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.
Sunday is for the Norse
Sorry, that’s already my designated day for thinking about Ancient Egypt.
You disgust me, for shame.
I bet you don’t even have a day for the Huns of the Qin Dynasty.
You’d think one of the four days named after Germanic gods (in English, at least) would be for the Norse
You’re right, I should swap Sunday and Wednesday.
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)!
Okay, but what have the Romans ever done for us?
The aqueduct?
Alright, alright… Apart from sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and public health… what have the Romans ever done for us?
Brought peace.
Via imperialism. Then, when their enormous military became too expensive, their empire crumpled. Or maybe it was the lead pipes.
Are you baiting history nerds into a rant
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 from those exceptions… I never really think of 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
Why would they add months at the front? March makes sense to be the first month being spring and all
If I recall correctly, it was mainly political. I’m not an expert in this topic at all, I’m just regurgitating what I read. But from what I remember, it was something along the lines of elections occur at the end of the year, and by placing January and February at the beginning rather than at the end, the new year would more closely coincide with office terms
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.
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.
This is why we need an ask historian community on lemmy. Rome questions would have spiked about now
Yeah pretty much never, unless it’s in a movie or something.
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
Love it. Was learning about the ancient city of Ur. They had like indoor plumbing and stuff. Humans are incredible when external factors don’t get in the way.
