Rome

I've been watching the HBO miniseries "Rome" on DVD.

Ancient Rome (especially the middle and late republic) has been an interest of mine for most of my life. Up until now, though, I've always thought of it as history - I never thought about what it would be like to live there. I never thought about the social attitudes, and whether they would be a better match for how I see the world than the present.

OK, they had slavery, the plumbing was terrible, the religious fanatacism was if anything worse and more dangerous than it is today, you were better off without medical care than using what was available in most cases, but while I'm sure much of that shaped the social attitudes, were they necessary to them?

To what extent do circumstances drive attitudes? It seems to be generally accepted that democracy can only work in a population that is literate and has access to non-government news. It is generally accepted that slavery discourages technological innovation for labor-saving devices.

And yet Rome was the closest thing to a democracy the world saw for millenia (yes, the greeks "invented" it, but we owe far more to the SPQR than to the greeks). Its level of technology, especially civil engineering, was unmatched for centuries after the 'fall of Rome'. The aqueducts, the baths, the roads - infrastructure that benefited the commoners just as much as the wealthy.

What will history think of our attitudes? That we reached the moon first will never be forgotten, but will they laugh at our quiant ideas and wonder how we could have possibly achieved so much when we were socially so handicapped?