How Often Do You Think About the Roman Empire? Be Honest.

And who cares about the Romans anyway?

I’ve never had much use for TikTok; I’m not much of a dancer, I’m seldom in a bikini, and I’m still mildly opposed to transferring my personal data to the Chinese Communist Party.  

So imagine my surprise when I discovered that TikTok started a national discussion about one of my favorite topics.  Apparently, all over America, women are asking their significant others how often they think about the Roman Empire. 

And many thousands of these men answered that question with … outright lies.  That’s right.  All those guys who said they think about the Roman Empire almost every day—liars.

Ladies, that’s why you were so befuddled.  You couldn’t believe it was true, because it wasn’t.    

How do I know this? 

Because Roman history is one of my hobbies.  I’ve read many dozens of books on Ancient Rome—if you include the historical fiction, probably 50 to 70 of them—and I’ve visited ruins and other sites of significance to Roman history many times in Italy, France, Spain, and England. 

Not to brag, but I could bore almost any of you with a discussion of Cicero, Cato, Pompey, or Octavian.  You may not have had the pleasure yet, but it would be much listening to a Harry Potter fan talk about his favorite Potter movie, only probably on a subject of even less interest to you.  

I think about Ancient Rome more than anybody I know, and probably more than anybody who doesn’t study and write about Ancient Rome for a living.  And you know what?  I don’t think about the Roman Empire every day.  Unless your husband or boyfriend is a classicist, he doesn’t either.  He just doesn’t.  His answer was nonsense.  Women are from Venus; Men are sometimes from Full of Crap. 

Truth is, I think your husband or boyfriend should think more about Ancient Rome than he does, because it is, as we amateur historians like to say in our technical jargon, freakin’ awesome.  

Let me tell you a story.  In about 75 B.C., a young Roman nobleman is sailing to Greece to study rhetoric.  This nobleman was from an ancient and distinguished family but one that had fallen on hard times in recent generations.  His ship is captured by pirates—not an uncommon event in those days—and the pirates decide to hold the nobleman hostage for ransom.  He is outraged, not so much by the kidnapping, but because he believes he is worth far more than the pirates’ meager demand.  He is insulted.  He demands that they ask for more.  So they do.  As befuddled as many of you, they cave to his demand and raise the ransom figure. 

If you think the nobleman was somewhat delusional and maybe overdosing on unhealthy amounts of pride, that’s not an unfair conclusion.  The pirates undoubtedly thought so as well. 

Just one thing: the nobleman’s name was Julius Caesar.  And while he was only 25 at the time, he was one of the most talented, ambitious, and soon to be accomplished men in world history.  The fact that you all know his name today is pretty compelling evidence of that.  At the time, however, only Julius Caesar was convinced of Caesar’s historical greatness.   

Caesar stays with the pirates while someone is dispatched to collect the ransom money from Rome.  He lives with them.  He practices his speeches on them—mocking them when they don’t recognize his rhetorical genius.  He even participates in their games.  

He also makes clear that once he is released, he will track them down and kill them all.

The money arrives; the pirates free Caesar; sadly for the pirate community, they don’t take his warnings seriously.  Caesar sails immediately to the closest Roman settlement, demands the local ruler provide a small contingent of soldiers (even though Caesar is only a private citizen at the time), and sails back to the pirates’ hide out.  The pirates are still counting their money.  They had no reason to believe Caesar took his own threat seriously; they certainly didn’t. 

Caesar, however, doesn’t make idle threats.  And when he arrives at the pirate camp, his private army captures the pirates and executes them all.  Every.  Single.  One.    

See?  Like I said: freakin’ awesome.

There is good reason to be fascinated by the ancient Romans.  Our Founding Fathers certainly were, and much of the theory and architecture of the United States Constitution rests on a Roman foundation.  (Not of the Roman Empire; the Founders venerated the Roman Republic, which Caesar largely destroyed.)  The Founders weren’t wrong to be smitten.  The entire western world was transformed by the Romans; they gave us Spanish, French, and Italian; much of our architecture and city planning; a calendar, and even the names of July and August.  Julius Caesar’s influence was so vast that his name came to mean emperor or king—and not just in the Roman Empire.  Caesar became the word for king or emperor throughout much of the world; it became Czar in Russia, Kaiser in Germany, Qeysar in Persia.  The Romans even live with us still today, it seems: Mark Anthony wins Latin Grammy awards and sells out arenas; Julio Caesar Chavez is the greatest Mexican boxer of all time.  

Part of this is the spectacular successes of the Romans.  We see how this once-small town in the middle of Italy came to conquer the entire Mediterranean.  We still visit the Colosseum, Hadrian’s Wall, and other surviving examples of the Romans’ architectural skill.  We still watch shows about Antony and Cleopatra and gladiators.  Our lawyers and politicians practice many of Cicero’s rhetorical techniques.   

But an even bigger part of the fascination, I think, is Rome’s spectacular fall.  The Roman Republic was founded in 509 B.C., and by Caesar’s time it had lasted four and a half centuries—a spectacular achievement in a day when voting for a country’s leaders was hardly the norm.  The Romans had built a system that kept carefully separated and limited the various powers of the state and kept tyranny in check.  

And it all collapsed.  

There are those who see the Roman Republic’s collapse in the events of the modern day.  And, to be sure, there are parallels.  Donald Trump is ambitious enough and a talented enough demagogue to threaten our own rules and traditions.  But he’s not Caesar’s equal.  Does anybody really think Caesar would have lost an election to an old guy who didn’t leave his basement for the entire campaign?  Besides, Caesar was an elite talent as a commander, a writer, a public speaker, and an administrator.  The comparison to Caesar—one common in silly productions of Julius Caesar in recent years—is embarrassing.  To Caesar.

And, sure, the last days of the Republic were filled with corruption.  But Roman politicians really knew how to plunder.  They were the best at it.  Gaius Verres plundered Sicily for all it had—money, art, slaves.  Our current president can only squeeze a few millions out of corrupt foreign businesses through the pockets of his idiot kid.  His corruption is embarrassingly inept compared to the Romans.

I don’t think the United States will follow Rome’s example and collapse into autocracy.  I mean, we might collapse into autocracy; if our Republic were a patient, he might not be in the ICU right now, but he’d certainly be undergoing a whole series of blood tests, MRI’s and psychological examinations.  But we’re Americans!  We have very little use for history or foreign places.  If we blow up our republic, we’ll do it our way, thank you very much.   

Besides, just remember, even after Romans lost the right to elect their own leaders, the Roman Empire was still a better place to live than almost anywhere else in the ancient world.  So if Americans persist in destroying the political system that has done more to spread freedom, civil rights, and prosperity than any other in human history, we can at least assured that we will occasionally have an American Marcus Aurelius to go with the inevitable Caligulas and Commoduses.  So keep it up, America!  It should all work out.