...and at the foot of a monumental temple: it is the imposing nineteenth century Soldiers and Sailors Monument, a tall circular temple of white marble with elegantly fluted columns that are elevated by a massive base and crowned with Corinthian capitals of luxuriant foliage, the higher architrave decorated with ornate details harkening back to the second and third centuries, when Rome was at its zenith. Although the monument was based on an ancient Greek design, the eagles proudly perched atop the architrave and over the doorway at the base convey an imperial majesty more typical of Rome than Greece. Indeed, the Romans adopted—expropriated—the refined classical aesthetics of Greece to proclaim their power and greatness, and for countless centuries the fierceness of the eagle had represented Roman might, adorning temples and palaces, as well as the standards of the legions.  From the lights shining on this august edifice through the evening darkness, you can easily imagine that you’re in the Forum 1900 years ago, with flickering torches illuminating the temple’s fluted columns and chants of its priests echoing from within. The very existence of this monument, with its timeless classical harmony, begs the question as to why, two millennia later, we imitate the Roman ideal of beauty, which in marble and bronze bespeaks order, authority, and, yes, raw power. 

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Of course, all around us are buildings that have adopted Rome’s classical style, including banks, train stations, post offices, and especially our capital. A very downsized representation of what the monumental area of ancient Rome looked like at its height can be found by strolling around the Mall in Washington, D.C., the putative “New Rome” of modern times, although America’s reach throughout the known world is really modest compared to what ancient Rome’s was. One of the purest examples in D.C. is the Supreme Court Building: approached by an expansive staircase worthy of a great ancient Roman temple or palace, its entrance has massive fluted columns topped by equally impressive Corinthian capitals right out of second and third century Rome. This “temple of justice” is certainly evocative of the Temple of Jupiter, the holy of holies that once crowned the Capitoline Hill overlooking the Forum. Many of the government buildings ringing the Mall in D.C. similarly echo back to ancient times, but they are spaced so far apart that they create only a pale imitation of Rome at its height, when its population was around a million people. Back then the city was chock-a-block full of temples, palaces, baths, theaters, and public buildings of all sizes, tightly packed cheek-to-jowl and often separated by narrow streets and alleys. If the monumental area of D.C. were ever to be pillaged, abandoned, and then left to the vicissitudes of countless centuries of neglect, weather, and encroaching vegetation, there really wouldn’t be much to admire, whereas Rome’s ruins continue to astonish and impress visitors 1600 years later.

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Yet it’s not just our imitating Rome’s majestic architecture that illustrates how Rome still matters. Rome’s lingering presence nowadays can also be subtle and largely unappreciated by most people. For example, embedded on the wall behind the dais of the United States House of Representatives, on each side of the Speaker’s chair, is a representation of the ancient Roman fasces, which was a bundle of wooden rods and an ax, all about five feet long and tied together with a strap. The fasces was carried on the shoulders of lictors, attendants who accompanied Roman magistrates throughout the city, initially as bodyguards but later as ceremonial symbols of the magistrate’s authority—the more important the magistrate, the more lictors who traipsed after him, the emperor eventually having 24. In some of the “sword and sandals” movies on ancient Rome, they would be shown in the background silently following the emperor. Although it’s fair to say that America’s democracy is light years away from ancient Rome’s rigidly hierarchal society, with the consuls and emperors having largely unchecked power backed by the army, the fasces remains a symbol of imperium, of power, even in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives. Perhaps a more apt appropriation of ancient Rome’s fasces in D.C. is with the monumental statue of Abraham Lincoln in his memorial on the Potomac: carved in the front of the sixteenth president’s chair are two fasces, symbols of the near-imperial power he wielded to save the Union—Nero, Commodus, Caracalla, and all of the other mad and ruthless emperors would have commended Lincoln for his resolute devotion to preserving the American Empire, that is, I mean the Union.

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Another frequently unappreciated vestige of imperial Rome can be found in almost every Christian church in the world: the initials “IHS” emblazoned on banners, crosses, communion tables and wafers, and other holy vestments. In the year 312, the Roman general Constantine, one of the several co-emperors vying for the imperial purple, was about to engage in battle with Maxentius, the current emperor in Rome. According to tradition—the history of murky, with several different versions—on his way to battle, Constantine saw in the sky a heavenly vision of the cross with the words “In Hoc Signo Vinces:” in this sign you will conquer. He immediately ordered that the shields of his soldiers be marked with the first two letters of the Greek work for Christ. Of course, he won the battle and the throne, and the next year he returned the favor by issuing an edict that permanently halted centuries of Roman persecution of Christianity, earning him the moniker “the Great” and enshrining the initials of his vision in churches through the subsequent centuries. Although these three letters from 1700 years ago might seem to be a trivial relic from the past, they in fact represent a seismic—cataclysmic--event in history: Constantine’s nod of favor towards Christianity was akin to visitation by aliens from outer space or the invention of the internet.

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These constant reminders of ancient Rome—our continually mimicking its monumental architecture, the fasces decorating our public spaces, the earth-shattering event that “IHS” calls forth—these references to Rome’s past glory are just embellishments to the larger, most profound theme of Rome’s all-pervasive influence on western civilization. Rome’s legacy—why Rome still matters—is its embodiment of the transcendent ideal of the universal commonwealth, the union of diverse peoples and civilizations under the rule of law. Never before had western humankind lived under such a largely benign, overarching concept. Yes, this commonwealth was imperfect: it was based on slave labor (but slavery in Rome was multifaceted and nuanced in many ways), women had minimal rights if any (but the history of Rome is replete with women who triumphed), the income inequality was profound (but many slaves, freeman, and soldiers carved out comfortable lives), and the emperors could be mad, incompetent, and exceedingly cruel (but the further away from Rome you were, the less affected you were by the whims of the emperors). But Rome’s universal law that was in effect throughout the far reaches of the empire, its extensive networks of roads and trade, its common language of Latin (and Greek), and its many generations of peace and prosperity were engrained into the DNA of people back then, so much so that when Rome’s empire unraveled and barbarian invasions shredded the fragile fabric of its civilization, the ideal of Rome never died. The thought of Rome “falling” was foreign to most people’s thinking back then—Rome would always exist, so they reasoned, and would be the apotheosis of western civilization.

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Centuries after the empire disintegrated, when the city’s monuments crumbled into the streets and their elegant columns and lustrous marble were hauled off to build Medieval churches or were dumped into lime kilns for mortar for crude Medieval hovels—when Rome was but a shade of its former glory--barbarian princes and kings vied for title of Emperor, popes enshrined martyrs’ bones in innumerable holy places throughout the city, and waves of pilgrims visited what for them was the New Jerusalem, the spiritual center of the world. Throughout the desperate times of the Middle Ages, the ideal of Rome competed with the miserable reality on the ground, and the ideal always won out—people largely looked toward the ideal instead of despairing over the dreariness about them. Indeed, although battered down, Rome back then, with its majestic ruins and the remaining sculptural friezes and marble statues, still evoked the power of its empire and reminded people that they were heirs of a truly monumental civilization.

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Yes, Rome still matters. Every time Holy Communion is held in a church of any denomination, every time we see an elegantly fluted column with a flowery Corinthian capital adorning a bank building or train station, every time Roman numerals denote the latest Super Bowl, every time a politician alludes to the sanctity of rule of law—all of these occasions and countless others remind us that Rome permeates every aspect of today’s world and will continue to do so for a very, very long time into the future.