When Roman “Barbarians” Met the Asian Enlightenment
&gt; Rome’s Asian contemporaries completely dwarfed Rome in almost every respect: heritage, population, cultural diversity, technology, architecture, medicine, philosophy, poetry…<p>&gt; it’s always made me sad to think of the Romans being largely cut off from the main action on the world stage.<p>This is incorrect because the Romans knew about Greece - in fact they ran the place.<p>The Romans <i>were</i> barbarians, in a sense, I suppose, just compared to Greece. They didn&#x27;t do anything that could compare to the Greeks in math or philosophy, for example. And by, say, the fall of the Roman Empire, India had far more interesting philosophy (sadly little known because not very accessible) than Rome, so sure, &quot;Asia&quot; had better philosophy than Rome (really India specifically). But it turns out that Indian philosophy was heavily inspired by Greek philosophy (highly recommend <i>The Shape of Ancient Thought</i> for anyone interested in Greek-Indian intellectual exchange), and I wouldn&#x27;t say it was better (though I wouldn&#x27;t say  it was worse either). Rome wasn&#x27;t cut off from the best of philosophy - they were just too practical to care much about it - and they knew it and said as much.<p>Philosophy I know something about - I dropped out of the PhD program at Harvard after studying quite a bit of it. But some of the other parts seem dubious or of questionable importance. Architecture? The Romans look pretty good to me there, and I mean they even used concrete. Medicine? Let&#x27;s be serious: almost all medicine before the 1800&#x27;s was placebo. Population? So what?