Ohhhh! So because it figures heavily into the history of your own worldview, that means it's the greatest, right? Yeah, that's a pretty dated worldview, sorry.

> you're writing the question using the Latin alphabet

Rome didn't invent the Latin alphabet.

> in a language that is heavily influenced by Latin

Calling English "heavily influenced by Latin is a very big stretch.

>if you speak Spanish, Italian, French, Romanian, or Portugese, you are speaking a language directly related to Latin.

All languages are related to others, this doesn't really tell us much.

>which spread Christianity

But did not create Christianity. Wouldn't this go against your own argument? Their own gods were supplanted by a foreign one.

>If you are Jewish and not living in Israel, it is because the Romans expelled the Jews from Judea, and your ancestors were forced to move elsewhere.

That's a pretty huge stretch, but which empires didn't cause populations to move?

>Geopolitically, a lot of the crimes committed against the Jews over the millennia can be traced to the expulsion of the Jews.

You're really going to have to provide a citation on that one.

>You could argue that the conflict in the Middle East is due to the area being under the control of the Eastern Roman Empire, and then the Ottoman Empire (it's successor empire), for two thousand years

You really couldn't.

> which lead peoples of various cultures, languages, and religions it intermingle in ways that didn't happen in other places

Where are their homogenous societies still existing? Not many. And every empire included mixtures of cultures, languages, and religions intermingling. That's a defining feature, but this is the norm in modern society.

The issues come more from the attempts to divide the intermingled peoples, and trying to force population exchanges and identity borders. See in particular Campos' Ottoman Brothers and the mandate system as a whole.

>and as a result, the nation-state as a political entity has mostly failed there

The notion of Nation States is a modern one entirely, trying to tie Nationalism with Rome is once again a stretch.

>derive from the Roman legal system.

Have some basis in, perhaps, but Rome did not create a unique legal system, they also found inspiration from other places to help create theirs, this is how all systems work throughout history. Rome is not unique in this.

>Trade routes between the various countries of Europe, particularly Western Europe, were affected by Roman occupation

Again, which empires did this not occur with?

>and in many cases, created by the Romans.

Such as?

>Oh, and the whole concept of the Senate, which we use in the U.S. as one of our two houses of Congress, is based on the Roman Senate.

Outside of the name the systems don't really match up that well.

I think you have this very strong view of an idealised Rome that has left you a bit biased. And as mentioned above, that's why no historian would try and list a greatest empire ever, or anything like the sort -- there's no scientific way to come up with such an answer. It's all bias.