Know your expression:When in Rome, do as the Romans do

This is a typical English expression, and one wonders why an English saying would single out Rome and Roman values for emulation.

Well, the expression is originally from Latin and was part of the letter an early Christian wrote to another Christian concerning their travel arrangements.

St Augustine wrote a letter to Januarius around 390AD.

The Latin version read: Cum Romanian venio, ieiuno sabbato; cum hic sum, non ieiuno: sic etiamtu, ad quam foste ecclesiam veneris, eius moem serua, sicuiquam non vis esse scandalum nec quemquam tibi.

Which translates in English as: When I go to Rome, I fast on Saturday, but here (Milan) I do not.

Do you also follow the custom of whatever chuch you attend, if you do not want to give or receive scandal.

Januarians, who also became a saint later, was the Bishop of Naples at the time.

While the source of this expression goes as far back as the beginnings of the Christian Church, its use isn’t recorded until much later, well into the middle ages.

In his play, The pleasant history of the two angry women of Abington, 1599, Henry Porter used a version of the expression:

Nay, I hope, as I have temperance to forbear drink, so have I patience to endure drink: Ile do as company dooth; for when a man doth to Rome come, he must do as there is done.

The Interesting letters of Pope Clement XIV were published in 1777 and Letters XLIV contains the earliest version of the expression as it is currently used in English:

The siesto, or afternoon’s nap of Italy, my most dear and revered Father, would not have alarmed you so much, if you had recollected, that when we are in Rome, we should do as the Romans do — Cum Romano. Romany eris.

The expression means it is polite, and possibly also advantageous, to abide by the customs of a society when one is a visitor.

In other words, we are admonished to behave as those around us do when we visit places. I must add that as a result of its familiarity and the expectation that everyone knows the ending, the expression is used in the shortened version: “When in Rome...’’