Having spent a couple trans-Atlantic plane flights listening to the more gritty sorts of history podcasts...
Culturally, the Romans were a *hell* of a statistical outlier.
@icefox I'm curious how you mean that. The Romans are so titanically overrated in just about every conceivable department...
@kara Well, yes. The podcast I was listening to (Hardcore History) admits a certain bit of Roman fanboyism, just cause they actually bloody wrote everything down.
But contrasting with other civilizations of the time, the early Roman Republic seems moar militaristic, moar regimented, and moar socially-indebted, while also moar bureaucratic, moar artistic and moar indulgent. Which is a heck of a combination. Continuing developments seem to emphasize these traits, to almost caricature.
@kara There seems a very strong self image of what "a Roman citizen" should be, and a surprising amount of formalism and bureaucracy around that idea from an early time, especially for 400 BC Italian city states. Those traits were quite militaristic, engendering conquest, and successful conquests this self-reinforced this ideal. They ended up with a weird balance of liberty and convention and organization that many empires did not; id est, the Moguls.
I am not an expert on the topic, I confess.
