Legacy of the Roman Empire

The legacy of the Roman Empire has been varied and significant, comparable to that of other hegemonic polities of world history (e.g. Persian Empire, ancient Egypt or imperial China).

   Official Romance language
  Co-official Romance language
  Unofficial Romance language
Global distribution of Romance languages:
BlueFrench; GreenSpanish; OrangePortuguese; PurpleCatalan; YellowItalian; RedRomanian

The Roman Empire itself, built upon the legacy of other cultures, has had long-lasting influence with broad geographical reach on a great range of cultural aspects, including state institutions, law, cultural values, religious beliefs, technological advances, engineering and language.

This legacy survived the demise of the empire itself (5th century AD in the West, and 15th century AD in the East) and went on to shape other civilisations, a process which continues to this day. The city of Rome was the civitas (reflected in the etymology of the word "civilisation") and connected with the actual western civilisation on which subsequent cultures built.

One main legacy is the Latin language of ancient Rome, epitomized by the Classical Latin used in Latin literature, evolved during the Middle Ages and remains in use in the Roman Catholic Church as Ecclesiastical Latin. Vulgar Latin, the common tongue used for regular social interactions, evolved simultaneously into the various Romance languages that exist today (notably Italian, Sardinian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Romanian, etc.). Although the Western Roman Empire fell in the 5th century AD, the Eastern Roman Empire continued until its conquest by the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century AD and cemented the Greek language in many parts of the Eastern Mediterranean even after the Early Muslim conquests of the 7th century AD. Although there has been a small modern revival of the Hellenistic religion with Hellenism, ancient Roman paganism was largely displaced by Roman Catholic Christianity after the 4th century AD and the Christian conversion of Roman emperor Constantine I (r. 306-337 AD). The Christian faith of the late Roman Empire continued to evolve during the Middle Ages and remains a major facet of the religion and the psyche of the modern Western world.

Ancient Roman architecture, largely indebted to ancient Greek architecture of the Hellenistic period, has influenced the architecture of the Western world, particularly during the Italian Renaissance of the 15th century. Roman law and republican politics (from the age of the Roman Republic) have left an enduring legacy, influencing the Italian city-state republics of the Medieval period as well as the early United States and other modern democratic republics. The Julian calendar of ancient Rome formed the basis of the standard modern Gregorian calendar, while Roman inventions and engineering, such as the construction of concrete domes, continued to influence various peoples after the fall of Rome. Roman models of colonialism and of warfare also became influential.

Language

Latin became the lingua franca of the early Roman Empire and later of the Western Roman Empire, while - particularly in the Eastern Roman Empire - indigenous languages such as Greek and to a lesser degree Egyptian and Aramaic language continued in use. Despite the decline of the Western Roman Empire, the Latin language continued to flourish in the very different social and economic environment of the Middle Ages, not least because it became the official language of the Roman Catholic Church. Koine Greek, which served as a lingua franca in the Eastern Empire, remains in use today as a sacred language in some Eastern Orthodox churches.

In Western and Central Europe and in parts of northern Africa, Latin retained its elevated status as the main vehicle of communication for the learned classes throughout the Middle Ages and subsequently; witness especially the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Books which had a revolutionary impact on science, such as Nicolaus Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543), were composed in Latin. This language was not supplanted for scientific purposes until the 18th century, and for formal descriptions in zoology, as well as botany - it survived to the later 20th century.[1] The modern international binomial nomenclature holds to this day: taxonomists assign a Latin or Latinized name as the scientific name of each species.

In the 21st century the Romance languages, which comprise all languages that descended from Latin, are spoken by more than 920 million people as their mother tongue, and by 300 million people as a second language, mainly in the Americas, Europe, and Africa.[2] Romance languages are either official, co-official, or significantly used in 72 countries around the world.[3][4][5][6][7][8] Of the United Nations' six official languages, two (French and Spanish) descend from Latin.

Additionally, Latin has had a great influence on both the grammar and the lexicon of West Germanic languages. Romance words make respectively 59%, 20% and 14% of English, German and Dutch vocabularies.[9][10][11] Those figures can rise dramatically when only non-compound and non-derived words are included. Accordingly, Romance words make roughly 35% of the vocabulary of Dutch.[11] Of all the loanwords in Dutch, 32.2% come directly from some form of Latin (excluding loans from Romance languages).[12]

Script

Global distribution of the Latin script.

All three official scripts of the modern European Union Latin, Greek and Cyrillic—descend from writing systems used in the Roman Empire. Today, the Latin script, the Latin alphabet spread by the Roman Empire to most of Europe, and derived from the Phoenician alphabet through an ancient form of the Greek alphabet adopted and modified by Etruscan, is the most widespread and commonly used script in the world. Spread by various colonies, trade routes, and political powers, the script has continued to grow in influence. The Greek alphabet, which had spread throughout the eastern Mediterranean region during the Hellenistic period, remained the primary script of the Eastern Roman Empire through the Byzantine Empire until its demise in the 15th century. Cyrillic scripts largely derive from the Greek.[13]

Latin literature

15th-century printed books by language.[14] The high prestige of Latin meant that that language still dominated European published discourse a millennium after the demise of the Western Roman Empire.

The Carolingian Renaissance of the 8th century rescued many works in Latin from oblivion: manuscripts transcribed at that time are our only sources for some works that later fell into obscurity once more, only to be recovered during the Renaissance: Tacitus, Lucretius, Propertius and Catullus furnish examples.[15] Other Latin writers never went out of circulation: Virgil, reinterpreted as a prophet of Christianity by the 4th century, gained the reputation of a sorcerer in the 12th century.

Cicero, in a limited number of his works, remained a model of good style, mined for quotations. Medieval Christians read Ovid allegorically, or re-imagined Seneca as the correspondent of Saint Paul. Lucan, Persius, Juvenal, Horace, Terence, and Statius survived in the continuing canon and the historians Valerius Maximus and Livy continued to be read for the moral lessons history was expected to impart.

Through the Roman Empire, Greek literature also continued to make an impact in Europe long after the Empire's fall, especially after the recovery of Greek texts from the East during the high Middle Ages and the resurgence of Greek literacy during the Renaissance. Many educated Westerners from the Renaissance up to the 20th century, for instance, read Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, originally written in Greek. Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar takes most of its material from Plutarch's biographies of Caesar, Cato, and Brutus, whose exploits were frequently discussed and debated by the literati of Shakespeare's time.

Education

Martianus Capella developed the system of the seven liberal arts that structured medieval education. Although the liberal arts were already known in Ancient Greece, it was only after Martianus that the seven liberal arts took on canonical form. His single encyclopedic work, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii "On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury", laid the standard formula of academic learning from the Christianized Roman Empire of the 5th century until the Renaissance of the 12th century.

The seven liberal arts were formed by the trivium, which included the skills of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, while arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy played part as the quadrivium.

Calendar and measurement

The modern Western calendar is a refinement of the Julian calendar, which was introduced by Julius Caesar. The calendar of the Roman Empire began with the months Ianuarius (January), Februarius (February), and Martius (March). The common tradition to begin the year on 1 January was a convention established in ancient Rome. Throughout the medieval period, the year began on 25 March, the Catholic Solemnity of the Annunciation.

Roman monk of the 5th-century, Dionysius Exiguus, devised the modern dating system of the Anno Domini (AD) era, which is based on the reckoned year of the birth of Jesus, with AD counting years from the start of this epoch, and BC denoting years before the start of the era.

The modern seven-day week follows the Greco-Roman system of planetary hours, in which one of the seven heavenly bodies of the Solar System that were known in ancient times—Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury and the Moon—is given "rulership" over each day. The Romance languages (with the exception of Portuguese, that assigns an ordinal number to five days of the week, from Monday to Friday, beginning with segunda-feira, and ending with sexta-feira) preserve the original Latin names of each day of the week, except for Sunday, which came to be called dies dominicus (Lord's Day) under Christianity.

This system for the days of the week spread to Celtic and Germanic peoples, as well as the Albanians, before the collapse of the empire, after which the names of comparable gods were substituted for the Roman deities in some languages. In Germanic languages, for instance, Thor stood in for Jupiter (Jove), yielding "Thursday" from the Latin dies Iovis, while in Albanian, native deities En and Prende were assigned to Thursday and Friday respectively.

Day Sunday
Sōl (Sun)
Monday
Luna (Moon)
Tuesday
Mars (Mars)
Wednesday
Mercurius (Mercury)
Thursday
Iuppiter (Jupiter)
Friday
Venus (Venus)
Saturday
Saturnus (Saturn)
Latin dies Sōlis dies Lūnae dies Martis dies Mercuriī dies Iovis dies Veneris dies Saturnī
Italian domenica lunedì martedì mercoledì giovedì venerdì sabato
French dimanche lundi mardi mercredi jeudi vendredi samedi
Spanish domingo lunes martes miércoles jueves viernes sábado
Catalan diumenge dilluns dimarts dimecres dijous divendres dissabte
Romanian duminică luni marți miercuri joi vineri sâmbătă
Albanian te dielën
(diell = "sun")
të hënën
(hënë = "moon")
të martën të mërkurën të enjten të premte të shtunën
Irish An Domhnach
Dé Domhnaigh
An Luan
Dé Luain
An Mháirt
Dé Máirt
An Chéadaoin
Dé Céadaoin
An Déardaoin
Déardaoin
An Aoine
Dé hAoine
An Satharn
Dé Sathairn
Welsh dydd Sul dydd Llun dydd Mawrth dydd Mercher dydd Iau dydd Gwener dydd Sadwrn
Breton Disul Dilun Dimeurzh Dimerc’her Diriaou Digwener Disadorn
Old English Sunnandæg Mōnandæg Tīwesdæg Wōdnesdæg Þunresdæg Frīgedæg Sæternesdæg
German Sonntag Montag Dienstag, Ziestag (Swiss German) Mittwoch (older Wutenstag) Donnerstag Freitag Sonnabend, Samstag
Dutch zondag maandag dinsdag woensdag donderdag vrijdag zaterdag
Icelandic sunnudagur mánudagur þriðjudagur miðvikudagur fimmtudagur föstudagur laugardagur
Norwegian Nynorsk sundag/søndag måndag tysdag onsdag torsdag fredag laurdag
Danish søndag mandag tirsdag onsdag torsdag fredag lørdag
Swedish söndag måndag tisdag onsdag torsdag fredag lördag

Hours of the day

The 12-hour clock is a time convention popularized by the Romans in which the 24 hours of the day are divided into two periods. The Romans divided the day into 12 equal hours, A.M. (ante-meridiem, meaning before midday) and P.M. (post-meridiem, meaning past midday). The Romans also started the practice used worldwide today of a new day beginning at midnight.

Numerals and units

A typical clock face with Roman numerals in Bad Salzdetfurth, Germany. The notion of a twelve-hour day dates to the Roman Empire.

Roman numerals continued as the primary way of writing numbers in Europe until the 14th century, when they were largely replaced in common usage by Hindu-Arabic numerals. The Roman numeral system continues to be widely used, however, in certain formal and minor contexts, such as on clock faces, coins, in the year of construction on cornerstone inscriptions, and in generational suffixes (such as Louis XIV or William Howard Taft IV). According to the Royal Spanish Academy, in the Spanish language centuries must be written in Roman numerals, so "21st century" should be written as "Siglo XXI".

The Romans solidified the modern concept of the hour as one-24th part of a day and night. The English measurement system also retains features of the Ancient Roman foot (11.65 modern inches), which was used in England prior to the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain. The inch itself derives from the Roman uncia, meaning one-twelfth part.

Three-age systems

Although the present archaeological system of the three main ages—stone, bronze and iron—originates with the Danish archaeologist Christian Jürgensen Thomsen, the concept of dividing pre-historical ages into systems based on metals extends to Ancient Rome, originated by the Roman Lucretius in the first century BC.

Religion

Christianity by percentage of population in each country.

While classical Roman and Hellenistic religion were ultimately superseded by Christianity, many key theological ideas and questions that are characteristic of Western religions originated with pre-Christian theology. The first cause argument for the existence of God, for instance, originates with Plato. Design arguments, which were introduced by Socrates and Aristotle and remain widely discussed to this day, formed an influential component of Stoic theology well into the late Roman period. The problem of evil was widely discussed among ancient philosophers, including the Roman writers such as Cicero and Seneca, and many of the answers they provided were later absorbed into Christian theodicy. In Christian moral theology, moreover, the field of natural law ethics draws heavily on the tradition established by Aristotle, the Stoics, and especially by Cicero's popular Latin work, De Legibus. Cicero's conception of natural law "found its way to later centuries notably through the writings of Saint Isidore of Seville and the Decretum of Gratian"[16] and influenced the discussion of the topic up through the era of the American Revolution.

Christianity itself also spread through the Roman Empire; since emperor Theodosius I (AD 379-395), the official state church of the Roman Empire was Christianity. Subsequently, former Roman territories became Christian states which exported their religion to other parts of the world, through colonization and missionaries.

Christianity also served as a conduit for preserving and transmitting Greco-Roman literary culture. Classical educational tradition in the liberal arts was preserved after the fall of the empire by the medieval Christian university. Education in the Middle Ages relied heavily on Greco-Roman books such as Euclid's Elements and the influential quadrivium textbooks written in Latin by the Roman statesman Boethius (AD 480–524).

Major works of Greek and Latin literature, moreover, were both read and written by Christians during the imperial era. Many of the most influential works of the early Christian tradition were written by Roman and Hellenized theologians who engaged heavily with the literary culture of the empire (see church fathers). St. Augustine's (AD 354-430) City of God, for instance, draws extensively on Virgil, Cicero, Varro, Homer, Plato, and elements of Roman values and identity to criticize paganism and advocate for Christianity amidst a crumbling empire. The engagement of early Christians as both readers and writers of important Roman and Greek literature helped to ensure that the literary culture of Rome would persist after the fall of the empire. For thousands of years to follow, religious scholars in the Latin West from Bede to Thomas Aquinas and later renaissance figures such as Dante, Montaigne and Shakespeare would continue to read, reference and imitate both Christian and pagan literature from the Roman Empire. In the east, the empire's prolific tradition of Greek literature continued uninterrupted after the fall of the west, in part due to the works of the Greek fathers, who were widely read by Christians in medieval Byzantium and continue to influence religious thought to this day (see Byzantine literature).

Science and philosophy

Ptolemy's refined geocentric theory of epicycles was backed up by rigorous mathematics and detailed astronomical observations. It was not overturned until the Copernican Revolution, over a thousand years later.
The Bible as codex. The codex, the book format today in universal use, was invented by the Romans and spread by Roman Christians.[17]

While much of the most influential Greek science and philosophy was developed before the rise of the Empire, major innovations occurred under Roman rule that have had a lasting impact on the intellectual world. The traditions of Greek, Egyptian and Babylonian scholarship continued to flourish at great centers of learning such as Athens, Alexandria, and Pergamon.

Epicurean philosophy reached a literary apex in the long poem by Lucretius, who advocated an atomic theory of matter and revered the older teachings of the Greek Democritus. The works of the philosophers Seneca the Younger, Epictetus and the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius were widely read during the revival of Stoic thought in the Renaissance, which synthesized Stoicism and Christianity. Fighter pilot James Stockdale famously credited the philosophy of Epictetus as being a major source of strength when he was shot down and held as prisoner during the Vietnam War. Plato's philosophy continued to be widely studied under the Empire, growing into the sophisticated neoplatonic system through the influence of Plotinus. Platonic philosophy was largely reconciled with Christianity by the Roman theologian Augustine of Hippo, who, while a staunch opponent of Roman paganism, viewed the Platonists as having more in common with Christians than the other pagan schools.[18] To this day, Plato's Republic is considered the foundational work of Western philosophy, and is read by students around the globe.

The widespread Lorem ipsum text, which is widely used as a meaningless placeholder in modern typography and graphic design, is derived from the Latin text of Cicero's philosophical treatise De finibus.

Pagan philosophy was gradually supplanted by Christianity in the later years of the Empire, culminating in the closure of the Academy of Athens by Justinian I. Many Greek-speaking philosophers moved to the east, outside the borders of the Empire. Neoplatonism and Aristotelianism gained a stronghold in Persia, where they were a heavy influence on early Islamic philosophy. Thinkers of the Islamic Golden Age such as Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Ibn Rushd (Averroës) engaged deeply with Greek philosophy, and played a major role in saving works of Aristotle that had been lost to the Latin West. The influence of Greek philosophy on Islam was dramatically reduced In the 11th century when the views of Avicenna and Avveroes were strongly criticized by Al-Ghazali. His Incoherence of the Philosophers is among the most influential books in Islamic history. In Western Europe, meanwhile, the recovery of Greek texts during the Scholastic period had a profound influence on Latin science and theology from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance.

In science, the theories of the Greco-Roman physician Galen dominated Western medical thought and practice for more than 1,300 years. Ptolemy produced the most thorough and sophisticated astronomical theory of antiquity, documented in the Almagest. The Ptolemaic model of the solar system would remain the dominant approach to astronomy across Europe and the Middle East for more than a thousand years. Forty eight of the 88 constellations the IAU recognizes today were recorded in the seventh and eighth books of Claudius Ptolemy's Almagest.

At Alexandria, the engineer and experimentalist Hero of Alexandria founded the study of mechanics and pneumatics. In modern geometry, Heron's formula bears his name. Roman Alexandria also saw the seeds of modern algebra arise in the works of Diophantus. Greek algebra continued to be studied in the east well after the fall of the Western Empire, where it matured into modern algebra in the hands of al-Khwārizmī (see the history of algebra). The study of Diophantine Equations and Diophantine Approximations are still important areas of mathematical research today.

All of the planets in the Solar System, excluding Earth and Uranus, are named after Roman deities.

Roman law and politics

Roman Law in blue tones.
Republics
  Presidential republics with a full presidential system.
  Presidential republics with a semi-presidential system.
  Parliamentary republics with an executive president chosen by the parliament
  Parliamentary republics with a ceremonial president, where the prime minister is the executive.
  One-party state considered Republics

Although the law of the Roman Empire is not used today, modern law in many jurisdictions is based on principles of law used and developed during the Roman Empire. Some of the same Latin terminology is still used today. The general structure of jurisprudence used today, in many jurisdictions, is the same (trial with a judge, plaintiff, and defendant) as that established during the Roman Empire.

The modern concept of republican government is directly modeled on the Roman Republic. The republican institutions of Rome survived in many of the Italian city-states of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The United States Congress is inspired by the Roman senate and legislative assemblies, while the president holds a position similar to that of a Roman consul. Many European political thinkers of the Enlightenment were avid consumers of Latin literature. Montesquieu, Edmund Burke, and John Adams were all strongly influenced by Cicero, for instance. Adams recommended Cicero as a model for politicians to imitate, and once remarked that "the sweetness and grandeur of his sounds, and the harmony of his numbers give pleasure enough to reward the reading if one understood none of his meaning."[19]

Inventions

Gnocchi, a kind of traditional Italian pasta, was introduced to various parts of Europe by the Roman legions during the expansion of the empire.

Many Roman inventions were improved versions of other people's inventions and ranged from military organization, weapon improvements, armour, siege technology, naval innovation, architecture, medical instruments, irrigation, civil planning, construction, agriculture and many more areas of civic, governmental, military and engineering development.

That said, the Romans also developed a huge array of new technologies and innovations. Many came from common themes but were vastly superior to what had come before, whilst others were totally new inventions developed by and for the needs of Empire and the Roman way of life.

Some of the more famous examples are the Roman aqueducts (some of which are still in use today), Roman roads, water powered milling machines, thermal heating systems (as employed in Roman baths, and also used in palaces and wealthy homes) sewage and pipe systems and the invention and widespread use of concrete.

Metallurgy and glass work (including the first widespread use of glass windows) and a wealth of architectural innovations including high rise buildings, dome construction, bridgeworks and floor construction (seen in the functionality of the Colosseum's arena and the underlying rooms/areas beneath it) are other examples of Roman innovation and genius.

Military inventiveness was widespread and ranged from tactical/strategic innovations, new methodologies in training, discipline and field medicine as well as inventions in all aspects of weaponry, from armor and shielding to siege engines and missile technology.

This combination of new methodologies, technical innovation, and creative invention in the military gave Rome the edge against its adversaries for half a millennium, and with it, the ability to create an empire that even today, more than 2000 years later, continues to leave its legacy in many areas of modern life.

Colonies and roads

Rome left a legacy of founding many cities as Colonia. There were more than 500 Roman colonies spread through the Empire, most of them populated by veterans of the Roman legions. Some Roman colonies rose to become influential commercial and trade centers, transportation hubs and capitals of international empires, like Constantinople, London, Paris and Vienna.

All those colonies were connected by another important legacy of the Roman Empire: the Roman roads. Indeed, the empire comprised more than 400,000 kilometres (250,000 mi) of roads, of which over 80,500 kilometres (50,000 mi) were stone-paved.[20] The courses (and sometimes the surfaces) of many Roman roads survived for millennia and many are overlaid by modern roads, like the Via Emilia in northern Italy. The roads are closely linked to modern-day economies, with those that survived from the empire's territorial peak in 117CE having more economic activity today. This is especially true in European areas, which kept wheeled vehicles in the latter half of the first millennium, whereas other regions preferred cheaper methods of transport such as camel caravans.[21]

Architecture

In the mid-18th century, Roman architecture inspired neoclassical architecture. Neoclassicism was an international movement. Though neoclassical architecture employs the same classical vocabulary as late Baroque architecture, it tends to emphasize its planar qualities, rather than sculptural volumes. Projections and recessions and their effects of light, and shade are flatters; sculptural bas-reliefs are flatter and tend to be enframed in friezes, tablets or panels. Its clearly articulated individual features are isolated rather than interpenetrating, autonomous and complete in themselves.

International neoclassical architecture was exemplified in Karl Friedrich Schinkel's buildings, especially the Old Museum in Berlin, Sir John Soane's Bank of England in London and the newly built White House and Capitol in Washington, DC in the United States. The Scots architect Charles Cameron created palatial Italianate interiors for the German-born Catherine II the Great in St. Petersburg.

Italy clung to Rococo until the Napoleonic regimes brought the new archaeological classicism, which was embraced as a political statement by young, progressive, urban Italians with republican leanings.

Imperial idea

From a legal point of view the Roman Empire, founded by Augustus in 27 BC and divided into two "parts" (or rather, courts, as the empire continued to be considered as one) after the death of Theodosius I in 395, had survived only in the eastern part which, with the deposition of the last western emperor Romulus Augustulus, in 476, had also obtained the imperial regalia of the western part reuniting from a formal point of view the Roman Empire.

The Roman line continued uninterrupted to rule the Eastern Roman Empire, whose main characteristics were Roman concept of state, medieval Greek culture and language, and Orthodox Christian faith. The Byzantines themselves never ceased to refer to themselves as "Romans" (Rhomaioi) and to their state as the "Roman Empire", the "Empire of the Romans" (in Greek Βασιλεία των Ῥωμαίων, Basileía ton Rhōmaíōn) or "Romania" (Ῥωμανία, Rhōmanía). Likewise, they were called "Rûm" (Rome) by their eastern enemies to the point that competing neighbours even acquired its name, such as the Sultanate of Rûm.

Flask for Priming Power with the Justice of Trajan (mid-16th century), depicting a woman's plea for justice from Trajan, with an imperial pennant of the Habsburgs suggesting that as Holy Roman Emperors they are the political descendants of the ancient Roman emperors (Walters Art Museum)

The designation of the Empire as "Byzantine" is a retrospective idea: it began only in 1557, a century after the fall of Constantinople, when German historian Hieronymus Wolf published his work Corpus Historiæ Byzantinæ, a collection of Byzantine sources. The term did not come in general use in the Western world before the 19th century, when modern Greece was born. The end of the continuous tradition of the Roman Empire is open to debate: the final point may be viewed as coming as early as the sack of Constantinople in 1204, or the capture of Constantinople in 1453, or as late as the abolition of the Ottoman sultanate in 1922 given the Sultans' adoption of the title of Emperor of the Romans (Kayser-i Rum) for themselves.

After the fall of Constantinople, Thomas Palaiologos, brother of the last Eastern Roman Emperor, Constantine XI, was elected emperor and tried to organize the remaining forces. His rule came to an end after the fall of the last major Byzantine city, Corinth. He then moved to Italy and continued to be recognized as Eastern emperor by the Christian powers.

His son Andreas Palaiologos continued claims on the Byzantine throne until he sold the title to Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile before his death in 1502.[22] However, there is no evidence that any Spanish monarch used the Byzantine imperial titles.

In Western Europe, the Roman concept of state was continued for almost a millennium by the Holy Roman Empire whose emperors, mostly of German tongue, viewed themselves as the legitimate successors to the ancient imperial tradition (King of the Romans) and Rome as the capital of its Empire. The German title of "Kaiser" is derived from the Latin name Caesar, which is pronounced [ˈkae̯sar] in Classical Latin.

The coronation of Charlemagne as "Roman" emperor by Pope Leo III in the year 800 happened at a time of unprecedented sole female imperial rule in Constantinople (by Empress Irene) which was interpreted by adversaries as tantamount to a vacancy. The imperial title in the West generated what historians have called the problem of two emperors. The emperors of the Holy Roman Empire sought in many ways to make themselves accepted by the Byzantines as their peers: with diplomatic relations, political marriages or threats. Sometimes, however, they did not obtain the expected results, because from Constantinople they were always called "King of the Germans", never "Emperor." The Holy Roman Empire survived Byzantium, but was eventually dissolved in 1806 owing to pressure by Napoleon I.

In Eastern Europe, firstly the Bulgarian, then the Serbian and ultimately the Russian czars (Czar derived from Caesar) proclaimed being Emperors. In Moscow in Russia adopted the idea of being a Third Rome (with Constantinople being the second). Sentiments of being the heir of the fallen Eastern Roman Empire began during the reign of Ivan III, Grand Duke of Moscow who had married Sophia Paleologue, the niece of Constantine XI (it is important to note that she was not the heiress of the Byzantine throne, rather her brother Andreas was). Being the most powerful Orthodox Christian state, the Tsars were thought of in Russia as succeeding the Eastern Roman Empire as the rightful rulers of the Orthodox Christian world. There were also competing Bulgarian and Wallachian[23][24] claims for succession of the Roman Empire.

In the early 20th century, the Italian fascists under their "Duce" Benito Mussolini dreamed of transforming Italy back into the Roman Empire again, encompassing the Mediterranean basin. Associated with Italian fascism also Nazi Germany and Francoist Spain connected their claims with Roman imperialism.

Toponymy and ethnonymy

Aside from the city of Rome itself, the Imperial Roman name has survived in a number of regions and was also adopted by some of the political regimes that ruled them. These include:

  • Romagna, the Italian region that was the administrative center of Byzantine Italy and thus remained associated with the Roman Empire when most of the country had fallen under Lombard rule;
  • Rûm, the name by which the Seljuq Turks referred to the parts of Anatolia which they had conquered from the Eastern Roman Empire, thus the common name of the Sultanate of Rum for their realm (1077-1308).[25] Under the Ottoman Empire after the 1390s, the Rûm Eyalet was the region around Sivas, later known simply as Eyalet of Sivas.
    • The name of the Turkish city of Erzurum has been derived from the Arabic Arḍ ar-Rūm (Arabic: ارض الروم) 'land of the Rûm'.[26][27]
  • Romania, a habitual reference in medieval Latin and Romance languages to the Byzantine Empire, or between 1204 and 1261 to the Latin Empire. It survived for a time in place names such as that of Nafplio, which in Italian was referred to as Napoli in Romania well into the modern era, or to this day in the Bosnian region of Romanija.
  • Rumelia, the Balkanic parts of the former Eastern Empire, labelled "land of the Romans" following their conquest by the Ottomans and at a time when the Asia Minor territories formerly known as Rum were more commonly referred to again as Anatolia.
  • Central Greece is still known colloquially as Roúmeli (Ρούμελη).
  • The modern country of Romania. Tracing the origin of the Romanians to the Roman Empire's province of Dacia has long been part of the national narrative in spite of the scarcity of conclusive evidence. The "Roman" demonym referring to Romance speakers in Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania appeared in the 16th century (with various vernacular spellings) under the influence of Renaissance humanism.

In linguistics and ethnonymy:

See also

General:

References

  1. See History of Latin.
  2. "Romance languages". Britannica.com. Retrieved 2018-11-24.
  3. "Language Acquisition in the Romance Speaking World: Peru - Departamento de Educación". Departamento.pucp.edu.pe. Retrieved 2016-05-14.
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  5. Weber, Jean Jacques (2009). Multilingualism, Education and Change - Jean Jacques Weber - Google Libros. ISBN 9783631572856. Retrieved 2016-05-14.
  6. Johnson, Sally; Ensslin, Astrid (2007-09-19). Language in the Media: Representations, Identities, Ideologies - Google Libros. ISBN 9781441151254. Retrieved 2016-05-14.
  7. Beretta, Claudio (2003). I nomi dei fiumi, dei monti, dei siti: strutture linguistiche preistoriche - Claudio Beretta - Google Libros. ISBN 9788820330989. Retrieved 2016-05-14.
  8. USA (2015-09-28). "Radiation oncology in Latin speaking countries: A link between Europe and Latin America". Rep Pract Oncol Radiother. 19 (4): 227–9. doi:10.1016/j.rpor.2013.06.004. PMC 4104016. PMID 25061515.
  9. Finkenstaedt, Thomas; Dieter Wolff (1973). Ordered Profusion; studies in dictionaries and the English lexicon. C. Winter. ISBN 3-533-02253-6.
  10. Uwe Pörksen, German Academy for Language and Literature's Jahrbuch [Yearbook] 2007 (Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2008, pp. 121-130)
  11. Loanwords in the World's Languages: A Comparative Handbook (PDF). Walter de Gruyter. 2009. p. 370.
  12. van der Sijs, Nicoline (2009). "Loanwords in Dutch". In Haspelmath, Martin; Tadmor, Uri (eds.). Loanwords in the World's Languages: A Comparative Handbook (PDF). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. p. 350. ISBN 978-3-11-021843-5. Retrieved 3 June 2020. The Latin loanwords [in Dutch] (from Roman times, from Church Latin and from medical and scientific Latin) amount to 32.2% of all loanwords [...].
  13. Lunt, Horace G. (1955). "The Old Church Slavonic writing systems". Old Church Slavonic Grammar (7 ed.). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter (published 2010). p. 16. ISBN 9783110876888. Retrieved 3 June 2020. [...] the Greek-based alphabet is the ancestor of the cyrillic alphabets used today in the Balkans and among the East Slavs.
  14. "Incunabula Short Title Catalogue". British Library. Retrieved 2 March 2011.
  15. Roberto Weiss, The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity (Oxford: Blackwell) 1969:1.
  16. Corwin, Edward S. (1955). The "Higher Law" Background of American Constitutional Law. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. pp. 17–18.
  17. Roberts & Skeat 1983, pp. 38−67; 75
  18. Agustine, De Civitate Dei, book viii.
  19. Carl J. Richard, Why We're All Romans: The Roman Contribution to the Western World, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010, p. 122.
  20. Gabriel, Richard A. The Great Armies of Antiquity. Westport, Conn: Praeger, 2002. Page 9.
  21. Dalgaard, Carl-Johan and Kaarsen, Nicolai and Olsson, Ola and Selaya, Pablo (2018). "Roman Roads to Prosperity: Persistence and Non-Persistence of Public Goods Provision". Center for Economic and Policy Research. SSRN 3130184.CS1 maint: uses authors parameter (link)
  22. Norwich, John Julius, Byzantium — The Decline and Fall, p. 446.
  23. Clark, Victoria (2000). "Chapter 5: Romania". Why Angels Fall. New York: St. Martin's Press: Macmillan. p. 213. ISBN 978-0-312-23396-9.
  24. Runciman, Steven (1985). "Chapter 10: The Phanariots". The Great Church in Captivity. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]; New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 365. ISBN 978-0-521-31310-0.
  25. Alexander Kazhdan, "Rūm" The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (Oxford University Press, 1991), vol. 3, p. 1816. Paul Wittek, Rise of the Ottoman Empire, Royal Asiatic Society Books, Routledge (2013), p. 81: "This state too bore the name of Rûm, if not officially, then at least in everyday usage, and its princes appear in the Eastern chronicles under the name 'Seljuks of Rûm' (Ar.: Salâjika ar-Rûm). A. Christian Van Gorder, Christianity in Persia and the Status of Non-muslims in Iran p. 215: "The Seljuqs called the lands of their sultanate Rum because it had been established on territory long considered 'Roman', i.e. Byzantine, by Muslim armies."
  26. See Joseph Laurent's extensive note in his (in French) L’Arménie entre Byzance et l’Islam depuis la conquête arabe jusqu’en 886, 1919, new edition revised and updated by Marius Canard, Lisbon: Librairie Bertrand, 1980, pp. 87–88, note 83.
  27. (in Armenian) Darbinyan, M. «Էրզրում» [Erzurum] Armenian Soviet Encyclopedia. Yerevan: Armenian Academy of Sciences, 1978, vol. 4, p. 93.
  28. Ozbaran, Salih, "Ottomans as 'Rumes' in Portuguese sources in the sixteenth century", Portuguese Studies, Annual, 2001

Sources

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