Rome remains powerful partly because we know so much about it – the poems of Virgil, the letters of Cicero, and the histories of Tacitus have all survived the millennia – and images of toga-wearing senators and duelling gladiators endure in the popular imagination.

European languages are littered not only with Latin words but entire Latin phrases (alter ego; per se; de facto; bona fide – et cetera), while we still use an adapted version of Julius Caesar's calendar. Romanesque styles still thrive in art and architecture: from the Neoclassical columns of the US Capitol to the paintings and sculptures of the Renaissance, which explicitly aimed to revive Roman aesthetics and philosophies.

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