The Roman Empire rose and fell under the shadow of Mars, god of war. In forgetting that their patron god was first an agricultural deity, the Romans themselves cultivated a martial and urban existence that eventually exhausted the granaries of the Empire. This led to economic collapse and eventual depopulation of Rome itself. They had created a city culture second to none, but one which they finally could not sustain.

The Romans emulated many aspects of Greek culture, adopting the pantheon of Greek gods, and imitating their art and architecture. Yet their pragmatic spirit led them to adapt Greek precedents to new ends. In this process, they also developed new building technologies that allowed them to create unprecedented architectural forms. These are their greatest artistic legacy to Western culture. The Roman admiration for things Greek also stimulated a museum culture without which our view of Greek painting and sculpture would be severely limited.

Although the Romans imitated the Greeks, they also transformed all they touched, in the process leaving an extraordinarily vivid portrait of themselves: their emperors, senators, soldiers and ordinary citizens. Roman religion served the purposes of political stability, while the ruling class was guided more by the ideals of Stoic philosophy. Roman patriotism and devotion to family, coupled with their love for realism, inspired the widespread development of portraiture, which extended also to portraits of ordinary people. Their rural roots expressed itself in an enduring love for nature. This resulted in the development of landscape painting, the building of country villas, and the cultivation of private gardens within enclosed town houses.

Roman cities, and most notably Rome itself, became models of comfort, efficiency, and spectacle. Monumental buildings advertised the power and grandeur of Rome, while providing its citizens with luxurious public baths and amphitheaters. Rome's great Imperial forums--now desolate, once adorned with triumphal arches, columns and statuary--commemorated the memory of successive rulers, while providing impressive centers for public administration.

For the duration of their Empire, the Romans had to contend with disorder on their borders, and the barbarians were a constant menace from the North. A different threat arose in the East, from among the Jews of Palestine, in the form of Christianity. Initially, this hardly caused the great Roman political machine to blink; in due course, however, Rome itself became the capital of Western Christendom--an identity maintained by the Roman Papacy to this day. In this process, the heritage of Greco-Roman culture fused with Judeo-Christian practices, and so laid the foundations on which Western civilization has continued to build.