[英语专业] See Roman Empire through English Idioms

Any language in a long and splendid history has its magic power and great influence to the people who speak or learn it. While the environment that the people devote into, like local culture, custom, literary and so on, also promotes and shapes the language as its power resources and guide. As a result, idioms have appeared since the people can record the history and developed with the improving media. “Idiom is an extremely important language phenomenon. No beautiful language in the world doesn’t have its colorful and meaningful idioms.” ① English has a great number of idioms, which mainly have the allusions from three great resources, the Bible, Greek and Roman fables and the works of Shakespeare. Another resource English idioms come from is the historic events in Europe.

1.Roman Empire, “political system established by Rome that lasted for nearly five centuries.
2.With his incredible ability, Caesar founded his empire and outspread it in the following years when he was on the throne.
3.Everything has the time of falling and ending, so did Roman Empire every coin has its head and tail.

①韩有毅,鲍川运:(1992) «英语习语分类词典» 商务印书馆
②Ronald J. Mellor: Microsoft_ Encarta_ Encyclopedia 2002. _ 1993-2001 Microsoft Corporation.
③Michael S. Cheilik: Microsoft_ Encarta_ Encyclopedia 2002. _ 1993-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
④华泉坤，盛学茂：（2001）«英语典故词典» 91页 商务印书馆
⑤庄和诚：（2002）«英语习语探源» 149页 上海外语教育出版社