Roma Invicta

Apparently it's a guy thing. Maybe it's a Euro-White Caucasian thing because I don't know how many Asian and Latino and Black guys think it, but apparently at least here in the United States a lot of men admit to thinking often about Ancient Rome.

It seems this matter came to the fore a few weeks back when women on Tik Tok and Instagram began quizzing their husbands and boyfriends how often they think about the Glory That Was Rome. It became unavoidable on social media where men began openly confessing - or bragging - that yeah Caesar and sea-proof concrete and movies about gladiators are oft on their minds.

I saw an IG Reel that said something along the lines of “women have no idea how often the men in their lives think about the Roman Empire.”

So I asked my husband: “How often do you think about the Roman Empire?”

And without missing a beat he said “Every day.”

YALL! Why!?

— Rev. Kelsey Lewis Vincent (@KelseyMLoo) September 6, 2023

The pontificating came later, like this from Caroline Mimbs Nyce in the Atlantic: 

All roads lead to Rome—and apparently so do all male thoughts. Across social media, women have been encouraged to ask the men in their life how often they think about the Roman empire and to record the answer. To their surprise (recounted in videos posted all over TikTok, Instagram, and more), many men purport to think about the Roman empire quite a bit. One reveals that his iPhone background is Jacques-Louis David’s Oath of the Horatii, a painting depicting a Roman legend. “Men Are Thinking About the Roman Empire All the Time” has quickly become a meme of its own. Even those who don’t cop to this behavior still sometimes do it. “Probably not a lot, why?” one confused man replies when asked, before admitting that he thinks about the Romans three or four times a month. “The Roman empire was a very big part of history,” he says defensively.

Presumably some of this is performative, an attempt to project oneself as the sort of history bro who can mansplain Catullus. These men could surely learn something from Cullen Murphy. An Atlantic editor at large and the author of the 2007 book Are We Rome?, Murphy has spent decades thinking about the Roman empire. His work focuses on all of the analogies between ancient Rome and the modern United States, and what, if anything, the analogies portend. “The comparisons, of course, can be facile,” he wrote in a 2021 magazine story reopening the question. “Still, I am not immune to preoccupation with the Roman past.”

Murphy's interview has a few interesting tidbits:

Nyce: What do you think the appropriate amount of time one should spend thinking about Rome is?

Murphy: Well …

Nyce: Are you a biased source on this question?

Murphy: Yes, I’m probably not a good person to ask. Personally, I can’t get enough of it. It’s just such a fascinating topic. One of the great things about having a bit of a fixation on this topic is that it makes me very easy to buy for...

Nyce: Are you surprised by how many men purport to think about the Roman empire all the time?

Murphy: I am a little bit surprised. I’m not surprised that men are more likely to think about it than women, if that reporting is true.

Over time, this subject has been presented as gendered, though it is not inherently gendered. A lot of the best recent work about Rome has to do with diverse cultures and about women. But if you look at the broad sweep of historical writing, from ancient times onwards, most of it was done by men. Most of it is about men. And much of the subject matter is about military affairs, which has also historically been something that men have gravitated to more than women...

There are in truth a number of women who also think about Rome as much as the men, but it seems as though the cultural and historical norms of that ancient civilization - the militarization, the obsession with personal honor, the ability to party in togas - retain great appeal for men across the social spectrum. As Sarah Bond and Stephanie Wong note at MSNBC:

“Men, to our core, I think are warriors,” some guy called Adam Woolard once stated to his betrothed on video. As it turns out, his fiancée is former “Bachelorette” star Hannah Brown, who has 1.2 million followers on TikTok. In his next breath, he then claimed that the Roman Empire was all about being ready for battle — as are modern men. But is the measure of a man really based on ancient Rome...?

Rome has a long history that served particularly aggressive men, and in the late Republic there were little to no consequences for public discussion of imperialism, colonialism and misogyny. Imperialism was rewarded with triumphal processions, and ancient literature written for elite audiences celebrated expansion and subjugation. Caesar paid the price for longing for a monarchy, not for committing genocide in Gaul. Roman “freedom” of speech was extended especially to free men who served as heads of their family (a status called the pater familias). The patriarchy was legally codified and came with the power to punish children, wives and enslaved persons who stepped out of line in the household. It is this inherent male power, combined with distorted pop culture portrayals of Rome in television and film, that have conjured a new nostalgia culture for a Rome that never truly existed for 99% of the populace...

A white man who dreams of grisly showdowns on the battlefield might believe that, in some lifetime 2,000 years ago, he would have been born into a noble family somewhere in the Roman Empire. He would have had a British accent. It would have been possible to rise through the ranks to become a despotic war hero, earning his name-check in the annals of history. Perhaps he would even be part of an inbred political dynasty and take on the mantle of his warlord father, destroying barbaric legions and marrying his first cousin in order to further the family line. After a day of slaughter, he would decamp to his swanky villa on a Capri-like coast, where he would get sloshed on natural wines and engage in unspeakable — but very debauched — sex acts. Then he would wake up the next day and do it all over again. 

But humor us historians, and let’s talk statistics. In all likelihood, he would have come from much humbler origins. Around 1 in 4 people in Roman Italy during the Roman imperial period was enslaved. Most others, if they were free, were rural peasants, artisans or people manumitted from slavery. Harsh climates, ambient warfare and decimating plagues dictated the life of many, which is possibly the furthest thing from a cinematically sexy storyline that ends in a blaze of blood, guts and glory...

It can well be that the male obsession over Rome is to fantasize about the power and patriarchy that Rome as both Republic and Empire came to represent through our studies of history. That a number of men admit to such thoughts could seem a dark sign about how we handle gender roles in our modern society.

The thoughts about how things were back in Roman times echo the fantasies men have about being superheroes, or athletic savants, or artistic geniuses, or badasses of any manly code, or anything other than an office manager or work drone in the real world.

We should note that American history, our American culture as defined by the Euro immigrants (conquerors), our political and social constructs owe a lot to what our constitutional Founders wanted to base a national identity upon. The basic principles of checks and balances between the three branches of federal government - and then the balances between the federal and the states - hark back to how the Romans set up their bureaucracy between the Senate (hereditary), the Consuls (no singular king), the elected assemblies (freedmen only could vote), and the various offices like the Tribunes that could hold the powers of the others in check. It mostly worked until internal and external crises led to the rise of dictators and imperators (what we would call Emperors). The historical mirror of our current crises - the rise of a would-be dictator in trump - has been noted already by pundits and historians.

Rome's influence on modern Western civilization is unescapable. It reaches through the European languages - French, Spanish, even some Germanic and Slavic, and especially English - that came to American shores. Art and music, theater and literature, what's popular culture today all have ties in some ways to what became popular in Rome. The American love of sports? Chariot races (the Nika Riots almost destroyed the Roman Byzantium Empire). The American love of toga parties? That would be obvious.

As an American Eurowhite Male, I cannot hide from this question. Yes. Yes, I do think often - not that I count the times - about Ancient Rome and its modern influences. Part of it can't be helped because I studied Latin in high school and college (Alas, my language skills have faded over time: I can barely translate the written word anymore). Part of it can't be helped because I studied European history, and Rome was kind of unavoidable as a topic. Part of it can't be helped because my political diatribes here on this very blog often require me to think of the republican model of checks and balances I hope to see regain value in our government currently torn apart by partisan misrule.

Any regular reader of this blog can note the near-annual remembrances of the Ides of March and my personal advocacy versus the Far Right's War On Saturnalia.

Regarding guys who think often about the Roman Empire, I woke up this morning with an insane urge to hold a chariot race with my worst enemy. pic.twitter.com/UrSYaLakhB

— Witty Librarian 2024 (@PaulWartenberg) September 15, 2023

I'm not really kidding, people.

I would like to think my thoughts about Rome are benign, that I focus on the positive aspects of what Roman civilization brought to human history. I am aware of the dangers of patriarchy, slavery, and military violence that were built into that ancient fallen empire: I speak to the hope that the American venture into republicanism evolved over the decades by ending slavery and empowering citizenship to women as political and cultural equals. Yeah I know, the letter of the law is there but the spirit of it? Still working on it. Our nation's militarism, the cultural obsession with manhood, the racism ingrained into our system, and the ongoing mistreatment of women are serious issues. But our American republic - I hope - is aware of these problems and working on solutions, as opposed to how Rome handled it by devolving into Empire and perpetuating the decay a few more centuries until it collapsed on itself.

Just as long as we American men (and women) who vote understand that the would-be Caesars offering themselves to lead us - the likes of donald trump and his Far Right sycophants - are nothing like the Romans of old. trump is no Augustus who moderated his own wants and built a city of marble that stood for centuries: trump is more Nero, spoiled and destructive, who fiddled while Rome burned.

Think to the Rome that gave us wine, the engineering feats of the aqueducts, the exile of kings, Cincinnatus, and the paved roads that connected a world (the roads go without saying!). Think of what Monty Python - the descendants of Roman-occupied Britons - pointed out what the Romans ever done for us. (bloody 'ell, I can't embed YouTube videos at the moment)

"Brought peace?"

"Peace? SHUT IT!"

And IO SATURNALIA.