What have the Romans ever (actually) done for us?

[Connacht]

As quoted by Italian writer, journalist and historian Indro Montanelli in his books "History of Rome" and "History of Italy" (sorry if I made mistakes in the translation):

If we see things from above and give them a reason, we could say that Rome was born with a mission, that she accomplished it and with it ended.
That mission was to recollect the civilizations that came before her, the Greek one, the Eastern one, the Egyptian, Carthaginian, Celtic ones, to merge them and spread them in Europe and in the Mediterranean Basin.
Rome didn't invent so much in philosophy, art or science, but gave them roads for their circulation, armies for defending them, a formidable and complex system of law to guarantee their developement in order, and a language for making them universal.
Rome didn't invent even political forms: monarchy and republic, aristocracy and democracy, liberalism and dispotism, were already tested before. But she made them models, and in every one of them was brilliant for practical and organizative genius.

Abdicating with Constantine, Rome left her administrative structure to Constantinople, who survived for other 1000 years. And even the Christianity, in order to triumph in the world, had to became Roman. Saint Peter well understood that only by travelling in the Via Appia, Cassia, Aurelia and all the other highways built by Roman engineers, not the labile paths travelling the desert, the disciples of Jesus would have spred in the Earth.
His successors would have been called Pontefices Maximi just like those who managed religious questions in the pagan Urbs. And against the austerity of the Jewish rule, they introduced in the new liturgy many elements of the pagan one: the pomp and spectacularity of some ceremonies, Latin language, even a little vein of polytheism in the veneration of saints.
So, no more as the political centre of an empire, but as the mastermind of Christianity, Rome became again Caput Mundi, and remained so until the Protestant reformation.

Never a city in the world had a so wonderful adventure. Her history is so great that even the huge crimes scattered during her time seem tiny.
Maybe one of the troubles of Italy today is this: to have for capital a city that is disproportionate, for name and legacy, to the modesty of a people that, when shouts "go for it Rome!" is only referring to a football club.