Have you heard about the Roman empire meme? It was hot on TikTok recently.
It’s a simple one; women approach the men in their life and ask how often they think about the Roman Empire. Clips of boyfriends, husbands, dads, and brothers who have never stepped foot in Italy casually admitting that they think about the Roman Empire often, even multiple times per day, have gone viral on the video-sharing platform, with female creators often expressing complete bewilderment at the shared obsession.
I had to think about that — I took several history courses on Rome in college, so I have invested some time in the subject, I’ve seen several popular movies with a Roman history themes, I’ve read books by Mary Beard and Colleen McCullough. But I struggled to remember when I last “thought about the Roman empire” — it just isn’t a frequent unprompted consideration. You know it’s all just spiders in my head.
I think it’s more a matter of being primed. It’s the converse of the “try not to think of an elephant” idea — when triggered, you start retroactively reviewing all the times you thought of the subject. Those men are just playing along with something they were asked by a woman, making it a kind of mansplaining exercise.
Although there may be an alternative explanation: maybe all these men are all advocates of the authoritarian “Red Caesar” idea.
For the last three years, parts of the American right have advocated a theory called Caesarism as an authoritarian solution to the claimed collapse of the US republic in conference rooms, podcasts and the house organs of the extreme right, especially those associated with the Claremont Institute thinktank.
Though on the surface this discussion might seem esoteric, experts who track extremism in the US say that due to their influence on the Republican party, the rightwing intellectuals who espouse these ideas about the attractions of autocracy present a profound threat to American democracy.
Their calls for a “red Caesar” are now only growing louder as Donald Trump, whose supporters attempted to violently halt the election of Joe Biden in 2020, has assumed dominant frontrunner status in the 2024 Republican nomination race. Trump, who also faces multiple criminal indictments, has spoken openly of attacking the free press in the US and having little regard for American constitutional norms should he win the White House again.
These are authoritarian times, maybe that’s what has some people thinking about tyrants and empires. I don’t see how you can look at Trump and even imagine there’s a Julius Caesar in there — he’s not even a Sulla. Maybe a Vitellius.
Look, this subject got me thinking about the Roman empire. Now you’re all going to think about it, too.
I dare you to not think about the Roman empire.
Maybe rightwing Republicans are thinking of Elogabalus?
How often do you think of the French Revolution?
45 is probably thinking of Priapus.
And the Phoenician god Mammon.
Myself I think of the Etruscans. And the bronze-age people in Sardinia, check an image of the enigmatic nurhaghe structures. Their descendants have long lifespans despite eating cholesterol.
@2: Every time I read the news.
PZ Myers @ 2
I rather think of the Swedish popular uprisings when the peasants dislodged kings. These days we restrict ourselves to sarcasm.
I find it hard to see Biden or Sanders in the role of Danton. If you want a Robespierre, I think I can get time off my current work.
If you settle for violent sarcasm, Mike Myers from the British Skeptical* Society is definitely your man.
*BTW is it the Brits or the Mericans that spell it with “sc” ?
I think of the Roman Republic a lot more than the Empire, but the Empire is a fascinating cesspool of corruption and self-dealing, so yeah, I do think about it a fair bit. But the Republic, its fall into Empire, and the Empire’s gradual internal rot, are all useful lessons for navigating today’s world.
Brits spell sceptic with a ‘c’. It sometimes makes me think of a Cockney rhyming slang for Americans which was ‘septic”, ie septic tank = Yank
That was in the glory days of the British Empire which I don’t think about much either
Crassus got rich by being crass.
He played general and crucified ten thousand escaped slaves. Then he foolishly went to war against real warriors and that went as bad as you can imagine.
He is a decent analogue to your average MAGA Republican.
@ birgerjohansson
Ah yes the Etruscans. Now that you mention it… I do like movies about… um… gladiators.
Yeah, I’ve seen the Red Ceasar idea proposed many times lately.
I don’t quite see how it will work though.
Julius Ceasar was stabbed to death by his friends and coworkers who didn’t like how he was running the Roman empire.
This was followed by a civil war that lasted for 13 years.
The parallels with the current GOP are obvious.
No one has stabbed Trump to death except metaphorically.
These days we use X, formerly Twitter, Facebook, the courts, and the mass media instead of knives.
And the GOP is having their civil war but it is all talk, paper, and electrons and photons so far.
I don’t see any good reasons why we should want to repeat Ceasar’s regime or the aftermath.
It’s been over 2,000 years.
We should be better than that.
Seversky @ 9
The last 13 years have finished off the job.
The current tory party conference show they are doubling down on the exact same vicious political brew as the MAGA people, and they will not bounce back.
The media situation in UK is different than in USA with “media barons” supporting the tories. But no amount of propaganda can save them not, especially of the voting system finally gets reformed.
Eventually, UK (minus some parts) will rejoin EU as an ordinary country, without the EU priviliges Thatcher negotiated.
The Hellenes did it all first. And better.
AND NO ONE BEFORE OR AFTER THAT DID ANYTHING OF NOTE.
Megali Idea for lyfe!
Louis
We’re talking about MAGA-cult Republicans here. Their knowledge of the Roman Empire probably amounts to little more than Charlton Heston driving a chariot in some movie
I do sometimes think of ancient Rome, but not in positive terms. By now, the old “Roman” virtues have mostly negative connotations for me.
Whenever I hear (or read) the word “Glory,” I can only think of victorious Roman soldiers with their boots on the necks and faces of thousands of captives — men, women, and children — from their latest conquest, captives destined to be torn apart in the Colloseum for the entertainment of the public. It was a culture that glorified power (“power over”) and made public virtues of cruelty, torture, and inhumanity. Dominance and coercion, at home or in public or abroad were what everyone was supposed to aspire to. Greed and hate were virtues and plunder, betrayal, and murder were seen as honorable ways to gain power and wealth and to subjugate your rivals. IMHO, Nazi Germany epitomized what ancient Rome prized. When I hear of “Roman virtues,” I think of the SS.
And a romanticized version of this is what European culture based (and still base) their values on. This was the underlying principle of the British Empire. This is the ethos of groups like the Proud Boys or the Oath Keepers — or the Trumpkins. The squalid swamp of lies and bullying we’re seeing in the wake of the January 6 putsch attempt would be very much in tune with the politics of Imperial Rome.
I think about the Roman Empire while I read articles like this. When I’m done reading, I totally forget about the Roman Empire. I’m somewhat lacking in object permanence. >.>
I’m more concerned by the looming threat of Sid Caesarism.
Red Caesarism could be a thing, though fringe at that. If you google it you wind up with a bunch of hits with previews saying: “Red Caesarism’ is rightwing code” leading back to the Guardian article.
Does seem to dovetail with Carl Schmitt’s politics of the “exception” though, which is disturbing in itself.
I think of the Roman Empire almost every day. But it helps if you live next to the site of an ancient Roman road, whose course still influences the shape of your quarter. Every time I look at the map at the local tram stop I can’t help but study the positions of roads and buildings that are even today influenced by city planners who worked nearly two millenia ago.
Aulus Vitellius should be the favorite emperor of fascist (GOP) dictatorian dreamers, especially Gaetz. He was allegeldy, even for roman-imperial standards , a terrible pedophile.
How about a Green Caesar? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Caesar-Altes-Museum-Berlin.jpg
“Romanes eunt domus!”
Caesar had one thing that the MAGA crowd will never had, a great honking big legion that was willing to cross the Rubicon. Our military has repeatedly told all who will listen that they’re loyal to the Constitution, not some flaming asshole that’s so crass as to be even rejected by NYC.
Meanwhile, the GOP is happily self-destructing, like their predecessor party in Lincoln’s time.
Truth be told, I rarely think of the Roman Empire, however, I do share an admiration for the Roman Republic, which many of our Founders shared.
And remember Franklin’s answer as to what kind of government we had at the Constitutional Convention, “A republic, if you can keep it”.
“I don’t see how you can look at Trump and even imagine there’s a Julius Caesar in there”
Well, maybe if Trump had eaten Caesar…
In Fallout:New Vegas, one of the factions is Caesar’s Legions. It is built on the idea of recreating ancient Roman mores in post-apocalyptic America, complete with slavery, relentless militaristic expansion, cruifixion as a political tool…and wearing Roman army tunics in the Nevada desert. Brrr. Even players who like playing villain roles in RPGs find Caesar’s Legion so revolting that almost nobody ever joins the faction, and there are many, many social media threads about the joys of destroying the Legion in your playthrough.
So, yeah, imagine admiring a political system that even players who like blackhatting find repulsive.
I think about leveling mechanisms. Like making externalities capital crimes. I need to go look up some of those traditions that involve going into rich people’s houses and raising their goods periodically and other flips of the temporary hierarchy.
Does ordering a pizza from Little Cesar’s count as thinking about the Roman Empire?
I must admit, I’ve never had the experience of eating a Caesar salad. Descriptions of the dressing make it sound absolutely revolting to me. Wait, what were we talking about, again?
The last time I thought about the Roman Empire, I was pondering the correct route through the Augustus Caesar Memorial Sewer on the way to Pilate’s palace…
But the time before that I was working. Unfortunately, if one deals at all with civil-law legal systems (like in the entire EU, now that the Poms have left, and in fact most of the world), one is dealing with relics of the Roman Empire. As bad as US and Commonwealth law are about reifying “first ancestor to benefit,” the civil law is far, far worse — because with extremely rare exceptions it can only be changed by legislation, meaning that “small” changes have to get the attention of not just individual elected representatives but a majority of the legislators. This is, umm, suboptimal in a period of acceleration change (it’s not the eighteenth century any more, guys, more and more people live, work, and die more than ten miles from where they were born). Indeed, there’s a direct line from “ambitions to reinstate something like the Roman Empire” and “parliamentary systems controlled by a Prime Minister who never stands for election (however corrupt) in front of the entire nation.”
So, yeah: I’m afraid I think about the Roman Empire, at least in passing, a lot. What I don’t do is try to make a list of things that the Roman Empire ever did for us — at least not without a corresponding list of things that the Roman Empire did to us.
Personally more of a fan of the Persian Empire myself. My interest in Zoroastrianism plays a role in that.
That said the Roman Empire is pretty interesting. For instance, at least one Roman Emperor was an ethnic Arab. He was called Philip the Arab. Apparently he was a pretty tolerant emperor. I wonder if any of these crypto-fascists know about him.
I teach Classics. It’s my JOB to think about the Roman Empire for several hours a day.
It’s very easy not to think of Rome.
The last novel I read about Rome was written by Lindsey Davis. But I’m reading other stuff now.
I was asked that question out of the blue by my daughter-in-law. Never heard of the meme or whatever.
I said, “That’s an odd question, but, let me see, about once a week? Certainly several times a month.”
She was gobsmacked! Srsly, she said, mouth agape?
She regretted opening up that can of garum as I then launched into a lively discussion, i.e. lecture, of Roman customs. Hasn’t talked to me since.
@29 Jaws
I strongly disagree.
However, in a proper multi-party system, this is not as big a hurdle as you may think. Conversely, why should one single judge or some unqualified jury decide legislature for the entire country?
Also, if anyone were to ask me how often I think about the Roman Empire (I am too abrasive and off-putting to have significant others who might do it. Saves a lot of time) I would have to ask “do you mean the Imperium Romanum or the Principate – the territorial possessions of the Roman state or the system of government by emperors?” Because they aren’t the same thing and the former pre-dates the latter by at least two centuries.
After Dioclean we got the dominate- this is the oppressive phase when people were shoehorned into a single religion, and the nature around the mediterranean was by now badly degraded with much of the topsoil flushed down the rivers into the sea. Not a fun time to live, as the population size shrank.
And don’t get me started on the Holy Roman Empire. Neither Holy, Roman or a proper empire.
@16 Oh thank goodness I’m not the only one. I’ve been meaning to write a blog post of my own about how the seeds of fascism date back to Roman culture, especially their idolization of Alexander “the Great”. In “what would you do with a time machine” conversations, my own proposal to make the world a better place was to go back to the time of the Macedonian Empire and guarantee that Alexander’s path of conquest fails, so that the Romans never look back on Macedon as worthy of emulation and therefore start their own empire out of jealousy/pride.
drsteve @ 28, yeah, I’ve had it before, it is indeed fairly revolting. Like turning a bowl of fruit into lard covered fruit in the end. Salt and fat city.
Jaws @ 29, well, now they do have an EU parliament to simplify things. Now, I couldn’t keep a straight face while typing that. Inherited remnant laws from the Empire are indeed, arcane.
Chronos @ 37, well, the Romans did give us fasces as a symbol. Alas, that wasn’t stigmatized like the swastika was outside of Italy.
And we know how well people learn from history, after all, Napoleon wasn’t rejected when he returned to France and a lesson had to be reapplied by the Seventh Coalition.
@34: (Disclosure: I’ve lived Over There. I’ve observed it up close and personal, and in a professional/academic sense.)
I can’t agree with your disagreement. Specifically:
• The presumption of a viable/vibrant multiparty system is, umm, not historically supported. Realistically, things are more often two-factor than not, with a majority “party” and various opposition. Consider, for example, Germany, Hungary, and the Netherlands over (most of) this century.
• There’s a lot more to “law,” and especially to “dispute resolution short of bloodshed,” than can ever be encompassed in legislation. The problem with civil-law systems is that they presume a substantial degree of omniscience — not to mention absence of conflicts of interest! — on the part of legislators resulting in comprehensive legislation with no forseeable lacunae or contradictions or inconsistencies with other legislation, let alone problems with set-of-law supremacy and implementation. As a horrible example of the latter with which I’m all too familiar in multiple languages, consider the “implementation” of Directive 2001/29/EC in the nations of Europe… and, too often, the lack of implementation thereof, which resulted in the EC actually fining and suing about a third of its members for failure to implement the Directive in their domestic law. This has resulted in millions of Euros in lost income to individual authors, composers, and artists whose income streams were adversely impacted.
The common-law system is by no means perfect; there are even better systems already in place in some small nations. (Which have their own flaws, especially when coopted by outside influences.) And it gets even more confusing, and more subject to abuse, in parallel-sovereign contexts like the US “federal” model. But Roman-derived civil law is at the system level inferior, especially when it comes to “disfavored parties” who have a specific problem requiring resolution.
And before anyone objects, this is from a system-versus-system perspective, not a policy perspective.
I don’t see how you can look at Trump and even imagine there’s a Julius Caesar in there — he’s not even a Sulla. Maybe a Vitellius.
Maybe a Romulus Augustulus.
Oh. It’s like The Game.
(Which you all just lost, BTW.)
The late lamented Benito Mussolini was known in his time as the yellow Caesar.
@39 Jaws
For this entire century so far Germany did indeed have a vibrant multi-party system. I have no idea what you’re on about.
This is neither the aim nor the function of a civil law system. In my opinion the benefits of civil law far outweigh the disadvantages compared to a common law system. We will probably have to agree to disagree.
Last night, just before lights out, I noticed on Curiosity Stream a docco about Caesar that I hadn’t seen before. I though of how the Republic ended and decided to watch it today, at which point I will likely think of Rome again. I also plan to watch the Wes Anderson short The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, and I will probably be pondering Benedict Cumberbatch’s name. Right now, I’m thinking about the video I saw earlier on Twitter of a toothless goober praising Ancient Rome for its values of tolerance and equality.
I have to say I’m not really sure what Jaws is objecting to, exactly; let alone what they advocate as an alternative…
The presumption of a viable/vibrant multiparty system is, umm, not historically supported…
What presumption? If you have at least two parties, and no serious restrictions on freedom of expression or political advocacy/campaigning, then you have at least a good chance of having an elected legislature that can make laws representative of what the people demand, and be accountable to their voters.
The problem with civil-law systems is that they presume a substantial degree of omniscience — not to mention absence of conflicts of interest! — on the part of legislators resulting in comprehensive legislation…
Horsemuffins — “civil-law systems” (as opposed to what, exactly?) don’t presume any such things; they merely presume that a group of elected officials can bring more, and more diverse, knowledge to the table than any single tsar or smaller oligarchical group; and that “conflicts of interest” would be reconciled when elected lawmakers of all interests get together and start making deals, compromising, and forming coalitions.
The common-law system is by no means perfect…
So you’re contrasting “common-law systems” against “civil-law systems?” That sounds like utter bullshit — every decent civil society known to Mankind is built on BOTH of those things working together. Seriously, which countries have one but not the other? The only example I can think of is Russia, which doesn’t seem to have much of either — and is a backward, corrupt, tyrannical failed-state hellhole. China is a good bit more competently run, and they seem to have civil-law (albeit from an unelected lege with zero independence from the totalitarian ruling oligarchy), but no common-law. How do either of those countries fit into Jaws’s weird simplistic picture?
And before anyone objects, this is from a system-versus-system perspective, not a policy perspective.
In other words, it’s a purely abstract argument with no grounding in the real world; and thus no relevance.
The Roman Empire comes to mind every few months. It’s hard to read a lot of history or law or linguistics or poetry without bumping into it. After years of wondering, I finally found a book that explained why the Romans wound up with their empire. Their secret sauce was that they were extremely good at managing allies and building alliances. They were much less interesting in crushing their neighbors than in cooperating. Early on, they developed something of an EU where allied states allow inter-marriage, the ownership of property and the making of contracts. A close ally might even have seats in the Roman Senate as their aristocratic classes were aligned. One reason we know so little about the Etruscans is that they became Romans.
The Romans could fight fairly well, but they often got their butts kicked. That book had a long list of Roman generals killed in combat. The Punic Wars were a close thing. On the other hand, even if the Romans clobbered a city, they’d often leave an avenue open for future alliance and eventual consolidation. They co-opted the elite, but peace with Rome opened all sorts of opportunities just like joining the EU today. Carthage was an exception, but it rivaled Rome in power and there was a long standing conflict. Rome expanded in the Western Mediterranean, and around 200 BC, when Ptolemaic Egypt started to collapse, the remnants of Alexander’s empire in the Eastern Mediterranean asked Rome to step in.
I’m not going to say that Rome was some kind of paradise, but if you compare the pacified Roman Mediterranean with, let’s say, the all too well documented world of classical Greece, it was nice to live in a place where the wars were far away and there was a world of opportunity and some measure of prosperity. An ancient Greek city state would get a bug up its ass and sack a random neighbor and take the survivors as slaves. The Romans had to work up a casus belli full of grievances before setting out to, well, to do the same thing. (Festivus was a real thing.) If you want allies who trust you and whom you can trust, it helps to have diplomatic channels and clear expectations.
Now, I’m reading about 18th century France, so I’ll probably wind up thinking about the French Revolution soon enough.
I think about the Roman Empire every time I slip into my CROCODILVS sandals.
@ ^
When I was a youngster, my brother and I would call “l Claudius”, “I clavdivs”. X-D
(We knew the name, we just thought it was funny)
I, Claudius opening credits – YouTube
Apparently, AMC doesn’t believe in fair use for even the credits.
It is sobering that after a few Caesars, Rome entered a period where few Roman Emperors lasted more than a few short years and were assassinated. Some lasted only a few weeks.
Slavery destroyed Rome. A few families had immense colonias with huge numbers of slaves and drove small farmers out of existence. Soldiers didn’t want the usual retirement from the army to a nice little farm. The wanted to put a general on the throne and get rich donations from the new emperor. Becoming such a new red emperor was usually a death sentence. It made “Game Of Thrones” look sane by comparison.
First as tragedy, then as farce. Trump is like the SNL-version of Caesar.
And a good thing, too. If Trump had Caesar’s competence, he’d already be dictator for life and publishing proscription lists.
That’s not mansplaining. An example of mansplaining would a guy telling Mary Beard about the Roman Empire.
LOL, I just read a(nother) biography of Seneca (Emily Wilson’s Seneca: A Life – enjoyed it very much) and am now reading Epictetus, so quite a bit of late.
I’m not reading Epictetus for the advice, but he did offer some entertaining advice:
Re Caesarism, the chapter in Peter Gay’s The Cultivation of Hatred on 19th-century Caesarism – especially related to Napolean III and Bismarck – is one of the more interesting. The emergence of these figures and their personality cults was coupled with revisionist histories of the original:
Then as now, the authoritarian propagandists were serving rich reactionary interests seeking to retain their power in the face of genuine democratic forces.
Vitellius sounds like a pretty fun, self-deprecating guy by all accounts. Just because he was fat doesn’t make him Trump.
He also hasn’;t lasted as long a sTrump either – one of the quartet in the year of Four Emperors -Nero, Galba, Otho then Vitellius. See :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitellius
From there it seems on the good side he banned astrologers from Rome :
Okay, that last bit is a tad excessive..
and on the not so good he worshipped and respected Nero :
Plus it seems Suetonius singled him out as a glutton which may or may not have been fair but he certainly seems tohave had better taste than Trump – low bar as that is!
StevoR,
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aulus-Vitellius
“Vitellius was murdered with great barbarity.”
@58 is there any murdered emperor who wasn’t murdered with “barbarity”? I don’t have anyone in mind, do you? (this is a question out of mere, genuine interest)
Oh off the top of my head Claudius comes into my mind, who was, iirc, poisoned, they say. This might qualify as “non-barbaric”(?)
video uploaded four hours ago. TimeTeam weighs in on the subject.
Just the title makes me smile. I really only think of the Roman Empire when I’m watching TimeTeam.
@59-60. jeanmeslier : I think a few of them were poisoned including, if I recall right, Augustus himself by his wife Livia in order to secure power for Tiberius at least according to rumour.*
But, yeah, murdered with only a little barbarity? Medium barbarity? Or murdered civiliy and politely? Huh.
.* Or from I Claudius and maybe fictional but who knows? Hmm ..
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus#Death_and_succession
So, that’s all very murky..
Also, the term/concept barbarity (barbaric, barbarous, savage, etc.) is useless and harmful. Avoiding such language would force everyone to be more precise and honest when discussing violence.
@63 SC
Bad bot, no cookie.
“Barbarian” was used a very specific way by the late Roman empire, and I think everyone using it in this thread is in on the lingo. Avoiding use of the term would cause more confusion.
First, the quote @ #58 is from a contemporary historian in Cambridge, MA.
Second, how do you think “murdered with great barbarity” would be used unproblematically in ancient Rome or subsequently?