All roads lead to Rome.




All roads lead to Rome.



All roads lead to Rome.

This proverb means that all the different paths lead to the great city of Rome and this saying is from the great English poet Chaucer of 14th century. During the period after the Greek civilization and when Rome was founded as a city, the city slowly established itself as one of the leading military powers in that region and slowly an empire appeared at that point and this empire was called the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire was the centre of all the civilization in that period and slowly it conquered a lot of countries in that region and at the height of its empire the Roman Empire spread from Germany in the east up to Spain and encompassed even a part of United Kingdom. So all the administrative decisions for this big kingdom originated from Rome and so it became the centre of the ancient world. Also the Roman civilization had a very good network of roads to travel to these provinces and generally they were all connected to the Rome the centre of the Roman Empire.


This is very similar to the situation where there are lots of rivers flowing on the landscape and wherever they originate from they always end into the sea. Also in religion though there are various religions and various forms of gods they all preach love and humanity. Similar to this whatever our way of life-style of life, we are all human beings and our endeavour should march towards the noble nature - eternity.


A fool has many days.

The real meaning of the proverb is that the prudent person who looks like a fool to the unwise lives a long life. The moral of the proverb is that restraint, far from being foolishness, is in fact wisdom. It is a virtue that we need to cultivate in ourselves. The Tharaka people of Kenya live in the plains to the east of Mt. Kenya. The plains are a semiarid scrubland characterized by fragile sandy soils, low rainfall and scorching sun. The people practice subsistence farming and keep cattle, goals and sheep.


Due to the fragile soils, low rainfall levels and inappropriate farming techniques, farms yield little produce and the people are generally poor. Probably due to the harsh physical and economic conditions existing in the plains, Tharaka people tend to be short-tempered. Occasionally, little disagreements degenerate into nasty confrontations. In spite of these general observations, there are many Tharaka people who remain cool in the face of what observers consider to be provocation that requires retaliation.


Some of these observers may then ridicule the levelheaded person as a fool. In today’s world there is much intolerance. As a result we have witnessed crises and wars that could have been avoided. The spirit of understanding and forgiveness needs to be rekindled in our hearts, our families, our communities, our nations and among the peoples of the world. The moral of the proverb is that restraint, far from being foolishness, is in fact wisdom. It is a virtue that we need to cultivate in ourselves. The proverb, therefore, contains a precious message which we can and should pass around to create a more tolerant world - a world that values understanding and treasures peace - a world that shuns violence as a means of resolving conflicts and frowns on war as a way of redressing wrongs.


All roads lead to Rome.






GRAMMAR INDEX



All roads lead to Rome. To HOME PAGE