have it just on a better scale.

[Ursus]

I find something in the Roman soul that is appealing to me.

[Ginevra]

I like it because it's the capital of my nation.

Because is Roma Caput Mundi isnt it?

Because there you can feel like you're walking through the pages of time..

...and because all these make me proud of being Italian.

[Lost_Warrior]

If I told you the real reason you might think I'm crazy

 

So lets just say, it fascinates me. Especially the cultural stuff, how people lived and worked, the religion, the various knowledge and technology. I am especailly interested in Roman medicine (thanks to Pertinax )

[Pantagathus]

For me it's quite the same as for Q Valerius Scerio. I love the entire ancient world from the Neolithic all the way until the fall of Rome.

 

Rome of course stands out because it represents the culmination of human greatness during a crutial moment in human history.

[Lex]

Mostly just reading the amazing stories of some of characters, especially achieving things against heavy odds.

Edited July 22, 2010 by Lex

[caldrail]

I guess I was inspired by all those hollywood epics I used to watch on tv when I was a kid. I saw this huge empire, greedy, decadent, all-powerful, yet strangely vulnerable toward the end.

 

Face it, roman history is the most fantastic soap opera ever. Its got everything. Best all, it happened. For real.

[Gini]

Difficult to explain but I feel very emotionallyconnected to the Romans - as well as finding them fascinating. The Chinese Empire may have been as advanced and influential in the East but Ihave absolutely no interest in it - so its not the levelof civislisation. - it's something else. The fall of the Western Empire makes me feel very upset and I can feel this haunting sense of loss. Quite emotional and yes of course I'm female

[Horatius]

When Rome fell it really WAS the end of civilisation . Everything since has just been Barbarian successor states, including Europe and the Americas IMHO. It is no coincidence that our architecture, laws and governmental structures are modeled after Rome to some degree to this very day. The plebian/patrician divide still exists and is handled much worse today. Technology for all it's comforts and ease does not in the end adress the fundamental human condition.The slums of Rome and the slums of East St. Louis are not so very different.The army of Great Britain today consists of 90,000, ...in one day in 216 B.C. at Cannae 80,000 Romans were slaughtered and yet Rome persevered. You must believe in something to survive. Romans survived, prospered and inspired for many centuries.That's why I love Rome at least. Imperium SINE FINI !

Edited July 21, 2006 by Horatius

[phil25]

Their practicality and their success - unlike the Greeks who had great ideas but no unity and (to me at least) an "effete" quality.

 

I think some of the stories and characters are great too - both the myths - Horatius at the bridge and all that; and the historical - Caesar; some of the Emperors.

 

I grew up and lived until I was 18, in a Roman colonia, with a gateway still astride the street in which I lived, and the pillars and pavement of the main north/south street 8 feet below my home in a cellar. Inevitably, I asked questions.

 

I liked the pictures I saw in anything from Classics Illustrated's version of the Gallic Wars; to reconstructions of Hadrian's wall by Alan Sorrell. Ladybird books also did a volume on Agricola.

 

Like others movies - Ben Hur, Spartacus, Cleopatra all came out around the time I was 10 and fired my imagination. Most of all I was amazed by Fall of the Roman Empire and the forum set.

 

I has two classics masters at school who, notwithstanding my poor ability at Latin, noted my interest and knowledge of ancient history even at age 11. One, an anglican vicar, encouraged me to join the local archaeological society where I was fortunate enough to hear Sir Ian Richmond lecture on his excavations at Inchtuthil, the legionary fortress in Scotland.

 

At 14 or so, I helped with excavations of a tower base and the east gate of the colonia. Around the same time i paid my first visit to Hadrian's Wall and fell deeply in love with Houseteads, Chesters and Corbridge (Vindolanda - then referred to as Chesterholm - had yet to be exploited.

 

Rome is not my only interest in history - I range wider - but it remains a first love and I still collect books on the late republic and early history; have a collection of photos of portrait busts of emperors I have taken on my travels; and have long toyed with writing historical novels set in early imperial times.

 

So, like Achilles in the Styx, I suppose I was immersed in things Roman from an early stage in my life and the interest has stuck.

 

Phil

[Gini]

Where di you grow up Phil? It sounds fascinating