who said "Romans" cannot create?

In the course of my Ancient Greek/Roman Culture lessons my professor said once, that the Romans are mostly famous for conquering, i.e. stealing, what the Greeks had created. "That's quite true", I thought at that moment. My professor added: "What's the point in creating something of your own, if it's so easy to steal that something that has already been created?" At that I chuckled feeling a surge of pride for my ancestors.
Today is the day that changed my judgements about the modern "Roman" culture influence on the modern world in general and on Russia in particular.
What struck me most was that to make myself change my mind I didn't have to go either to Italy or to Moscow. It was here right in the centre of the place where I live.
I'm talking about the exhibition of Tonino Guerra's art. He's quite a famous person, especially famous for his skilfully written scripts for Federiko Fellini's films and for his friendship with one of the most outstanding Russian screen-writers and film directors Andrei Tarkovskii (he became extremely popular after his "Solaris"). What I liked most of all was my discovery about his immense love for Russia, for Russian people and for our culture, even for our weather, which is quite surprising for me! His wife is Russian and in the interview he mentioned the story of their acquaintance describing how white and gentle the snow falling on her face was. He's quite concerned about the fact of Russian uniqueness in every branch of culture and science. I fully agree.
The first thing that attracted my attention was his ability to make simple things seem complicated, as he believed, every simple thing in life, that we don't pay much attention on, is worth analysing and thinking over and over again until we can find the right place for it in the system. His photographs and films are full of twisted philosophy that is not that easy to understand and draw your own conclusions of. However, while viewing his works (including illustrations for Kama Sutra) and his projects (including the one of building and decorating a hotel with a restaurant "Tzargrad" in the historic centre of Yaroslavl which is said to be Italian)watching his films, one of which is dedicated to two young men playing tennis without either a racket or a ball, simply imitating it, and a crowd watching their play very attentively. And here's the question: who are you personally - a tennis player or a crowd indifferent member? Are you in or out of this game, called Life? Are you active or passive in it? Are you a puppet-theatre plaything?
Or maybe you're neither. Then who are you and what is your role in this puppet-theatre or maybe you're left out of it, forgotten?
I still have all questions rushing in my head. I only hope you can also think about them, because, no matter if you like such kind of art or not, it offers you a compelling proof for its right to exist.
You can find some pictures of "Tzargrad" decorations at http://www.cih.ru/tg/index.html