- I won't defend the Roman record on slavery, but I will point out that the Greeks (particularly the Spartans) were slave societies too.
- The Greeks were significantly more xenophobic and sexist than the Romans. If you washed up on the shores of ancient Greece, you could never have become a citizen. The Romans were far more tolerant and inclusive.
- Putting spaces between words was a medieval innovation. The Greeks wrote in much the same way as the Romans, and that was thanks to the Phoenicians!
- Romans revered Greek culture because their city started in a period when Greek colonies were spreading Greek influence throughout the Mediterranean and, specifically, in Italy itself. Greece was to Rome as Rome was to medieval Europeans: A colonizer.
----------
No ancient society smells of roses if you look close enough. However, it's also rare to find ancient societies that expanded and persisted for centuries without being innovative and progressive. The Romans were both awful and great, much like the Greeks, Akkadians, Babylonians, Sumerians, etc. before them.
As opposed to the Greeks, Parthians, Ptolemaic Egypt and Judea? Unless you mean "fully dependent on slave labour" - then I guess we can mention Sparta and Athens.
> that progressed sciences, technology and civilization little from what they inherited from the Mesopotamian's/Greeks
What does "little" mean in this context? This is a very fuzzy concept but this doesn't sound right.
Athens had a rather strange system of slavery. The majority of slaves, owned by State, earned wages and worked and lived unattended. It was much more similar to indentured-servitude.
It progressed civic life, institutions, law, infrastructure, and other things, a lot. Modern law is a heavy percentage ancient roman law in basis.
Slavery-based society doesn't say much for 2 millenia ago. Most where. The US had slavery until less than 2 centuries, and Jim Crow and other such things until less than a century. And still has things like forced prison labor, so let's cut the Romans some fucking slack.
And a lot the later 19th-20th century "englightened" countries that didn't have explicit slavery in their midst, have enslaved and exploited whole countries as colonies.
I'd rather work than be in a cell.
Especially if I get far far worse crime outcomes than countries with much healthier prison systems.
But, hey, that's just me.
Probably because what they really want is not safety or justice or rehabilitation, but retribution, revenge, and a non-criminal way to express their sadistic tendencies on some group, and since that group is prisoners anyway, so few care, even better.
Greek of this same era did not have spaces either, as a look at any reproduction of an ancient manuscript will tell you.
Roman engineering was pretty darn solid.
Without spaces, Japanese could never develop a great civilization. Pfff