BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?

Subject: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 03:38 PM

Over to you

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Amergin
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 03:45 PM

They gave us orgies....

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: peregrina
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 03:47 PM

They wore socks with sandals. !
and made garum instead of nam pla.

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: fat B****rd
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 03:58 PM

Is this a cue for a'Life of Brian' routine?

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 04:10 PM

Underfloor heating...

Straight Roads...

Verulanium...

The (incredible) Roman Baths of Bath...(if you've not been..GO!)

Good to see you back, Johnus MacKenzieus (although, according to this site, your Roman name is.....Mamercus Postumius Regulus (goshus!) :0)

Er...my name, apparently, is Publius Porcius Vulso.   LOLus

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 04:11 PM

Well, for those of us south of Hadrian's Wall, all sorts of things that come with the benefits of being in the empire.

But for those in the barbarian north .... ???

DC

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: gnu
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 04:17 PM

HEY! We are only barbarians on the rink.

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 04:20 PM

They gave us Kirk Douglas?

And....men in short skirts!!   

(methinks I may now be in trouble for making a sexistumus commentus)


Some wore shorter skirtuses than others! :0)

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 04:20 PM

Hypocaust

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 04:21 PM

Typocast

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Ed T
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 04:32 PM

Roman salad, and where would Greco-Roman wrestling be without them?

Most historians believe that Roman soldiers were the first people to use condoms...and the Rome connection remains to today.

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 04:35 PM

Did they invent condominiums then?

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 04:50 PM

Football

A calendar which doesn't fit

The Welsh flag

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Ed T
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 05:18 PM

If it weren't for the phrese, when in Rome, do as the Romans do....we would be a heathen lot....well maybe we are?

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Ed T
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 05:25 PM

the Lupine Roman Harness For Small Breed Dogs ,ust have had something to do with them. And, let's not forget the Roman Nougat candy.

Then there are the roman numerals and Roman polanski...who can not possibly count the girls he has done in any numeral system.

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Ed T
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 05:59 PM

Did they have anything to do with Romanians?

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 06:04 PM

Yes. They wiped out the Dacian civilization and repopulated the land with Roman citizens.

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Ed T
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 06:36 PM

I believe they influenced Italian expressions, like:


Desso fai silenzio … girati … fammi concentrare che ti devo massaggiare i piedi.   Oooh, mi fai il solletico … no, non ti fermare! Mi piace.

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Ed T
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 06:38 PM

I suspect there was no romance, nefore the romans.

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 06:53 PM

No, Romance was after the Romans (in both senses). In the Mediaeval period, the Roman Empire was seen as the high point of civilzation.

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Bert
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 07:01 PM

Did they have anything to do with Romanians?

Yes. They conquered the place and gave it their language which is the closest living language to Latin.

They invented the safety pin.

They gave us a good many words for our language.

They introduced many inventions, concrete and the Roman arch for two.

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 07:12 PM

What did the Romans ever do for us? by Terry "Python" Jones

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Rog Peek
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 07:17 PM

Gave us the expression "wrong end of the stick"?

Rog

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Monique
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 07:20 PM

About Romanian being the closest language to Latin, check the long last post but two

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: GUEST,Devon
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 08:05 PM

Arthur, or Artorius (as he may have been Roman), and the post-Roman anarchy fog in which to thrive, to be recorded much later and much more hyped, as the folk tradition usually enables ...

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 09:58 PM

The Koreans have had sub-floor heating for many, many centuries, probably pre-dating Rome.

The Keltoi invented the safety pin and what became the Roman gladius.

But...

The Romans DID give us Nero and Caligula and Octavia and Valeria Messalina, not to mention that bane of students everywhere, the self-serving De Bello Gallico.

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 28 Feb 10 - 04:15 AM

This is an interesting 'facts' site...

They invented fire stations and public toilets.

Damn clever, those Romans.

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 28 Feb 10 - 04:45 AM

They beat Scotland at rugby yesterday.

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 28 Feb 10 - 10:27 AM

As I said above, they did give us football.

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Abdul The Bul Bul
Date: 28 Feb 10 - 10:40 AM

Warmongering suppressors of quite well civilised societies for the time. They sucked all the wealth from the "Empire" to support their 'civilisation. Bit similar I think as it may have been if Hitler had won.

Al

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 28 Feb 10 - 10:42 AM

I was trying not to mention the fasces.

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 28 Feb 10 - 11:35 AM

They invented fire stations and public toilets.

We used to piss on the campfire, to make sure it was out, before we decamped.
Does this mean it's a Roman custom

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Feb 10 - 07:00 PM

Sorry Bert and Rapaire, the safety pin (fibula) was around the Mediterranean before the founding of Rome, and before the Celts were in the neighborhood. Earliest are late Bronze Age (2nd. millennium B.C.).

When safety pins were patented in the 1840s, the design was very similar to the early Mediterranean ones. None of the descendants of the guy who filed the patent bothered to sue.

Maybe they were too stuck up to bother.

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Ed T
Date: 28 Feb 10 - 07:10 PM

They built fine urban aqueducts and roads...and gave employment to lions at Roman games....it was so successful that may actually have endageres the Barbary lion numbers in the wild?

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: GUEST,Sandy Mc Lean ( can't find cookie )
Date: 28 Feb 10 - 07:22 PM

The greatest army of their time could not take Scotland and built a great wall to keep the Picts from kicking the shit out of them! Suas Le Celt!

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Bert
Date: 28 Feb 10 - 07:36 PM

Thanks GUEST, I stand corrected. That is another falsehood I learned at school.

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Ed T
Date: 28 Feb 10 - 07:38 PM

I suspect the Romans would have done better in Scotland if they could have persuaded the Campbells (versus the MacDonalds) over to their side?

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 28 Feb 10 - 07:52 PM

The Roman army was overstretched by the time they got to Scotland. They committed a disproportionate number of legions to Britain, unlike Germany where they wihdrew, or Dacia (Romania) where they wiped out the native people and planted a friendly population. It's probably significant that the British were the only Romanised Celts to retain their language rather than adopting Latin. Even the English with a millenium longer haven't managed to erradicate British.

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Ed T
Date: 28 Feb 10 - 07:54 PM

"The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in twenty-fve years than the Roman army subjugated in four hundred"

is it true?

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Ed T
Date: 28 Feb 10 - 08:11 PM

Maybe this, in some cases:

"In a Roman household, sex was in plentiful supply. Except, so it seems, between the actual married couples"

More info here:
http://www.roman-empire.net/society/soc-household.html

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Rapparee
Date: 28 Feb 10 - 09:03 PM

A centurion, a Celt, and a Teuton walk into a taberna....

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Gurney
Date: 01 Mar 10 - 12:58 AM

AS Bert implied, if it wasn't for the Romans, the Empire State Building would be a pile of sand.....

The question has been fairly comprehensively answered in 'The Life of Brian.'

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 01 Mar 10 - 03:52 AM

They kept the Christians down?
;)

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 01 Mar 10 - 05:54 AM

By inventing the Roman Catholic Chuirch.

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: G-Force
Date: 01 Mar 10 - 06:45 AM

Roman blinds. Roman candles.

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Ed T
Date: 01 Mar 10 - 07:58 AM

They gave us orgies....

Where's mine?

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 01 Mar 10 - 08:05 AM

Roman noses, Roman hands!

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Acorn4
Date: 01 Mar 10 - 11:19 AM

Existentialism.

(X is ten)!

Sorry!

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Arnie
Date: 01 Mar 10 - 11:50 AM

I live near Dover (Dubris), and we've still got a Roman lighthouse sitting on top of the eastern cliff. It used to have a neighbour on the western cliff but that fell down a few hundred years ago. Rowing galleys over from France at night, the crew would simply aim between the two lighthouses, which burned wood, and arrive at the harbour.
We also have the remains of a fine Roman house in the town with painted plaster walls and a mosaic floor. Amazing to thing that the Roman fleet was based here and defended the British coastline for around 300 yrs. The Goodwin Sands just off our coast were the graveyard of many Roman galleys with urns, coins etc. still being discovered there when the tide is out.

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 02 Mar 10 - 11:53 AM

SNCF Ferries, still do the same thing, I believe.

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: Ed T
Date: 03 Mar 10 - 09:19 AM

Standardised army rations.

Subject: RE: BS: What did the Romans ever do for us?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 03 Mar 10 - 09:35 AM

I know of a stand at ease army, is that any good?
Or is that irrational?