Every society has a culture that comes from the legacies of a community belonging to a distant past. As Chuck Palahniuk said, “it is important to create something that will [live forever]”, something such as culture, which is a result of the lives of people who are no longer in existence. An example of such communities can be seen in the Ancient Greeks and Romans. Even though they lived thousands of years ago, they heavily influenced the modern world. During the golden ages of each of these civilizations, their culture spread over continents and this still affects the world today. For example, both civilizations had a long-lasting impact on many aspects of modern culture, such as language, art, and government structure. As a result, we owe
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To begin, one legacy that the ancient Greeks and Romans left us is the language, which evolved over time into dialects that we speak and understand today. Romans spoke Latin, and this evolved into today’s romance languages: French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian. Even though the vocabulary changed over time by borrowing words from other civilizations, the grammar structure is still similar. This legacy is truly important because 920 million declare a Romance language as their mother tongue, and original Latin terms are still used in medicine, law, and mathematics. Examples of these terms are actus reus, which is a criminal act; appendico, which means appendix; and quod erat demonstrandum, which means that the theory has been demonstrated. In like manner, Greek had a significant influence to languages today. It was spoken throughout Eastern Europe as an official language for hundreds of years, existing all over the written and spoken world. Today, Greek has a simpler grammar than its ancient equivalent, and the vocabulary has also changed. However, the alphabet remained the same, and many cultures borrowed its words. From a religious point of view, the New Testament and Bible were commonly written in Greek, which helped spread the language with the rise of Christianity. The word itself, Christianity, comes from the Greek word Χριστιανός (Christianos), …show more content…
Most government systems have Roman or Greek origins, and we owe recognition to the people who developed them. To begin, Greece had multiple city-states ruled by monarchies, meaning that a royal family was in power for multiple generations. The notion of citizenship also came from Greek city-states, and at the time it meant that all males had to fight for their communities. Democracy also has its roots in Athens, a small city-state where people could vote for themselves. It has evolved over time into a representative democracy, where the people are represented by one person who votes for them. Other changes occurred, but democracy is an important legacy because it is the government system of about 48% of the nations of the world. Likewise, the Senate of the United States of America is inspired by the Roman one. The system evolved in many ways, an important change being that in Roman times, the Senate had immense power: consuls or emperor would rarely go against its word. Today, in the US, the power is split evenly between the three branches of the government. The branches are also inspired by ancient Romans. Countries today use the same ones they did: executive, legislative, and judicial. The government systems we adopted from those civilizations have evolved over time to accommodate the needs of the people, but we still owe a debt of gratitude to ancient Greeks and Romans who invented
To begin, one legacy that the ancient Greeks and Romans left us is the language, which evolved over time into dialects that we speak and understand today. Romans spoke Latin, and this evolved into today’s romance languages: French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian. Even though the vocabulary changed over time by borrowing words from other civilizations, the grammar structure is still similar. This legacy is truly important because 920 million declare a Romance language as their mother tongue, and original Latin terms are still used in medicine, law, and mathematics. Examples of these terms are actus reus, which is a criminal act; appendico, which means appendix; and quod erat demonstrandum, which means that the theory has been demonstrated. In like manner, Greek had a significant influence to languages today. It was spoken throughout Eastern Europe as an official language for hundreds of years, existing all over the written and spoken world. Today, Greek has a simpler grammar than its ancient equivalent, and the vocabulary has also changed. However, the alphabet remained the same, and many cultures borrowed its words. From a religious point of view, the New Testament and Bible were commonly written in Greek, which helped spread the language with the rise of Christianity. The word itself, Christianity, comes from the Greek word Χριστιανός (Christianos), …show more content…
Most government systems have Roman or Greek origins, and we owe recognition to the people who developed them. To begin, Greece had multiple city-states ruled by monarchies, meaning that a royal family was in power for multiple generations. The notion of citizenship also came from Greek city-states, and at the time it meant that all males had to fight for their communities. Democracy also has its roots in Athens, a small city-state where people could vote for themselves. It has evolved over time into a representative democracy, where the people are represented by one person who votes for them. Other changes occurred, but democracy is an important legacy because it is the government system of about 48% of the nations of the world. Likewise, the Senate of the United States of America is inspired by the Roman one. The system evolved in many ways, an important change being that in Roman times, the Senate had immense power: consuls or emperor would rarely go against its word. Today, in the US, the power is split evenly between the three branches of the government. The branches are also inspired by ancient Romans. Countries today use the same ones they did: executive, legislative, and judicial. The government systems we adopted from those civilizations have evolved over time to accommodate the needs of the people, but we still owe a debt of gratitude to ancient Greeks and Romans who invented