How Did The Greeks Influence Roman Civilization

Introduction:

"We might say that when Greece was conquered by Rome, Rome was civilized by Greece" (Morey, 1901). Indeed, while the Romans believed the Greeks were, as a conquered people, fundamentally inferior to them, they nevertheless admired Greek culture, art, and philosophy. As a people with education and intellect, many Greek slaves that were taken by Romans became tutors for noble Roman children. Romans were taught about Greek architecture, religion, and literature. In addition, the Greek language became the second language of the Roman upper class. Importantly, Romain government and military tactics soon became heavily influenced by Greece, which advanced the concept of democracy and catalyzed the growth of the Roman empire respectively.

Greek became the language of intellect, taught to the wealthy as a second language to their native Latin. "Greek was the language of the educated, and it was used in all official documents and governmental assemblies during the Roman empire" ("halessandrah" GreekinfluenceonRome, 2010). As well, the epic writings of Greek authors, such as Homer and Sophocles, were adopted by the Romans, but read in Greek, emphasizing that only the most cultured and educated Romans could understand them. Eventually, Romans who were inspired enough by the epics of the Greek authors, poets, and philosophers, began to write their own epics. For example, in Rome, the Greek poet Homer was regarded as the greatest of poets, so the Roman poet Virgil studied Homer's Iliad and Odyssey to develop his own style, deriving many characteristics of his epic, Aeneid, from Homer's work (Williams, 2017). The Greeks, however, wrote more than epic poems, and so, the Romans also began to appreciate comedy, tragedy, history, and theater (Wiethoff, 2014), as well as public speaking, which was heavily emphasized as an important skill for a refined Roman citizen to

After conquering Greece, the Romans promptly stole many of their beautiful paintings and sculpture as spoils that then made their way to Italy. Ironically, the Roman desire to collect and display Greek art, then to imitate it in admiration of the Greek models, resulted in the Romans becoming "the preservers of Greek art" (Morey, 1901), as many of the surviving Greek sculptures do so only as Roman copies. As Greek art was fashionable, Roman artists often would make copies of the originals. Rather than acknowledge Roman artists, instead writers would rave about the original Greek sculptors and painters. Eirene (Peace) bearing Plutus (Wealth), Roman copy after a Greek votive statue by Kephisodotos (ca. 370 BC) which stood on the agora in Athens. (Kabel, 2005)

"Most historians tend to see Roman art as, at best, a poor copy of Greek art. It is possible that the Romans themselves shared this perspective" (Williams, 2017).