All Roads Lead to Rome?

Why are men thinking so much about the Roman Empire?

Greetings, salutations, and welcome to Working Through It.

Welcome to my new readers, my old readers, and all those that know what SPQR means.

Today we’re working through the Roman Empire.

Rome, via Wikimedia Commons

There’s an interesting trend that’s been going around. I can’t remember where I first saw it. It might have been a tweet (or I suppose an X now?) or an Instagram Reel, maybe a TikTok. Essentially, the post said “ask the male person in your life (husband/brother/boyfriend/friend) how often they think about the Roman Empire, you will be surprised.”

The video version showed reactions from men being asked the question. Most of them said things like “everyday” or “once or twice a week.” Cue the people (usually women) in the videos being utterly shocked by their answers.

It’s sort of funny, if not standard fare for the internet these days. It isn’t exactly new nor exactly old either. I’ve seen similar parodies, such as “if your boyfriend doesn’t know how to counter the phalanx formation, he’s not worth your time” as a clever parody of the “your boyfriend must do X thing otherwise you should dump him” subgenre of TikToks. Yet the popularity of this meme exploded virtually overnight. Suddenly I began seeing it everywhere and my sister was asking me how much I thought about the Roman Empire (spoiler alert: not very much). She even insisted I ask it to the co-hosts on my podcast, who all found the question funny, if not bizarre.

So what made this trend suddenly popular?

We don’t know.

Every now and again I get recommended high school student council videos on Instagram. It’s nothing special, just an advertisement for their dance or elections – it’s usually a small high school in the American Midwest. The accounts usually have one or two reels and a handful of followers, minus the reel with millions of views. Was that one video just really good? No, of course not. It wasn’t bad, but we literally don’t know the reason why it became popular. In a world of opaque algorithms and fast-moving internet culture, there’s really no telling what will become popular¹.

If I had to pick a reason, I might say that it’s because a majority of TikTok users identify as female (via Statistica, though keep in mind that this is data from 2021) and any trend that involves participation from women automatically has a higher user base and ergo a higher chance of success. The trend also isn’t necessarily about the men thinking about Rome, it’s about women reacting to men thinking about Rome. It’s as good a guess as any, but then again, perhaps the Roman Empire simply had a hidden popularity we were all sleeping on.

Needless to say that it’s quite the phenomenon on the internet right now. I’m not the first person to notice this either, journalists much more credentialed than myself have already covered it. WIRED did a story relating it to pop culture, The Atlantic and RollingStone both did interviews with expert historians, and The New York Times did a sort of in between more classically journalistic article. They’re all worth a read for different reasons, but I do particularly enjoy one quote from the NYT article:

“I’m starting to get sick of being asked about this,” said Kevin Feeney, a faculty fellow at New York University who teaches an introductory class on Roman history. By his estimation, enrollment is about 60 percent male.

Poor Dr. Feeney just wants to teach his history class about the Romans and he has to deal with TikTok trends. Another issue raised was how unfortunately gendered the conversation has become. Essentially, a number of people interviewed (including Dr. Feeney) very accurately see the trend as enforcing harmful stereotypes about men being the only ones that think about the Roman Empire and the study of history as a whole. The Roman Empire is rated E for everyone, all people can and do think about the Roman Empire. The trend is so focused on men that it never stops to ask other people what they think about the Roman Empire (were we asking anyone about the Roman Empire beforehand though?).

I think what catches people by surprise is how many people said that they think about the Roman Empire every day. There’s obviously a few outliers who truly think about the Empire every day, but it’s the question’s abstract nature that is most frustrating to me.

What does it mean to think about the Roman Empire? Does it count that I think about Russell Crowe in Gladiator? Does it count if I drive on a highway or look at concrete? Does it count if I type the word senate? Do I have to be reading Ovid or is it enough to get crazy bread from Little Caeser’s?²

Frankly, I’m on the side of Dr. Feeney – the whole thing is getting a little annoying. The reality is that I, like most people, don’t actively think about the Roman Empire in a concrete sense. Some people do, but some people also think about car tires and Microsoft Excel every day. The question simply doesn’t mean anything. There’s so many different interpretations that it can’t be used to collect any sort of usable data³.

Listen, I know I’m being a terrible buzz kill right now, so I will say that I do find it at least a little bit amusing. It’s an interesting question that isn’t posed every day – and those are the kinds of questions that are the most fun to ask. For instance, my favourite mixer question is to ask people what the biggest animal they could beat in a fight is. I will admit that men are usually more excited by this question, but I’ve never had someone refuse to answer or not be interested at all.

I was asked the other day if I’d rather be a flightless bird or a large land animal and a wonderful conversation resulted (large land animal for anyone wondering). That’s what this Roman Empire question is to me, it’s fun, but ultimately useless. It doesn’t matter what animal they think they could beat (someone once tried to tell me they could fight a bear and I simply HAD to disagree with that) nor does it truly matter how often people think about the Roman Empire. The problem comes when we take it to mean anything at all – that somehow men are thinking about history more or that there’s an equivalent for women, when it is simply a stupid question.

I absolutely adore writing about trends because there’s always something interesting going on underneath. That’s also why I like writing about pop culture so much. It’s never just about the surface level; humans are complicated and even if the author doesn’t intend it, there’s always something going on below the surface. Earlier in the year I embarked on a similar journey and wrote about the word rizz for Mars’ Hill, another expedition to find the meaning behind a trend.

The end result of both these expeditions has been an interesting peek at our culture and the potentially harmful, but hopefully benign nature of our internet trends. There’s nothing really profound to end this on, so I guess for now, I’ll be thinking about the Roman Empire.

Thanks for reading everyone, I’ll see y’all next week.

Acta Diurna! Acta Diurna! Acta Diurna!

News that’s just Roman around.

• Shout out to my friend Will who sent me this article about alien foreheads (aptly called “Show Me the Alien Foreheads”) and said, “this seems like something you’d write.” Yes, I wish I had written this. Essentially, all of Star Wars’ aliens have a hat covering the transition between their prosthetics and their human selves, even in animation. The writer argues that it’s annoying and breaks the immersion, though also noting that it isn’t the franchise’s biggest problem. Very interesting read. (via Vulture)

• Wine tanks in Portugal ruptured, sending a flood of wine down city streets. Apparently Portugal is experiencing a wine consumption crisis and now has an immense over stock of wine. (via NPR)

• Poachers were caught in California smuggling endangered sea cucumbers. Apparently there’s a thriving black market in China where the sea cucumbers are a delicacy. (via HuffPo)

1. A friend had one of his Instagram reels go viral (3-4 million views) that he made for a social media class we were in together. None of us had any clue how he got millions of views, but we made fun of him relentlessly for being an “influencer” afterwards.

2. I must admit that I skillfully borrowed (ahem, stole) from a quoted source in the NYT article – one surveyed person said they only thought of Rome when they ordered from Little Caesar’s.

3. And I also know that the purpose of a TikTok trend is not to collect empirical data.