Could a time-traveling Roman understand the modern world?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I think he’d had a massive case of culture shock. It’s not that things wouldn’t be graspable, but that so many fundamental things would be so completely different that the cumulative effect would be extreme disorientation.

nevertheless, I think that a robust individual would learn to cope. He wouldn’t worry about exactly how things worked – Electricity and gasoline engines and television and telephones and the internet would be “magic” or “unexplained technology” until understood. But our Roman friend would be bewildered and disorented by the following (NOT necessarily because they’re hard to understand, but becauise of how fundamentally different they are):

1.) Non-Roman Numerals and calculations

2.) Religion and how it fits into daily public life

3.) Social networking – whether you get together with people at the bar, the health club, organizations, or hang out at the mall, it’ll be vastly different from whatever he had (gambling in the forum, hanging out at the Baths, conversing in the communal toilet, whatever)

4.) Buying Food in sealed containers and getting meals at fast food/casual restaurants. – street-market food stands and the open-air market weren;t at all like this. Even if he goes to Rnglishtown Auction Sales in NJ or Haymarket in Boston, it’s not going to feel like home. And NOBODY here reclines to eat.

5.) I don’t think investing and the fundamentals of banking are going to weigh heavily on our time traveler until he’s been in town for a long time. Coins and purchasing will be pretty much the same, except that our are more regular and made of weird metals. He’s more likely to be freaked by all the paper money, but he’ll get over that pretty quick.

6.) CLOTHES, fer cryin’ out loud. Completely different in form, function, and price. We have nothing at all like a toga, and only barbarians wore pants.

7.) No Slaves. How can modern people even LIVE without basic servants? This one’s going to be a big mental re-alignment.

8.) PAPER is ubiquitous today. That’s going to be a bigger shock than computers. We don’t have news criers (a la Rome) or Tables of Laws up in the Forum, or costly vellum or papyrus books, but we have gazillions of cheap paper books and (for now, at least) newspapers.
Read L. Sprague de Camp’s classic Lest Darkness Fall, and invert the situation. His Martin Padway found that the things he expected to be real big changes were hard to implement, but commonplaces like Arabic Numerals, Double-Entry Bookkeeping, Paper, Distilled Beverages, and consistent soap were impressive achievements. Packaged food will blow our Roman away, as wi;ll many of our new foods (coffee, potatoes, corn, chocolate) and things that were rare that are now cheap and plentiful (sugar, good salt)

22

He’d probably wipe his ass with toilet cleaning brush rather than with toilet paper.

23

Probably – it was usual to keep a sponge on a stick in Roman common toilets for that purpose (and I suspect you know, for bringing t up). The Roman would probably think this was one area where the future was worse.

24

I bet he’d figure out toilet paper without being taught.

I’d agree with others than a Roman would have only a little trouble getting used to technology. People adapt to that stuff pretty quickly. It’s been pointed out that old people hav trouble with computers and such, but that’s a function of being old. If your Roman is 30 years old he’ll be fine.

However, modern society would provide some challenges in terms of expected behaviour. Romans lived in a time when violence was an accepted way to solve interpersonal conflicts, universal rights and security of the person were unknown, society was heirarchical to an extent unknown today, personal honor wsa a matter of life or death, and their moral compass was different in a hundred little ways.

25

I still can’t figure out how the three seashells are supposed to work.

26

He’d freak out on his first visit to a dentist.
And c’mon people. Airplanes?

27

Dentists deal with people freaking out to varying degrees all the time. Or he could do what lots of modern people who can’t afford to go to the dentist (or who just don’t want to go) do, and not go.

He could get along for quite a while without flying on a plane. Lots of people do.

We use different utensils to eat than Romans did, too. Getting used to eating in a completely different position with completely different utensils than you’re used to would probably not be easy.

The food’s going to be quite different, too. Hopefully he’s an adventurous eater- people today vary in their willingness to try food that’s totally different from what they’re used to, and I would imagine Romans would have varied similarly. He would never have seen potatoes, tomatoes, corn, chili peppers, coffee, or lots of other common foods. He wouldn’t be able to get some things he was used to eating (I wonder how close Vietnamese fish sauce is to garum).

28

A kinda relevant webcomic.

For those that don’t want to look:

[Spoiler]It’s a picture of three people sitting around a table arguing with eachother. The question is, “So if the founding fathers were alive today, what would they say?”

One guys says, “They’d say they were horrified by excessive government control.”
Another says, “Seriously? Have you ever looked at a history book?”

And the caption on the bottom of the picture says, "I don’t care what the other pundits say, the correct answer is, “Holy shit! Airplanes!”[/Spoiler]

29

What utensils did Romans use to eat with?

30

Are you people insane? Tell him nothing! What’s to stop him from going back in time and changing history?

Sure, you’re thinking he’ll run up to Caesar and be all like “Cave Idus Martias!” and Ceasar will be like “De via mea decede!” But do you really want to take the chance?

31

I think an intelligent, educated Roman who knew he was coming to the future 2200 years ahead would take to the world very readily. I also think he would be amazed how ‘Roman’ we were. I think when we explain to him that the Roman emprire fell and we weren’t Romans he would think “Suuuurrrrreeee. I believe you believe that…but you really are more Roman than you think”

32

Yeah, but the OP was would he understand the modern world. In the case of a dentist, would he be able to get past the notion of torture (and a man, say 30 years old, getting dental care for the first time in his life would think of it as torture) to comprehend the good it will ultimately do?

Again, I think you miss the point of the OP.

33

If he was Titus Pullo from HBO’s Rome we’d have a hell of a time - but I’d need plenty of bail money.

34

They had doctors in Rome who hurt you one hell of a lot more than dentists do. The concept of a doctor who does uncomfortable things wouldn’t be anything unfamiliar.

Spoons and fingers. Forks were unknown and no decent Roman would eat with a knife.

They ate very different food than we do - more Italian, sort of. A lot of bread and porridge, basic vegetables, and fish. Heavy on oils and wine. Salads and cheeses and meats if you were richer. Almost everything was either a soup/porridge or cut up into finger foods. Roman food was often spicy and/or sweet.

35

I don’t think the airplane would be too big a problem. It would freak him out when he first saw it but you could explain that it’s basically the same as a car - it burns oil to make it move and if you move fast enough and put wings on then it will take off. You could demonstrate the principles using paper planes and birds.

It would be interesting to take him to Rome. It’s probably still got much the same layout and then you could take him round a corner and say “look, the Colosseum, it’s still there”. That would be quite moving for him and probably produce a few tears.

36

We wear trousers. We eat sitting. We drink milk. Women behave in the most deplorable manner! He’d be shocked at the amount of ‘barbaristic’ tendencies in modern society.

The Romans were formidable engineers, so I don’t think tech-wise he’d be that horrified, if you sat down and explained how, say, the internal combustion engine worked.

The biggest shock, I would think, would be the culture shock. A good Roman depends on his values; martial strength, solemn dignity, knowing you are superior in every way to the rest of the uncivilised barbarians that inhabit the world. Looking up to those above you for leadership and good Roman values. But in the modern world, all of those things are gone. You say 2000 years, so let’s assume he’s from the time of Augustus. When the world was Rome’s for the taking. Even disasters like Teutoburg were isolated incidents, the Empire endured. But now…no Empire. No sense of superiority. I imagine his first question upon understanding his situation would be; what has happened to the Empire? The answer may well be more than he can bear. Best keep him on suicide watch; he may well prefer to die ‘with honour’ than live out his life as a relic of a dead Empire.

37

The Empire? It’s just resting!

38

Yeah, you could break that stuff gently. Tell him the Empire still exists but we now call it “Italy”. And there are other Empires beyond the boundaries of “Italy” which we call “Germany”, “France”, “Britain” etc. The idea of other empires that exist outside of Roman control wouldn’t be so alien to him - that was always the case even at their height. You’d just have to convince him that the empire still exists in the form of Italy.

Which isn’t really all that untrue, it does still exist in the sense that it’s genetically still the same people there in Rome. They were never all wiped out by a volcano or an earthquake or something. The people there now are descended from the romans. There wasn’t an influx of different people between now and then. So it’s the Roman empire still, they’ve just organised themselves into a “country” of some sort.

Anyway, on a different note, atomic theory would be well-known to him - it was formulated by the atomists in Greece in 5BC (and also in India in 6BC). We just need to tell him that those guys were right, there are atoms after all and we can now actually see them to prove it. So he’ll be cool with splitting the atom and anything nuclear power related.

39

That is on a timeline. The sucking or birthing of the roman soldier so razor like would leave little to sane, hell even now, this kind of physical time travel is mythical. Might as well ask if an American soldier from this time and province would adjust to 2189… Or 5000.

Would we believe all that has been instilled and deny reality? Or would we accept reality and make destin? Love to have him show me around italy. I’m sure he could find his house and we could excavate or have the first verified 3-dimensional coordinate within time. Solid.

40

Actually, you’d be even better off if you could find one called the so-and-so Amphiteatre, and maximum points if the so-and-so was a Flavian.

Show him the modern day Catholic Church - there’s something he could recognize as an extension of the Empire. Heck, the Pope and cardinals even dress like ancient Roman royalty.