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This heavily depends from which geographical region you’re from. They were the champions of imperialist colonialism for a loooooong time.
Hell, I’d broaden it to the whole world because the Romans popularized Christianity, which pretty much immediately kicked off millennia of religious conflict. Christians vs “pagans” (which wasn’t one single group), Christians vs Christians, Christians vs Jews, Christians vs Muslims, Christians vs all “pagans” in the world (and their history), Catholics vs Protestants, church vs science…
Maybe Christianity would have risen without the Romans, but it wouldn’t have had such a powerful papacy without the Roman legacy. And as much as I hate religion, I have to admit it wasn’t all bad; if it weren’t for the clergy, even more Roman knowledge would have been lost and education in general through Europe would have been worse. Maybe. Islam did have Christianity beat for education and progression for a while, and the church did have a habit of condemning science that contradicted the idea that we were special in every single way.
People who seek power and authority will use whatever tools at their disposal. Christianity is a good tool because it is inherently monotheistic (leaving all the Trinitarian nonsense aside), thus making it authoritarian. One God. One mouthpiece. Christianity would have become dominant somewhere else and infected the world.
I don’t disagree, I just don’t think there would have been as strong of a central church authority because it wasn’t grandfathered in as a former Roman institution with all the power and influence that came along with that.
Once the Roman emperors decided Rome was Christian, a lot of Europe was suddenly Christian. Iberia, everything west of the Rhine, the Balkans, Anatolia, and the western part of the Middle East. If Rome hadn’t forced that, Christianity wouldn’t have spread as quickly and might even today still be one of many different sects.
Islam might have spread through Europe instead of being stopped in Iberia and the Balkans. It’s impossible to know what Europe would have done with Islam, but early Islam was a lot more tolerant of other religions and valued education, knowledge, and progress. We might not have settled in to some centuries of most people thinking humans had discovered everything there was to discover or physics being held back by people offended at the idea that the Earth isn’t the centre of existence. Colonialism might have even been different because Islam didn’t stamp out existing cultures like Christianity did (though again, who knows what it would have evolved into by the time people were figuring out how to navigate the oceans, because Rome also used to be like that).
We’re all victims of Roman jurisprudence
Great, it has now been 0 days since I thought about The Roman Empire.