h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I don't think the Roman civilisation can be called the greatest civilisation in history. It was very efficient and used this to establish and maintain its huge empire, but many of the things we view as the 'Roman legacy' were borrowed from other civilisations - particularly Greece, which deserves the Greatest title far more. The Romans had a great reverence for the Greeks and virtually borrowed the entire Greek religious catalogue, the Romans added nothing to Greek mathematics and in fact due to its geometric base they could add nothing to it until a new form of numbering came to the West with the number 0 via the Arabs.

They did improve on 'cement' perhaps paving the way for contemporary architectural wonders, such as Thamesmead, Plymouth's Tricorn Centre ("mildewed elephant droppings covered in drainpipes") and Birmingham's Central Library ("it looks ... like a place where books are incinerated, not kept ... an ill-mannered essay in concrete brutalism...").

Those quotes have raised a smile in the office, Montague!

Cement?? Reminds me of the quote used about the former boxer Joe Bugner:

He has the physique of a Roman statue - but not quite the mobility.

You'd better thank HRH Charles for the quotes. See his "Vision of Britain".

It could be that the Greeks were a "greater" civilization than the Romans - they were certainly starting with less. But "borrowing" from the Greeks is not, IMHO, a bad thing. Stravinsky reportedly said "Good composers borrow; great composers steal." [Or as a great anonymous engineer said, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".]

I do agree that the invention of the number "zero" was a great Arab breakthrough - I mean, it makes up half the computer programs in the world.

I feel that the Roman civilization took many of the ideas for its government from other civilizations especialy the greeks.

The Romans were high on efficiency and records, they have a number of great historians in their history. But in the realm of philosophy the Greeks stand head and shoulders above the Romans, in fact it is hard to name a great Roman philosopher. An empire isn't a civilisation and I think we should reserve the title Greatest Civilisation Ever for the Greeks

i disagree

The greeks did many things for math and philosophy, but this doesn't put them above the romans. The romans did do quite a bit for philosophy, albeit indirectly. Among the things they stole from the greeks is the notion of planets representing gods. However, they created modern day names for planets, thus influencing astrology, which is as big a chunk of "philosophy" as anything else. if we look at philosophy as how unfactual items influence factual items, then astrology, influenced heavily by the romans, is huge. poo on u

As for science, much of our water transportation is based on roman engineering. Streets as well, art was influenced by the romans. If u disagree, i hope to god ur not roman, cuz otherwise i'll be crucified by this time next weekjk.

Romans were by far the greatest civilisation of all time. They stretched influence to art, science, YES EVEN PHILOSOPHY, arabs were the math ppl, but romans were still the greatest.

Oh wait, i haven't gotten to military yet, oh well, maybe later...

I don't see how you can claim one civilization's philosophy to be better than another civilization's. It's a very subjective thing, philosophy.
But I do think that culturally, the Greeks were ahead of the Romans. Maybe the greatest civilization ever, but there are a lot of contenders for the throne. Rome, Greece, Japan, Current, the Aztecs, Inca, some times of China, a lot of civilizations in Renaissance Era Europe... the list goes on and on.

You have a point

this conversation has ~15 entries, all claiming the greatest civilisation to be...

but what are we judging on?

"I don't see how you can claim one civilization's philosophy to be better than another civilization's. It's a very subjective thing, philosophy..."

Well there you are.

The Romans picked up a little from every civilization or culture they encountered.
The Persians, though, had a tremendous influence on them with regard to warfare and religious practices.
The further the Romans got away from using the Senate as the conscience of the people, the more the rulers engaged in cults of personality, even going so far, as the Persian rulers had, as claiming that divine destiny had placed them on the throne. Oh, the throne was the Persian's, too.

It should be said that the Romans were very aware of the cultural and intellectual debt that they owed the Greeks and acknowledged it fully and frequently. Which started an interesting pattern: where modern European nations employed analogies with the Romans during the 18th and 19th centuries it tended to be as often in a spirit of deference as of any attempt to surpass the Romans - they looked at Rome much as Rome had looked at Greece, as an embodiment of an earlier civilisation whose glories could never quite be recaptured or equalled.

(And when Greece got too far back in the past to serve as an immediate comparison, the Romans started to use their own history in much the same way)

So maybe one thing that does stand in the Romans' favour, as regards 'greatest civilisation' ever, given that that is a relative term, is that the Romans were fully aware that that is a relative term.

Oh and btw:

>>Stravinsky reportedly said "Good composers borrow; great composers steal."<<

Well, he may have done, but if he did, he nicked it off T.S.Eliot (though with 'poets' for 'composers') Which illustrates the point nicely

And then there was Tom Lehrer who melodically enjoined us to "plaguarize, plaguarize, don't let any man's work evade your eyes" - I'm on the side of the Greeks, but one can't forget some of the tribes of North American Indians who had a pretty advanced form of government before being taken over by the invading white man. Before determining the greatest civilization, perhaps a definition of civilization is in order.

But the Native Americans didn't have an especially advanced form of Government. And they were really wiped out by smallpox rather than Europeans. Of a North American population of 20 million when Columbus discovered the Americas, only 1 million were remaining by the time the Mayflower landed.

The Persian comparison was interesting. There are numerous examples of invaders overrunning and occupying Persia (or Iran) the Greeks, Monghols, Arabs to name a few. Each time though it has been the invaders who have ended up adopting the majority of the Persian customs and way of life rather than the other way around. When Rome finally collapsed the invaders took very little of the Roman lifestyle on themselves: the language, customs etc. Not much of an epitaph for 'The Greatest Civilization' is it?

And who infected the North American Indians with smallpox among other things? Also, consider the Incas whose technology in many areas matched, if not exceeded, that of the Romans.

Ah, yes, but where is the Incan laws, the poetry, the drama, the naked statues of naked people, the monuments to Boudicca and the cultural references in Monty Python films?

On the other hand, the Incans never brought about anything like London...

Anyway... when did the Romans ever have anything like Alexander the Great?

Speaking of conquered civilizations and their influences... I think the Israelites have done pretty well for themselves, considering that most of their captors bit the dust like Ozymandias quite a while ago.

Alexander the Great/ Wildly superstitious and despite having Aristotle as his tutor for a while, something of an ignoramus. On top of that - was he really Greek?