Seriously, though. How often do you think of the Roman Empire?
I know this is a joke/meme, but I sincerely think of the Roman Empire a surprising amount of times. I find myself obsessing over how Roman citizens were living just as complex lives as we are today, or about Marcus Aurelius' life and philosophy, or about how the Republic fell and became a totalitarian state.
I think on Rome fairly often, but it's usually more often on the republic.
about how the Republic fell and became a totalitarian state.
I was thinking about this literally yesterday, on the nature of Octavian betraying the Republic, and how the Iulii and the Claudii simply kept themselves on power through the whole process. (Both gentes were already powerful in Republican times.) Or how some of the Claudii called themselves "Clodius" instead of "Claudius" for the sake of populism. ("See? I'm from the people! I even speak like a pleb!")
Even the state of politics dating back to the Grachi. Gradually becoming more violent and turbulent and Rome's reach and power grew. A society of adapters who could no longer adapt to the fast pace of change.
Well in 5th grade I read Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief and later on every book after that. And there's still a part of me that thinks I might be a demigod. So Monday, Wednesday, Friday, it's the Greeks and Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday it's the Romans. Sunday is a toss up.
I probably close to never think of the Roman Empire if there is no external cue
I think about words and their etymology a lot. Of course many words have their origin in Latin. And then I am amazed how they used kind of the the same word ~2k years ago.
And then I am amazed how they used kind of the the same word ~2k years ago.
This sort of borrowing tends to get crazy in the Romance languages. Because often the Latin word did survive, but underwent change, then someone re-borrowed the word from Latin and now it's living side-to-side with its ancestor. ...except that people in the Middle Ages were already doing this, so the reborrowed word might evolve, and someone might reborrow a third version of the word, recursively.
In English there's also the case of words being borrowed from Latin, except that those words have a native Germanic cognate, like verb vs. word.
This just made me have a fun observation: Message Of The Day used to be a common thing in the earlier days of computing (still pretty normal on stuff like game servers), and the initialism MOTD contains the french word for "word" (mot)!
I have no idea when the last time I thought about Rome period, let alone in any sort of in-depth way. I've learned a bit in school and a few years ago went through a YouTube deep dive history phase but Rome was a topic just as much as any other culture.
So exceptions aside.... I never think about Rome?
Often, but not daily. Maybe not even weekly. Certainly monthly and it's because THEY FUCKED UP THE CALENDAR. SEPT IS 7 NOT 9 ALL THE WAY UP TO DEC YOU BASTARDS. Seriously though, fuck Julius and Augustus.
Julius and Augustus didn't add a month. They replaced a month. The 6th and 7th months had different names, and they simply renamed them to July and August. The actual reason why the month names don't match up is because Romans originally only counted "business months," kinda akin to how we count weekdays way more than we count weekends. In any case, no (or little) business was happening in the winter, so they just simply don't count months during the winter. Those uncounted months would correspond to January and February. When January and February were added, people decided to put them in the front of the calendar rather than at the back. Hence, the 8th month (October) became the 10th month, and so on for all the months.
You can read a bit more from the Wikipedia page here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar#Romulus
It's the seventh month after February!
Totally genuinely, I never, ever think about the Roman empire. Don't understand how this is a thing across social media 😂🤷♂️
Never—I'm too busy thinking about the Spanish Inquisition.
No one expects the Spanish inquisition.
This is why we need an ask historian community on lemmy. Rome questions would have spiked about now
Have you ever read: I, Claudius? If not, you should. Going by your description, it should really scratch that itch in a very well written way. Recommended to you by a fellow Roman Empire fanatic ^^
Edit: And to answer your question: Yes, quite often I do.
The excellent “I, Claudius” BBC TV series was repeated recently (I think it was on BBC4). One of my all time favourites. I had forgotten how funny the Caligula episode is, and the demise of Messalina is truly bone-chilling.
I'm currently in a course about the Roman Republic in college, so pretty much every other day.
"The Roman Empire", as most people understand it, meaning ancient Rome, is a period of somewhere between 500 and 1500 years spanning territory from Western Europe to Syria and from Northern England to North Africa.
The reason this is a meme is that it's the equivalent of asking "how often do you think about the US" and then being surprised that the answer is some number. If you have even a passing interest in things that happened not specifically right now the answer to this is nonzero.
Now, the weird part is how many of the memers are getting things completely wrong or just generally fantasizing about the... I don't know, look and feel of the thing. If and when I think back to this it's mostly about petty neighbourly disputes leading to lawsuits and crummy politics.
Yeah pretty much never, unless it's in a movie or something.
Whenever I see a post or comment about it online
I eat 2 cups of food for lunch on weekdays because if it was good enough for a roman soldier to march on it's good enough for me to go clickity clack on a keyboard.
Often because I always had an interest in their history.
As a kid I was fascinated by the fact they existed, were so successful and then disappeared.
As an adult reading more details about their society and civilization, it amazes and terrifies me how we are following the same path and mentality. Which means we may very well be on the same path of self destruction. When they were in their glory, they were never aware that they would die out. We are feeling the same way today with total confidence.
2,000 years from now our decedants may see us in the same way we see the Romans today.
That's definitely how I think about them. In comparison to housing policies or rent issues and what their outcome was.... and deep horror at what it means for our potential future.
To be fair history rhymes not repeats but that mostly seems to come from us having better tech and therefore better conditions but the human actions and ideas seem to be annoyingly on repeat.
The only thing that seems to progress is our technology
We are capable of improving and making our technology very very efficient within a short period of time.
However, our mentality, our logic and our behaviours will take many more thousands of years to evolve ... the imbalance is like watching a monkey with a machine gun or a grenade.
And evolution, change and the future doesn't mean things will be rosy either ... evolution doesn't mean better from your perspective or some other person's perspective .. evolution just means change.
We could evolve our civilization into a socially minded mutually beneficial shared utopia ... or into a totalitarian model where we divide the species into the powerful served by the weaker ones ... or into something more equitable .. or something far more terrifying ... or we just completely and utterly destroy ourselves and leave no trace of our species or our descendants on the planet.
Almost never. When I do, it's probably most often because I'm thinking about concrete.
I have never felt less like a "man" (in terms of gender) than when I watched a bunch of videos of men explaining why they think about the Roman empire every day.
Actual quote, which was representative of the videos I saw:
"What you need to understand about men, is that we all feel the urge to conquer."
— Well, I guess I'm not a man then 🤷.
... need you to elaborate on the concrete bit?
The Romans were really, really good at making concrete. Like most "ancient secrets", it's been overblown by sensationalist pop-historians, but they were still really good at it. IIRC they figured out that if you mix volcanic ash in with your concrete, it becomes stronger when exposed to water, not weaker.
edit: exposed, not exposed
Only every time this gets asked
Pretty often. One of my main research interests is the Gospel of Thomas which ends up extremely tied to events around the Roman empire.
Just a day or two ago I was looking at when Lucretius's De Rerum Natura was popularly being read and cited given the apparent link between those two documents.
I read several pages of the The Daily Stoic…well…daily…so pretty much at least once a day.
XII times a day. Just kidding, pretty rarely
I don’t know where this trend came from. I haven’t thought about the Roman Empire since the last Historia Civilis video came out.
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At least twice a week, but counting indirectly then even more.
Edit: Oh the empire? A lot less. Late Republic club unite.
I did not know it was a trend or whatever until reading all the comments. But I probably think about the Roman empire most days.
I frequently think about the late phase of decadence and dysfunction, followed by collapse. I figure the American empire is treading a similar path, just on a faster timeline.
Whenever I'm driving on a very straight road, I can be pretty certain that it was built by the Romans and is still used to this day
At least the second part, surely
Generally only if something else prompts it. Such as this meme and the news around it, or a game, or a work of fiction referencing it for some reason. It doesn't come up independently in my head.
I’ve been painting a literal legion’s worth of miniature Roman troops for a few months now.
I certainly go through significant periods of time where I think about Rome virtually every day. I listen to a lot of history podcasts, play games involving ancient history, have read many books about Rome, am subscribed to reddit history meme subs.... If you are into history, Rome comes up a lot, whether for its own history or as a comparator for other empires.
All the time! I studied Latin and Classical History for years so it’s a deep interest of mine. I often reminisce about the trip I took to Italy with my Latin class to visit Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Barely at all before this whole "How often do you think a out the Roman Empire" thing popped up
But there is some context that I more often think about that is related.
First: You are now aware of the position of your togue in your mouth.
Diagonies is one that comes up at least once every couple weeks at work, this usually leads to Rome.
Second: You are now manually breathing.
Basically ancient philosophers is a topic that comes up a lot with some of my friends, so Rome comes up in relation to it.
Third: Don't think of a pink elephant
But in general I'd say before this whole thing it was basically at most once a month.
Sometimes. I don't get why people idolize it and mourn its fall though, the whole thing seems like it was defined by slavery and murder and domination and is honestly horrifying.
like, once a year at the most? Why on earth should I think more about the Roman Empire? What have they ever done for us?
Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and public health ?
I joked about my wife competing for a job with another candidate by having a gladitorial match. She was like, "Roman Empire again, huh?" and I was like "... fuck."
5 times total in the past 2 years...and the latest 3 times were because of posts like this in the past month...so basically, almost never.
Im a little shocked and in a bit of disbelief that some people think about it daily or even weekly.
Only when its mentioned
Weekly
I think about the TV show Rome but never about the actual Roman empire.
13!!!!!!
Pullo and Vorenus were great characters!
I could have watched another few seasons just about those two guys having adventures.
Circa once a week.
Also, I've lost The Game.
Often because of how much I read. Me and a friend were debating the other day over whether the European Union is simply a Neo-Roman-Empire or if it's its own separate thing. She argues if the Romans never fell, they would've reformed into the European Union anyways because their style of governing is simply today's style.
at least twice a month. it's just fun to fantasize about
makes me think back to my middle school latin teacher who would get super into everyday life & culture and just talk on and on about that stuff. she was pretty mean actually but her passion about rome was infectious
Every day. But I collect ancient Roman coins as a hobby, so it figures.
In the last week, seemingly every 11 seconds lol
More often than I think.
Everyday, memento mori, remember thou art mortal.
Not often. I imagine they are just like us, but much more brutal. I am as intrigued by the earlier civilization on the other side of the world. e.g. the approach to war stratrgy/methodology by Sun Tzu to train concubines to march like soldiers. I wonder what's the acceptable way of doing it today.
Yearly
As someone that lives in a country that is proud of both being conquered by the Roman Empire and winning some battles with the Roman Empire, I dont really think about the Roman Empire often. I think about latin frequently