Post on 11-Jan-2015
description
Rome and the Roots of Western Civilization
Objectives
• Know and understand the contributions Rome made to Western culture.
• Artistic
• Legal
• Architectural
• Language
• Technology/engineering
Classical civilization
• Greco-Roman culture or the mix of Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman influences.
• Bear in mind that the Roman Empire spanned a wide expanse of territory and incorporated a number of cultures. Just as Roman culture influences them, they influence Rome and a whole new mix comes out.
Fine arts
• Greek sculpture emphasized the ideal human form. Roman sculpture presented more realistic representations of people. The Romans were practically-minded, after all.
From this… to this.
• Bas-relief
• Type of sculpture with figures that project from a flat background. Often used to tell stories.
Trajan’s Column
Bas-relief of a play
Notice how the bas-relief spirals around the column all the way to the top.
• Can see close up pictures here, here, or here.
• Mosaics
• Very intricate and made by many small tiles.
Close-up of a mosaic.
• Painting
• Doesn’t survive as well, but we have many fine examples from Pompeii.
Pompeii
August 24, AD 79
From a bar
Graffiti
What Rome gave us
• Language
• Became the basis for the Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, and French languages – the Romance languages.
• Started off as just bad Latin, but then established themselves as separate languages.
• Architecture
• Many important buildings, like government buildings, use neo-Classical architecture. Like say, the U.S. Capitol Building.
The columns, the dome, the arches.
• The Romans were also big on the arch.
• It’s an extremely efficient weight-bearing structure.
• You see them a lot in their aqueducts, for example.
• The aqueducts were used to supply Rome with water and were engineering marvels.
• They supplied Rome with nearly 300 million gallons of water a day. That’s for a population of just 1 million. That makes for about 300 gallons of water per day per person.
Maps of aqueducts going into Rome.
• Pantheon The Pantheon
• The roads and road system were also engineering marvels, but we’ve already talked about them.
• Law
• Big contribution, mainly the rights of individuals.
• Rights under the law.
• Innocent until proven guilty.
• Burden of proof on accuser.
• Punishment for actions.
• The legal system also became basis of most Western countries’ legal systems.