ABSTRACT

The Roman world from the middle of the first century BC to the end of the second century AD witnessed, after traumatic upheavals, the establishment of a stable society over one of the widest geographical areas to know political unity at any time in human history. From the achievements, ethos and writings of the Roman Empire at its height stemmed the values-moral, religious, artistic, legal, political-which have shaped European culture down to the twentieth century. In some respects such influence has been continuous over the last 2,000 years. Christianity, which sprang from Judaism in the early first century, and rabbinic Judaism which emerged from the traumas of the end of that century, evolved in an unbroken tradition through the Middle Ages. So too did the medical achievements of the High Empire, to the extent that the speculations of Galen (AD 129-c. 199) about the workings of the body remained standard theory until the eighteenth century. So also did the astronomy and astrology of Claudius Ptolemaeus (AD c. 100-c. 178) and the work of the Classical Roman jurists, whose textbooks, written in the mid-to late second century AD, provided the foundation of Late Roman and then medieval law codes. German law is based on their categories to this day.