On the bus ride, George continued to read Robert Payne's "Ancient Rome". Lots of good stuff. Payne's chapter on Roman legacy is not so organized as it might have been, but one can extract six items. The following is from George's journal.

1. The gift of Engineering- arches and domes and roads- known before but never used so extensively and variously.
2. Governance- a sense of hierarchy and order that ruled the known world and kept the longest period of peace in history.
3. Governance based on a deep sense of law- Drawing from stoicism, articulated by Cicero and later by the church, the Romans believed in principles of justice that transcended time, place and power. This vision produced a sense of the world brought together by unbreakable bonds of rights and obligations (p 175).
4. Republican Virtues- based on a mostly legendary time when men were instinctively drawn to frugality, honesty, simplicity and courage (174). That we should live within our means, drawing our happiness not from material satisfactions acquired on borrowed money but on our sense of honor and courage and duty. This vision can be seen, if you dig deep enough, glimmering even amid the angry rhetoric of the Tea Party. ("I question this." says Joanne.)
5. The Latin Language- which turned so easily into Spanish, French, Italian, and other Romance languages.
6. Finally the Dream of a Commonwealth- something like an empire, but more than an empire, a sense of human brotherhood and shared destiny and mutual concern, still alive in the universal church and our recurrent dream we embody in institutions like the United Nations.