But apart from the aqueducts, what have the Romans ever done for us?

>some are not just intact, but in use, right now.

Thanks for giving me something to research at work. What query do you recommend I put into a search engine? "intact aqueducts italy" doesn't seem to help much

And let us not forget about Roman law.

> slavery or something similar (serfdom etc.)

Serfdom is very different from slavery. Even slavery is not always as bad as Roman slavery.

Roman slaves could be legally killed, tortured and raped (even children). Serfs might not have fair access to the law but at least in theory they had recourse and society recognised mistreating them was immoral.

Serfs could (meaningfully) marry. They were tied to the land so could not be separated from their families and sold elsewhere.

The mistake was inventing agriculture.

It's not that pre-industrial society causes slavery, it's closer to the other way round. If you're pre-industrial then everyone has to do farm work, yes, but slavery is /economically inefficient/ because the slaves don't provide demand (since you don't pay them) and don't grow the economy.

This is why economics was called "the dismal science" - economists told people to stop doing slavery and the slaveowners called them nerds. They wanted to own slaves because they wanted to be mini-tyrants, not because they were good at capitalism. Adam Smith did not go around telling people to own slaves.

Indians have a love/hate relationship with the British because it really is an apt comparison.

India (as in the country) literally would not exist without the British. They were right assholes (to put it mildly), but compared to the other colonial powers, actually did leave a somewhat useful legacy. And weren’t that rapacious compared to many others (cough Belgium, Spain).

As to how much, if any, that justifies anything is up for debate. But Indians would generally hold that debate in English, because it works.

Poe never wrote "Quoth the raven, eat my shorts", but I suspect an order of magnitude or two more people are aware of that poem thanks to The Simpsons, compare to all the poetry teachers ever.

> It would be interesting, however, to have a backdrop of steadfast historical “accuracy “ in an otherwise pseudo-slapstick context a-la Monty pythons flying circus. That was kinda part of the gig, but it might be even funnier if they obviously took that aspect with unflinching seriousness.

That can get super grim too.

I saw (maybe read?) an interview with Margaret Attwood about The Handmaids Tale. She took the atrocities committed by Gilead very seriously - and did not make a single one of them up. Every one of them was something historically accurate that really happened somewhere in the world.

> in slavery they were contemporary with most societies of their day

> Ultimately, there are probably very few, if any, living humans that cannot trace their cultural heritage to slavery

Indeed. Historically, for most of human civilization, chattel slavery was a linchpin of most societies. The Romans were unremarkable in this respect.

And if I may take a long digression to emphasize just how normal chattel slavery was for not only the ancient world, but for centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, it took Christianity to mount a challenge to this practice. It gave us a robust notion of the Imago Dei and human dignity, and a recognition of the evil of unjust servitude (which must be distinguished from just title servitude). Ancient Christians, having been born into a pagan world of entrenched and ubiquitous slavery, while believing that slavery was indeed evil, recognized that its abolition was impossible and impractical at the time. Of course, membership in the Church was open to everyone equally; social status had no significance. After Christianity's legalization under Constantine, the Church worked to free slaves and eventually managed to eradicate the practice in Europe. A former slave even became pope (Callistus I).

Some will point to chattel slavery in the New World, but this confuses what the Church as an institution held with what individual Catholics or Protestants did. Eugenius IV, prompted by slavery in the Canary Islands, condemned slavery in the papal bull Sicut Dudum in 1435, threatening excommunication. In 1537, Paul III issued Sublimus Dei to condemn enslavement of the natives of the Americas. In 1591, Gregory XIV promulgated Cum Sicuti to counter the practice in the Philippines. Urban VIII promulgated Commissum Nobis in 1639 in support of Philip IV's edict prohibiting the enslavement of American natives. Benedict XIV, in his 1741 document Immensa Pastorum, reminded that the penalty for enslaving the indigenous was excommunication.

Similar condemnations were issued regarding the Atlantic slave trade by Innocent XI, Gregory XVI (In Supremo, 1839), and Leo XIII in two bulls condemning slavery in 1888 and 1890. The condemnations were often so harsh that their publication was often forbidden without royal approval.

And we credit the abolitionists of and from the Christian West for politically ending the practice in their various respective jurisdictions that fell under Western rule. Their appeals were grounded in the general heritage of the Christian tradition and its understanding of the human person, whatever theological or philosophical differences there might have been between them.

> What matters is what -you- chose to do. Be known for the fruit of your tree, and not as the product of the hill from which you sprout.

Wise words. History ought to be remembered, and unresolved historical trauma should be addressed and resolved lest it fester (reasonable justice and remembrance matter; without truth, there is no authentic reconciliation or unity), but to stew perpetually in stomach-churning grievance over what someone else's ancestors did to your ancestors (often overlapping groups, btw) only succeeds in wasting the short time we have in this life and contributes nothing to it. It's an excellent method of self-sabotage.