5 Reasons Why Men Spend So Much Time Thinking About the Roman Empire
Many people have expressed surprise that an inordinate number of American men think about the Roman Empire a lot. To be perfectly fair, I didn’t realize that so many other men also thought about the Roman Empire either until I started reading multiple articles about it.
On the contrary, I thought that the kinship and connection I felt with the Romans was unusual. Apparently, it’s not, although I don’t know how many other men semi-regularly wear a Roman soldier’s ring around their neck, have read as much about the Roman Empire as I have, or wear t-shirts like this:
As someone who spends a lot of time thinking about the Romans, I can tell you why it’s so fascinating to me and my guess is that it would resonate with a lot of other men that feel the same way.
First of all, how can any man who knows his history NOT be fascinated with Rome? They had legendary emperors like Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, and Trajan; mad emperors like Nero and Caligula; frequent assassinations of their leaders; some of the most debauched sex in human history; legendary conquests and wars; military campaigns that went on for years; fought up close and personal; horrific punishments meted out on criminals and people that defied them; and incredible spectacles in the aren.
Intrigue, betrayal, lust, violence, struggle and conquest. It’s that same vibe that makes men interested in pirates, Vikings, or the Spartans. Certainly, it wasn’t better and easier back then than it is today, but in a sense, you have to wonder if they were “more alive” than we are. Really, any man worth a bucket of warm spit is going to wonder, at least a little bit, about how he would have done as a gladiator, emperor, or general back then. There’s a just a lot there that draws your attention. For example….
1) Rome helped inspire America: The Greeks and Romans were the fathers of Western Civilization. If you want to talk about going back to our “roots,” well that’s not just in Britain, Christianity, capitalism, and John Locke, it’s Athens and Rome. George Washington has been called, “the Father of Democracy,” because America’s success under his leadership helped inspire so many other nations to embrace that form of government, but Rome spent about 500 years as a Republic more than 1,700 years before Washington came along. Would our nation exist today without their example? Maybe, but it’s unlikely that it would exist in its current form. We Americans owe a lot to the Romans and in a very real sense, they’re our intellectual forefathers.
2) Like us, Rome became a great empire in decline: Rome was the greatest civilization in world history until the United States and arguably, Great Britain before us, came along. The Roman Empire reached the pinnacle of success as a nation and continued thriving for a long, long time. Rome was founded in 753 BC and reached the peak of its power around 117 AD. The Western half of the Roman Empire fell in 476 AD and the Eastern part of the Roman Empire lasted all the way until 1453 AD. That’s an amazing run, but the part that fixates the American mind is the drop from being the most powerful nation in the world to half the empire falling a little more than 350 years later.
What happened? Why? There are a lot of theories, but there do seem to be some answers. A growing bureaucracy and large standing military that consumed far too much in taxes is one of them. A move away from robust democracy toward an increasingly unstable succession of all-powerful emperors is another. An increasingly immoral population that stopped caring about the fate of their nation also contributed to its decline. Out-of-control immigration led to foreign armies running wild on Roman soil and worse yet, taking over their military.
Are there any of those potential dangers relevant to America? Actually, they’re ALL RELEVANT to America and our country has seemed to be in decline for many of the same reasons.
3) Conquest and battle: There’s something primal in men that draws us toward conflict, battle, and the desire to impose our will. You can see it in our heroes, our entertainment, in the things we find exciting.
However, for the vast majority of modern men, that’s just something we see on a screen. The Romans actually DID IT. They marched into foreign countries, slaughtered their enemies, looted their cities, went home loaded with loot, bought a farm, found a wife, and spent the rest of their lives living on the fruit of their conquest.
They fought barbarians. They burned Carthage to the ground and salted the earth. They knew what it was like to actually be part of a shield wall, throw a spear through a man’s chest, and then cut down another half dozen men over the course of a battle.
We watch the Rock do that at the movies. We do it in a video game like God of War. The members of the Roman legions actually did it themselves.
4) Bread and circuses: Just the whole concept of large military battles to the death in an arena, Christians thrown to the lions, people who displeased the emperor being sexually violated to death, and well-known gladiators fighting to the death for a crowd that might spare their lives if they were entertaining just grabs attention like nothing else.
Even today, when we have computers, games, blockbuster movies, the Super Bowl, UFC, and 100 other forms of entertainment, nothing can still match what the Romans were doing because they were playing for real stakes.
What if we had Mike Tyson and Jake Paul fighting each other in front of an audience that would demand the DEATH of the loser? What about if some career criminal from New York City was given a club and put into a room with a full-grown gorilla and only one got to come out alive? That would be disgusting, immoral, and absolutely wrong. But there would also be no other form of entertainment on earth that could compare to it.
5) There were so many legendary Roman figures: One of the stories about Rome’s founding is that the Romans invited the Sabines to a festival, abducted all their women, married them, and then their women helped make peace between them and their old families.
Caligula supposedly appointed his horse to the Senate and Nero played the lyre while Rome burned.
Ever heard of Cincinnatus? He proved himself as a military leader, then retired to his estate. During a dire military crisis, he was appointed dictator. Men rallied to his banner, he routed Rome’s enemies, then swiftly resigned his dictatorship and returned to his farm instead of clinging to power. Sounds a little like George Washington, right?
Regulus was captured by the Carthaginians and sent back to Rome to negotiate a prisoner exchange. He urged the Roman Senate not to accept the deal and yet, bound by his word, returned to Carthage to face torture and death rather than break his promise.
Last but not least, you may have heard the story of Julius Caesar and the pirates. In his youth, Julius Caesar was captured by pirates while traveling in the Aegean Sea. The pirates demanded a ransom, but Caesar insisted they double it, claiming they didn’t know his true worth. While in captivity, he promised he would ultimately punish them. After friends secured his release, Caesar quickly raised a small force, tracked the pirates down, seized their plunder, and had them crucified.
Ancient Rome was like, “Game of Thrones,” except it was all real.