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On a genetic map, a PCA plot, Romans and Romanians simply don't overlap. Romanians cluster with their Balkan neighbors, (1) on account of massive Slavic migration from around the 7th century AD, and (2) on account of strong historical and genetic evidence to suggest that the Roman colonists sent to Dacia were largely recruited from neighboring Balkan provinces (like Moesia and Pannonia), rather than from the city of Rome.
Genetically, the nearest populations to Ancient Romans are Cypriots and certain other Mediterranean types, including Anatolians. But it's not neat; there's no clear unambiguous descent. A lot can happen in >1000 years!
But less tongue-in-cheek, the other thing is that the legacy of the Romans is pretty much all around us. The Roman Calendar (with July and August both referencing a Roman leader), the Latin alphabet (with the additional letters like 'y' being added later on to support Greek), the roads we can travel, etc.
Just imagine to make recipe so good that it not just transferred across generations through 2000 years, but also evolved to come in supermarket in Russia.
It was surprising to find out that I have "ancient" DNA matches with a couple of Roman and Etruscan individuals.
Small world!
To me, what would suck the most is living in a place after the Romans where you can see signs of their civilization but you're living a rural peasant life.
This is sort of like saying computers were invented in Mesopotamia because they did math.
Roman water and earth-moving civil engineering was absolutely cutting edge to the degree that the projects they undertook would have been unfathomable to their Bronze-Age predecessors.
Egyptians, Shirley?
(Although they're such abstract concepts, I'm sure everyone had them to some degree).
There's some other ways they've left a mark on you.
- I won't defend the Roman record on slavery, but I will point out that the Greeks (particularly the Spartans) were slave societies too.
- The Greeks were significantly more xenophobic and sexist than the Romans. If you washed up on the shores of ancient Greece, you could never have become a citizen. The Romans were far more tolerant and inclusive.
- Putting spaces between words was a medieval innovation. The Greeks wrote in much the same way as the Romans, and that was thanks to the Phoenicians!
- Romans revered Greek culture because their city started in a period when Greek colonies were spreading Greek influence throughout the Mediterranean and, specifically, in Italy itself. Greece was to Rome as Rome was to medieval Europeans: A colonizer.
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No ancient society smells of roses if you look close enough. However, it's also rare to find ancient societies that expanded and persisted for centuries without being innovative and progressive. The Romans were both awful and great, much like the Greeks, Akkadians, Babylonians, Sumerians, etc. before them.
It progressed civic life, institutions, law, infrastructure, and other things, a lot. Modern law is a heavy percentage ancient roman law in basis.
Slavery-based society doesn't say much for 2 millenia ago. Most where. The US had slavery until less than 2 centuries, and Jim Crow and other such things until less than a century. And still has things like forced prison labor, so let's cut the Romans some fucking slack.
I'd rather work than be in a cell.
As opposed to the Greeks, Parthians, Ptolemaic Egypt and Judea? Unless you mean "fully dependent on slave labour" - then I guess we can mention Sparta and Athens.
> that progressed sciences, technology and civilization little from what they inherited from the Mesopotamian's/Greeks
What does "little" mean in this context? This is a very fuzzy concept but this doesn't sound right.
Athens had a rather strange system of slavery. The majority of slaves, owned by State, earned wages and worked and lived unattended. It was much more similar to indentured-servitude.
Roman engineering was pretty darn solid.