| | ::Yes, they did, I agree. The ''Athenian half-century'' is unique and wonderful and completely unchallenged as a period of intellectual achievement. Beside the Greeks, everyone is left behind for so much packed into so little time. But we can't say that the Romans had no intellectual achievements. The work of St Augustine, of Gregory the Great, of Justinian, to name just three, have had as big an impact on European thought as Plato or Aristotle who did not gain much traction until the Renaissance. There are as many copies of Cicero, Ovid, Tacitus, Boethius, Marcus Aurelius, Pliny, Horace, Catullus, on shelves (mine anyway) as there are of the Greeks. The whole intellectual weight of the Medieval western church rested on a Roman intellectual base, in its organisation, its ecclesiastical laws, its language and, of course, the centre of its authority. | | ::Yes, they did, I agree. The ''Athenian half-century'' is unique and wonderful and completely unchallenged as a period of intellectual achievement. Beside the Greeks, everyone is left behind for so much packed into so little time. But we can't say that the Romans had no intellectual achievements. The work of St Augustine, of Gregory the Great, of Justinian, to name just three, have had as big an impact on European thought as Plato or Aristotle who did not gain much traction until the Renaissance. There are as many copies of Cicero, Ovid, Tacitus, Boethius, Marcus Aurelius, Pliny, Horace, Catullus, on shelves (mine anyway) as there are of the Greeks. The whole intellectual weight of the Medieval western church rested on a Roman intellectual base, in its organisation, its ecclesiastical laws, its language and, of course, the centre of its authority. |
| | :::I am in no way meaning to denigrate the Greeks, just to argue that there is a recognised intellectual component in the Roman Empire that is alive today - especially noticeable in the development of the Christian Church and the Law. [[User:AlanE|AlanE]] 18:00, 19 February 2009 (EST) | | :::I am in no way meaning to denigrate the Greeks, just to argue that there is a recognised intellectual component in the Roman Empire that is alive today - especially noticeable in the development of the Christian Church and the Law. [[User:AlanE|AlanE]] 18:00, 19 February 2009 (EST) |