Latin Coursework Roman Culture

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The Relationship Between Roman Culture and Those it Absorbed

Ancient Rome had an empire that covered most of Europe at one time and encompassed many different cultures, including the Celts, the Greeks and the Jews among others. Areas such as Morocco, Northern England and the Euphrates river were ruled over by the Romans at one time, and The Romans had to keep a balance between themselves and all these different peoples; if they imposed too much of their own beliefs and practices upon their new citizens, the empire would quickly dissolve under the strain of holding together so many rebelling nations. To resolve this problem, the Romans developed a very simple solution; they began to incorporate aspects and elements of each different religion and society into their own. This was of great benefit to the Romans, firstly, it would pacify the population of the countries which they conquered; and secondly, they could take the best elements of each place and claim it as their own, showing themselves as the superior culture when in fact many facets of it were taken from other people who the Romans had simply absorbed.

The Roman Empire 100AD Wikipedia © (1)

Many of Rome’s greatest written works are either heavily influenced by, or directly copied from, myths or legends from other people and cultures. One of the most famous examples is Virgil's Aeneid, dedicated to the emperor Augustus, and telling the story of Aeneas, a Trojan fleeing from the destruction in his home city, who's destiny is to go on to found Rome. The story, which recounts Aeneas's many adventures on the way to founding Rome, clearly borrows it's hero and original storyline from that of Homer's 'Iliad' and the sequel 'The Odyssey'. The Iliad tells the semi- mythical story of the fall of Troy, Aeneas' home city, which was destroyed by the Greeks. Aeneas was said, in the story, to be a Trojan Lieutenant. Homer is considered to have written down the story of the Iliad, a story already part of Greek oral tradition, 720 BC, and the Odyssey (the sequel, which tells the struggles of Greek soldier Odysseus and also bears a striking resemblance to the Aeneid) 680 BC. The Aeneid, however, was written over 600 years later, between 27 BC and 19 BC. It adapted the story of Aeneas and was, in effect, a piece of political propaganda glorifying the Roman republic and the Emperor Augustus, whom Aeneas was supposed to represent. Many of the 'Trojan' characters stayed the same, such as Aeneas and his father Anchises, and the fact that he was Venus' son. Aeneas' journey eventually led him to found Rome, and Aeneas was supposed to represent the emperor Augustus in the story. An excellent example of the 'propaganda' aspect of the story is where Anchises, Aeneas' father from the Iliad, is telling Aeneas of the future of Rome. He says: 'Lo! Caesar and all the Julian/ Line, predestined to rise to the infinite spaces of heaven./ This, yea, this is the man, so often foretold to you in promise,/ Caesar Augustus, descended from God, who again shall a golden/ Age in Latium found.' clearly, this was not the tone and aim of Homer's original tale, in which Aeneas, though a hero, was still a minor character compared to many of the others.

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Roman medicine was heavily influenced by many other cultures, particularly the Greek one. Ancient Greece was highly advanced in medicine: they originally came up with the idea of the four humours and many of their cures were based on scientific principles that are still used today, and their ethical approach to medicine has again been adapted and is much the same today as it was 2000 years ago, when the Romans first adopted it. The Hippocratic Oath is a famous example of this: (translated from the original Greek)

I swear by Apollo the physician, by Æsculapius, Hygeia, ...

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