06e: Conclusions

1. Rome is still important
The people are still fascinating. The history is still instructive. The legacy is still all around you and around everyone else in the Western world. Like it or not, the United States of America has assumed Rome's old roles as the world's tough guy and the world's policeman. As Wilt Chamberlain famously observed, "nobody roots for Goliath." Like the United States, Rome rose from very humble beginnings to become the one superpower of its day. Because the Romans learned how to rule their empire well for a period of two and a half centuries (roughly 31 BC-235 AD), they were genuinely appreciated. But once times began to get tough internally, and once the barbarians started crashing the gates, the pax Romana disintegrated. Then Rome became a lot less popular. Then she found herself alone. Then the Western Roman Empire was gone. The same thing happened to the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as the Byzantine Empire. Sound familiar? I hope it never does.

2. Who knew?
Looking at Rome's beginnings -even in hindsight - it would still be hard to recognize a nation destined for world domination. As just one of forty or fifty small towns in the region of Latium, Rome would have been lucky just to rule the Latin League. As Camillus observed, Rome's location was perhaps a little better in that it was on hills overlooking a ford of the Tiber, but her greatest advantage was her people. Tough, focused, willing to put the collective (that is, the Roman city-state) ahead of their individual preferences, the Romans seemed to enjoy rising to challenges. They also appeared - as best we can tell from the written records - to take  pride in their national achievements. Whatever internal struggles were going on, the Romans could always get their act together in the face of trouble. Or maybe they were right all along, and they were predestined to rule the entire Mediterranean world someday.

3. Those funky Etruscans!
It would be hard to say that the Romans were ashamed of the Etruscan part of their heritage, or that they consciously tried to block it out, or even to rewrite it. But they didn't really do an awful lot to help later generations appreciate or understand the Etruscans, either. That is quite a shame, because what little we can find out today about the ancient Etruscans is utterly fascinating. On the other hand, the Romans assimilated their culture so thoroughly (and so respectfully) that it anticipated their reaction to Greek culture farther down the line. In the first century AD, the Emperor Claudius would write a 20 volume history of the ancient Etruscans - but it is now lost. Although its loss probably reflects its perceived lack of quality back in the day - it would be of tremendous interest had it survived, not only for our appreciation of the Etruscans but of Claudius (himself descended from the Etruscan clan of the Clausii).

4. Rome's National Myth
At the beginning of their history, the Romans undoubtedly had to be simple, tough peasants with close ties to their native soil and steeped in the mos maiorum, or way of the elders. And to the end of the Republican era, at least, that is how the Romans saw themselves. Of course, by that time the Romans were a wealthy urban civilization which ruled the entire Mediterranean. Still, Rome's historians saw it as their task to preserve this aura in writing about Rome's earliest days. Sometimes the tales they tell have little or even no historical basis. Yet they are still very worthwhile for what they tell us about how the Romans saw themselves. After all, it's not as though there is no such thing as an American national myth, however differently you or I might personally interpret it.