In recent years a number of films, TV shows, books and songs have taken the title ‘When in Rome’ – all thanks to an early Christian confused about customs in his new church. Rome’s era as a monarchy ended in 509 B.C. In the Vindolanda Tablets – a series of ‘postcards’ written on slivers of wood and discarded at a Roman fort on Hadrian’s Wall – it is interesting to read complaints about the state of the roads that the soldiers travelled on, demonstrating that maintenance wasn’t always a priority. First, he overhauled the tax system, which eliminated ingrained inefficiencies. Another example of the Greek influence on Rome is the pantheon of gods, renamed by the Romans but, in terms of myths and imagery, completely interchangeable with the Greek gods.

The proverb is so clichéd as to have been adapted to suit many other locations - a web search brings up thousands. Pingback: Did we Lose Out From Having No Roman Invasion Here? After all these examples of the Romans enhancing existing ideas rather than inventing new ones, here’s one that was genuinely original. Ironically, the sheer size of the empire, which many marvelled at, was also a major reason for the collapse in the power of the Romans.
Just how much of today’s Britain has been influenced by the Romans?

A denarius minted in Rome could be spent in Britain, North Africa or Turkey, such a global currency has not been seen since. Whatever the cause, Rome turned from a monarchy into a republic, a world derived from res publica, or “property of the people.”. "It serves as a reminder that you can still these sort of things while on staycation – which might be the only sort of holiday we will be able to go on this year. "He did it by forcing the battle to take place in an area that was hemmed in by forest. Skip forward a millennium, and Henry Porter came close to the modern version of the phrase in his 1599 play The Pleasant History of the Two Angry Women of Abington: ‘Nay, I hope, as I have temperance to forbear drink, so have I patience to endure drink: Ile do as company dooth; for when a man doth to Rome come, he must do as there is done.’, Porter might have advocated doing as the Romans do when it comes to drinking, but it was Robert Burton in 1621 who is most widely credited with making the phrase famous, even if he didn’t use it explicitly. How should history remember Margaret Thatcher? The Egyptians made a leap forwards with papyrus, thin sheets made from the pith of the papyrus plant. His successor Hadrian (117-138) solidified the empire’s frontiers (famously building Hadrian's Wall in present-day England) and continued his predecessor’s work of establishing internal stability and instituting administrative reforms. The main difference seems to have been that Iron Age roads serviced local communities and thus had a filigree appearance across the country, whereas Roman roads were trunk roads between large centres.