Year 9
Unit 4 - Roman Empire
Our concluding lesson looks at the long-term consequences of the Roman Empire and the ways in which it still influences our world today. As Monty Python famously illustrated (right) the Romans were responsible for many significant contributions to civilisation. For example, many roads in Europe still follow the old lines of Roman roads which really did all lead to Rome.
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Some of our most important cities were founded by the Romans like Lausanne or Seville in Spain, Maastricht in the Netherlands, or Bratislava in Slovakia.
Some places still take their names from their Roman name, e.g. London from Londinium, Florence from Florentia and Pamplona from Pompaelo. |
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In this video Adam Hart-Davis looks at a range of things the Romans developed, some of which we have already studied. He examines the military innovation and war machines. He looks closely at the roads and we find out what it actually takes to build one of these. The programme covers how they built amphitheatres and race tracks and spread sports throughout the empire. He looks at how they pioneered the mass production of glass and double glazing, and as we have already seen, they created enormous aqueducts that fed water from distant sources into the heart of their cities and bath houses, created clever heating systems, and flushing toilets.
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For example, the calendar we use today, with 365 days in a year, is based on the one developed by Julius Caesar, the Julian calendar, introduced in 46 BC. The Julian calendar split the year for the first time into 365 days, divided into 12 months, with a leap day added to February every four years. It was revised in 1582 to the Gregorian calendar. In many languages months of the year take their names from the Roman months and some days of the week are named after Roman gods. (See right)
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