‘Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?’, asks the leader of the People’s Front of Judea in Monty Python’s 1979 film Life of Brian.

The appearance on the left (sinister) side was considered an ill omen, hence our modern word ‘sinister’

We, too, might think of the Rome’s legacy largely in terms of infrastructure projects such as roads, sewers and public baths. But there’s an even more obvious and ubiquitous bequest: the words we speak and the context and concepts that gave birth to them. Almost a third of English vocabulary derives directly from Latin. Add the Latin words that entered English through French, and nearly 60 per cent of our vocabulary traces back to Ancient Rome.

Peering into their etymologies reveals how English words still carry Roman life inside them like miniature time-capsules of ancient religions, maths, myths and, particularly, politics. Senate, candidate, inaugurate, election: it’s hardly surprising that the Romans left a deep imprint on our political language, given how many modern institutions and ideals of government descend from theirs. The word senate, for instance, comes from senex, ‘old man’ (likewise the root of ‘senior’ and ‘senile’), reflecting how, according to Roman tradition, Romulus,........

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