AWC has a complicated case to make today. We fully concede that granting Augustus the title of Caesar 2,041 years ago on January 16, 27 BCE (photo taken a bit later) ushered out a rare example of (sort of) democracy in the ancient world, replacing the Roman Republic with a brutal and expansionist Roman Empire. AWC also grants that many of the endowments Rome left to Western society should have been returned to sender, including slavery, religious persecution, and military dictatorship.

But it’s just as true that Rome embodied bits of everything we call Western civilization, which included many roses among the thorns, for those fortunate enough to benefit from them. (Or to let Monty Python make the case: “Alright, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a freshwater system and public health…what have the Romans ever done for us?!”)

For two centuries, the Pax Romana brought peace and prosperity to Roman citizens, which was a pretty big deal for people who had to poop outdoors. Rome’s long arm brought peace (often brutally, which is ever the paradox) to an area that stretched over three continents and contained about one-fifth of the world’s population. (It was a different story on the empire’s borders, which were constantly assailed by raids, most notably from Germans looking for a piece of the Roman dream.)

Ironically, the Roman Empire also provided the infrastructure for the spread of Christianity. While some emperors tried to stamp out the dangerous new religion through torture and brutality, their network of roads and civilizations clustered around the Mediterranean actually had the opposite effect, allowing the Apostle Paul and other early proselytizers to spread their faith at breathtaking speed, giving it a firm foothold in the West and eventually taking over the Empire. (It’s not by accident that the Pope lives in Rome.)

Rome eventually fell, as all human endeavors will. (Those Germans on the border couldn’t be held back forever.) When it left, much of the Roman Empire wasn’t worth mourning. But much more of it still lives on, in our languages, religion, and civil structures all across the Western world. Even 2,000 years later, in some ways all roads still lead to Rome.

http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2004/04/19/gladiators,0.jpg