How really \'different\' were the Romans?

[thiswayup]

For I see our 'civilization' as simply a 'veneer' - which can crack. And if it does, then man can act as he has always done.

This makes no sense. You seem to be heroically battling strawmen... and losing very badly. Hint: you are confusing the words "civilized" and "humane". It's a common vulgarity, but not excusable in this context.

All the things that the Romans did - are still done in the world somewhere today - however horrible we may see them now.

But so what? This is like saying that jet propelled dogs must have existed in Roman times, because dogs and 747s do today. Leaving aside your poor logic (for a start, you don't know all the things the Romans did, so you can't be sure that they are all still done - and in fact I'm damn sure that some are not) a culture, like a personality, is not just the sum of its activities.

In a nutshell - I do believe in the adage - that if we don't learn from history, then we are doomed to repeat it. Which is why I don't see us as really 'different'.

This is appalling logic (you can certainly learn from people who are different - at least I can even if you can't) and wouldn't hold true even if your postulates were not ridiculous.

Anyway: the Romans were different. This does not mean, as you have concluded that they were less moral or less civilized. It means that they had different expectations and way of behaving, and we are not always sure what these were. You seem to miss this fundamental fact entirely - earlier you argued that we could put people in Roman uniforms and train them to act like Roman soldiers, so they couldn't be really different. But this is utter and complete nonsense because we don't know how Roman training methods - or even how they fought - well enough to do this.

And that's only the start of the problem. Because military effectiveness depends greatly on culture. US military advisors - who do know how US troops are trained! - can't get modern Arab troops to behave like US ones, because their cultural background is so different. See eg

http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/AD_Iss...rabs1.html

Combat effectiveness is enormously - and complexly and subtly - dependent on culture. If you don't understand this, then consider the differing behaviour of, say, Japanese and Italian infantry in WW2.