And now this morning I'm seeing mainstream news covering the trend.
WaPo has "How often do men think about ancient Rome? Quite frequently, it seems":
“Three times a day,” answered one woman’s fiancé.... “There’s so much to think about,” he explained, eliciting a stunned look into the camera from his soon-to-be wife. “They built an entire world-dominating society,” another man exclaimed when asked by a bewildered-looking woman to justify why he contemplates ancient Rome.
“Actually I was just having a conversation about their aqueducts and the fact that they had concrete that could harden. … How the hell did you know that?” answered another person who said they think about ancient Rome “at least once a day” in response to the question, in a screenshot shared on TikTok.
The NY Post has "Women expose men for bizarre Roman Empire trend: Why guys ‘think about it every day'":
One user posted a TikTok with 1.2 million views asking her husband how often he thinks about that turbulent epoch, to which he responded: “All the time. I just mentioned it to you today … Every boy you’ve ever met is like, ‘I wonder if I could survive in the Roman Legion,’ like, that’s a normal thing.”
Another shared that she asked her husband the same question before he began engaging her in a 45-minute conversation about the Roman Empire....
The headline at the NY Post is silly. The trend isn't the men thinking about the Roman Empire. It's the women asking them if they do and finding out and posting it on TikTok. The men have been thinking about it all along. I'm just going to assume that male thinking about the Roman Empire began during the Roman Empire and never faded.
Posts
107 comments:
dum vivis, dum licet, fac bonus fias
Her: I bet he's thinking about other women...
Him: Quinctilius Varus, give me back my Legions!
I never, spontaneously or unprompted, think about the Roman Empire. Just sayin'.
Make Victor Davis Hanson Great Again.
As for me. not more than once a year
The greatness of Rome is the greatness of Western Civilization. Imagine if you will that Rome had managed to find the social technology to survive. Imagine how much earlier we would've had all the innovative success - the fruits of our way of thinking - earlier in history than it otherwise would've without 1000 years of reorganization.
”Rome was a poem that was pressed into service as a city” – Anatole Broyard
"It's like Napoleon. When he was the king, you know, people were just constantly trying to conquer him, you know, in the Roman Empire. So, it's history repeating itself all over again."
"It was as if TikTok had built an aqueduct to deliver these things."
I see what you did there, clever girl.
It just shows you how the Chinese can drive the narrative of a nation with the push of a few buttons.
I thought of this before Scott Adams, but he is famous and I'm not so he'll get credit; It's not so much the data privacy issue, but the ability for the Chinese to brainwash millions of US citizens (especially the young) with the content of their choice. They can use TikTok to sway opinions and elections...
"I'm just going to assume that male thinking about the Roman Empire began during the Roman Empire and never faded."
So, women don't think about the Roman Empire? I don't think that's true. Maybe TikTok women.
Now, it might be interesting to contrast that with how often they think about ancient Greece.
I think about Rome everytime I order a Ceaser Salad, render unto Ceasar that which is Ceasars, and drive a car, since all roads lead to Rome.
The number ways to think about Rome are legion, and if I'd be decimated if I didn't do it. At least daily, and more when I fiddle.
If thinking about the Roman Empire was good enough for the Founding Fathers and some great historians, it's good enough for me.
I not only think about it, I read about it, but YMMV.
Some people like oysters, others prefer snails.
Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?
It's from Latin etymology in English words. A constant reminder.
The Roman Empire is big history- I think about history many, many times per day. My observation is that men like to read about history and thus think about history. I don't observe that with women nearly as much, but maybe they do when men like me aren't around. I do know that discussing history at dinner is a date killer.
The only people that ever thought more about the Roman Empire than I do were the Founding Fathers. Their obsession with it's working mechanisms of government infuses our Constitutional Republic which is in the toilet and soon to be flushed for "democracy" and the frisson of history rhyming again. Now back to Gibbons and his dry, wry and humourous take on the Decline of that Empire.
It needs to be remembered that the Roman Empire fell for good in 1453, as the so-called Byzantine Empire was the Roman Empire except without Rome, at least not most of the time. Not that the city of Rome was important when the western half the empire fell. It wasn't even the capital anymore.
The states in Europe were very much interested in being seen as a legitimate successor to the Romans. Both the German Empire and the Russian Empire, neither of which were part of the original Roman Empire in any significant way, both named their rules Caesar. Mussolini was very deep into Roman imagery; the fasces in "fascism" is a Roman symbol. European culture has ancient Rome, ancient Greece, and Jesus as its pillars.
Why wouldn't you think about it?
I took classics in undergrad, and one of our assignments was to attempt to recreate the lost inscription from Sulla's tomb. I still have that assignment on my hard drive, and here's what I came up with. As I recall, there were errors in the translation from the Greek but at least my Latin transcription received a decent grade.
N.AMI.Q.IP.BEN.FACTUM.N.HOSTII.MAL.EXCEL. (How it would have likely appeared)
NEMO.AMICORVM.QVISQVAM.IPSI.BENE.FACTVM.NEMO.HOSTES.MALE.EXCELLVIT (disambiguation).
Translation - No friend ever served me and no enemy ever wronged me whom I have not repaid in full.
In Greek, from the direct mention by Plutarch (in "Parallel Lives") - "τὸ μὲν οὖν μνημεῖον ἐν τῷ πεδίῳ τοῦ Ἄρεώς ἐστι τὸ δὲ ἐπίγραμμά φασιν αὐτὸν ὑπογραψάμενον καταλιπεῖν, οὗ κεφάλαιόν ἐστιν ὡς οὔτε τῶν φίλων τις αὐτὸν εὖ ποιῶν οὔτε τῶν ἐχθρῶν κακῶς ὑπερεβάλετο"
Most people are familiar with the apocryphal translation (also a common motto in the USMC) - NVLLVS AMICVS MELIOR NVLLVS INIMICVS PEIOR - “No better friend, No worse enemy”
Yes. Men think about Rome. A LOT.
>> "Women expose men for bizarre Roman Empire trend: Why guys ‘think about it every day'": <<
A lot of stories rely on confusing "some" with "all" to sound more important than they are.
I'm sure "some" men think about the Roman Empire regularly. Let's say its 10% of men. The Roman Empire is a big part of history, and references to it are everywhere (e.g. Little Caesar's) so it is a regular part of a small number of men's thinking. If you know one, you might notice and it would be an interesting quirk. Some men think about old movies a lot. Some women think about Jane Austin novels a lot. No big deal.
But writing about "some" men who do this wouldn't be very interesting. So what's a journalist to do? Amp up the article by dropping the "some" and say instead that "men often think about the Roman Empire," which suggests that "all" or "a lot" or "most" men do this.
Is this a TikTok story to keep us distracted? How often does the WaPo think about Hunter Biden?
It seems like that because this morning, NPR spent 3 minutes talking about Hunter's indictments, then 10 minutes on a coup in Gabon followed by a lighthearted 10 minute piece on new Iphone features.
I was half-asleep, so the details are hazy, but I did think that there was nothing interesting about the Gabon coup other than it replaces 55 years of Bongo rule (which wasn't as fun as it sounds) and the Iphone bit was completely superficial.
Maybe Althouse is correct. But for me, I learned early as in way back in the 1970s, that Western Empires tend to be short-lived measured in centuries and as we passed our 200th birthday (The Bicentennial) that America was rather long-lived for a Republic. The theme was expounded upon and enhanced by classicists like Victor Davis Hanson and among evangelical congregations the topic of rampant deteriation of morals and the family structure that preceded Rome's fall was all too apparent in modern America. All true. Then one of the big talk radio pioneers of the 1990s (or Rush, really I can't recall) started talking about how many people in pre-fall Rome were productive compared to the percentage who lived off government transfers and that America was fast approaching the same ratio, especially when "middle-class entitlements" started to take hold increasing the share of transfer payments and/or tax credits issued, which have the same negative impact on Treasury receipts. Receipts that in this current year are being negatively affected by the fact the Fed is drawing 5.6T based on upside down interest "income" instead of paying into the Treasury.
Yeah, why would we have any interest in the Roman Empire given those flimsy parallels?
Considering most people in this country are apparently unable to identify who the combatants were in our Civil War and against whom we fought to gain our independence, it seems doubtful that the average man is thinking about something he may know of only from watching Gladiator.
I thought I was the only one.
The NY Post article plays it pretty straight, without judgment. Does the Washington Post? Or do they invoke the Althouse Rule? ('Women don't do this silly thing that men do, thereby demonstrating superiority.')
I, a bona fide female, think about the Roman Empire several times a week, at least. Often about the aqueducts; sometimes about the roads. I also think about their concrete often. Many times I think about Julius Caesar and Brutus. Whenever Russell Crowe pops into my head, I think about Ancient Rome.
Maybe it's not just a guy thing; or maybe I should start identifying as a man?
I'm sure I'm going to be late to this party, but:
"What have the Romans ever done for us?!"
As for me, about once a decade
Well, I'm reading Suetonius now, sooo. . . . . .
Ancient Greece comes up frequently, too. Probably more so than Rome. Greece is the wellspring whence Rome sprung.
I was mesmerized by the Rome vs. Greece debate Mary Beard and Boris Johnson.
Obviously a stupid audience that picked Rome as the winner.
Reading a novel—Augustus by John Williams’s. So for right now, every day
The last 2 years, for some reason, the image of Caligula's horse in the Roman Senate has repeatedly occurred to me.
The Roman Empire effects our lives in myriad ways every single day. Men thinking about Rome much more often than women is merely a consequence of the fact that men, on average, are much more interested in history than women. If you know your history, you can barely get out of bed without seeing something that is the way it is because of Rome.
Women demand to know what men think about in order to discover yet another metaphorical stick with which to flog them into submission.
Men do not demand to know what women think about out of dread of what they may discover, such as women constantly thinking about discovering yet another metaphorical stick with which to flog men into submission.
I discovered that trend about half an hour after my 17-year-old son and I had been discussing the value of knowing the history of Rome.
Guess I'm out of step. I only think about the Roman Empire maybe once a week. But that's because I'm generally busy thinking about handguns, the US Navy c.1940-1946, and the American Civil War.
What the....?
Is there something in the water elsewhere that causes this unusual thinking about 2000 years ago?
I confess I very rarely think about the Roman Empire. Maybe I should re-watch I, Claudius?
If the local farmers run short of manure they can always grind up this article.
You can never watch I Claudius too many times. It's a soap opera on steroids.
If they were constantly watching 300, I'd be worried.
I think of it all the time. As an amateur historian with a dozen years living in former Roman Empire countries, my curiosity was piqued as a child. A wall outside a house I lived in was actually built by the Romans. I have done extensive research into some obscure roman weapons and have attracted attention from a very prestigious university for some groundbreaking work I have done to the point that a professor and I have collaborated on a paper and submitted it to a leading industry journal.
Too many people pay too little attention to history. That's why 'progressives' think their ideas are new and forward thinking. In reality they are 'regressives' trying to force society to relive all the mistakes of the past. Ignorance combined with inflated egos is a deadly combination.
Goetz von Berlichingen
This is one of the few times in my life that I've felt like one of the boys!
Gentlemen! For those of you not thinking enough about the Roman Empire, there's a couple hundred podcast episodes by Mike Duncan on Spotify. Should keep you going for a while.
Hunan rites on slabs, corrupting confused in clinics, taking a knee for social progress, grooming in fealty to mortal gods... a few, perhaps. Many more women, clearly.
I doubt that most men think about the Roman Empire on a daily basis. I find the era very interesting, have read a number of books about it and have visited many Roman related sites in Europe, but I can go months without thinking about the Roman Empire. Same about the Vikings, the British Empire, the ancient Greeks and other eras that I have an above average interest in.
Old joke:
Him (lying in bed in his apartment looking at the ceiling): I wonder if she's thinking of me?
Her (lying in bed in her apartment looking at the ceiling): Beige. The ceiling should definitely be beige.
New joke:
Her: I wonder if he's thinking of me?
Him: Incitatus would have made a better Consul that most of the others in Caligula's time.
While I doubt that most men think of the Roman Empire once a day, it's likely that Bob Dylan does. But he's not like most men.
I study Sanskrit and Arabic to improve my mind
I want to do things for the benefit of all mankind
I say to the willow tree - don’t weep for me
I’m saying the hell with all things that used to be
I get into trouble and I hit the wall
No place to turn - no place at all
I pick a number between one and two
And I ask myself what would Julius Caesar do
Slow news day.
Seriously, who cares about this?
From Paul in Ohio: I am sure the question on everyone’s mind is did you ask Meade.
I have no unusual or special interest in the Romans, but as a guy, I do think about them at least 3 times weekly.
Maybe its because they provide so many touchpoints for other things: manly virtue, patriotic sacrifice, engineering, words, and especially, corruption and decline.
I'm an Ancient Rome enthusiast and my wife knows it. We were short on something to stream a few weeks ago so I pulled out my DVD set for "I, Claudius" and tried to get her to watch it with me. She hated it from the first episode. I still think it is the greatest single season TV series ever made.
There is lots of good Ancient Rome material on YouTube that I watch all the time. I think I have been through just about all of Mary Beard's one-hour Rome documentaries, which are excellent. There is also a YouTube channel I really enjoy that is produced by a young historian, Garrett Ryan, called "toldinstone." It focuses on Greek and Roman history, architecture, and engineering. It's very interesting and very well done. Another good channel is from ProWalk Tours, which produces long-form 4K walking tours of historic sites and cities in Europe, especially Italy. For example, they have tours of the Colosseum, the Forum, and a 5-hour tour of Pompeii.
The YouTube algorithm, for some reason, has started proposing a lot of videos about Hernan Cortes and the Aztecs. My wife is not interested in that, either, but I find it just as fascinating as Roman history.
Evangelical Christians and Catholics are going to up the average. Men who think about military history or trade networks or public architecture or classical education are going to up the average. Those are going to be an incremental foundation right there, thinking about Legions and Emperors a lot. It adds up.
I would add European languages or Indo-European languages as well, but that may be just me.
The Roman Empire is by far, without anything that could even be considered to be in second place, the most important feature of Western history. It's not a synonym for history, but it's close (8th C. BC to 15th C. AD) - 2300 years!
The rule of law, roads, central government, provincial government, slavery, the Crucifixion, mercenaries, merchants, the intersection of public and private life, abortion/infanticide, and more and more and more - all topics of daily interest with their roots in Rome (at least, the roots of the modern Western understanding of those topics).
So if you're not thinking about Rome, that just means you're not particularly curious about how the same issues you're facing have played out previously, IMHO.
You think about Christ to avoid the Roman empire.
Point of pedantry: if "most" men think about the Roman Empire X number of times per day/week/month, by definition this is not "bizarre," but "normal," and those who DON'T think about the Roman Empire are abnormal. So there!
At least once per day, probably more (but in my day job as a medievalist who works a lot on things that happened 500-800, it's unavoidable--not that I would want to avoid it).
We are typing these comments using the Roman alphabet. Not just our letters, but vocabulary, grammar, categories of thought, moral standards, everything that makes us what we are, is fundamentally shaped by the Roman Empire . Si yeah, I probably think about it at least once a day and always have as long as I’ve known about it.
Plus the Jesus was born in Bethlehem because of the Roman census. The Romans crucified Jesus. Saint Paul was brought to Rome for trial, and put to death there. Every Christian thinks about the Roman empire.
Further, I pray the rosary, and I go to daily Mass, so I pray the apostles creed at least twice every day, and I say the words: “He was crucified under Pontius Pilate.” I mention a Roman governor by name at least twice a day every day, 2000 years after he died.
It’s a stereotype but it is generally accurate that men care a lot about history and women don’t care about it at all. And if you care about history you care about the Roman empire if you live in western civilization, the only possible challenger is the second world war for something to dominate the historical consciousness of men.
On a related point, regarding World War II, if you ask a random man: could Army Group Center have made it to Moscow if they had not diverted south? A very high percentage of them will know what you mean and have an opinion about it, and what it would have meant.
I don't know of any women who contemplate the Roman Empire. To extrapolate from there to say women aren't interested in history is ignorant, though. Google "corsetry".
The width of the standard gauge tracks of the Western railroads are a direct descendant of the Roman chariot. The steel bands of chariot wheels left grooves in the roads of England. It was easier to lay the tracks in those grooves so the grooves determined the width of the tracks: 4', 8-1/2".
The modern Western world is derived from the fall of Rome and the inability to reconstitute it. The expansion of the Roman Republic and later the Empire was a kind of Ponzi scheme. The conquests were used to payback the "investors" of the legions. The conquered were absorbed into Rome and became new "investors." The legions then had to conquer new territory to repay the investors. Eventually, Rome ran out of easily conquered territory. Just like a Ponzi scheme eventually runs out of new investors.
Rome having been one of the most patriarchal societies in the history of Europe, of course we of the patriarchy think of Rome all the freaking time. Especially so when we need to think of fresh ways to thwart Ann Althouse and the other feminists, we revisit Cicero and Plutarch, or reread Caesar’s “Commentarii de Bello Gallico.”
Actually, what we think about is owning a buxom, nubile, slave girl for when the wife says “Not tonight, dear.”
/sarc
"New joke:
Her: I wonder if he's thinking of me?
Him: Incitatus would have made a better Consul that most of the others in Caligula's time."
That's not a joke. INCITATUS WOULD HAVE MADE A BETTER CONSUL! Anyone who thinks otherwise is a populares!
I think about the Roman Empire (sort of) pretty frequently because I think a lot about English word etymologies. If English is the lint roller of languages, picking up every stray bit it finds, Latin/Romance languages are a big source of lint.
I'm with Lexington Green on this one. References to Rome, both direct and indirect are part of Catholic things even if you don't think of the Empire directly. And for those of us who attend Mass in the Old Rite, we get to pray and sing in Latin. And what about the stories of early Church martyrs with their myriad gruesome methods of death?
There's plenty of decent fiction out there using ancient Rome as the backdrop. Personally, I think Lindsey Davis is probably one of the best out there, first with her Falco series and now with her Flavia Albia series. Davis's slavish devotion to research is what sets her apart.
But I must be one of the odd females who does think about Rome a lot; well, mainly the fall of the Empire and how it relates to the various stages our current society is shuddering through. You can't contemplate immigration and not think about the many non-Romans (barbarians) who were encouraged to join the Legions in order to gain citizenship. Or the devaluation of our currency and how Roman currency was also devalued by reducing the true metal value in each coin. The parallels are there if you wish to look.
Doesn't WaPoo have style guidelines? A male bloc is so sexist... genderist or something, once, too.
I'd be willing to bet that most women, if they think about the Roman Empire at all, think of Biggus Dickus.
Does thinking about the Roman Republic count? If so, I think about Rome quite frequently, in addition to may other things as well.
I suggest the Roman Republic is what gripped the Founders much more than the Empire.
I'm rereading Robert Harris's detailed and engrossing trilogy (Imperium, Lustrum (aka Conspirata), and Dictator) about Cicero's life (late Republic to early Empire), which I highly recommend. Multipe huge historical events and figures during the life of this one man.
I've got a life-sized portrait sculpture of Augustus Caesar in my office, which a colleague gave me as a present, so Empire too. I've also got a life-sized head sculpture of Pegasus in my dining room at home, thus Ancient Greece too. Every time I see my 22 year old nephew, I remind him that the ancient Greeks taught us that hubris is the fatal flaw.
As one will be reminded by studying Cicero's life, the well educated Roman learned to read, write, and speak Greek, and trained in Greek rhetoric.
Women might be surprised by how interested men are in military history and the Legions of Rome are right up there.
Thank you for the best laugh I've had in a while. As I was reading your post, I stopped to ask my husband and a friend we were with how often THEY think of the Roman Empire. My friend's wife blurted out as I asked the question, "Don't be silly! Who thinks of the Roman Empire?!" But they both looked at us with wide eyes and said, "All the time! At least a couple or three times a day. What, you don't?" Um, no, not really.
We wives were dumbfounded but oh, gosh, how funny it was. Thanks.
I think about the Roman Empire every time I have to put unpeeled grapes into my mouth myself, which is pretty much every time I eat grapes.
Our alphabet, 60 percent of our words, the Roman Catholic Church, concrete. Rome lives on with us every day.
I probably think about the Roman Empire everyday. Not about how I would have lived in it. (I doubt I'd have fared well.) It's just interesting, and so many things either reference it or were profoundly influenced by it. So what? I don't think this is actually a male versus female thing.
they had slaves you know
As a descendant of white, mostly Anglo Europeans, I think of the Roman Empire on a daily basis, but mostly in terms of my future prospects of receiving reparations.
I think about Nero fiddling every time I hear our GOP "leaders" speak.
Pop Quiz: Incitatus and (pick one) Fetterman, Feinstein or McConnel. Compare and contrast.
Also the Ryder Cup in in Rome in 2 weeks, so maybe the sample was skewed a little.
Render unto Caesar, that which is Caesar's, even if it is a bit of your mind space.
What did they call the group of princes who chose the Holy Roman Emperor? The Electoral College. Boom! Mic drop.
Anne-I-Am said...
"I, a bona fide female, think about the Roman Empire several times a week, at least... Maybe it's not just a guy thing; or maybe I should start identifying as a man?"
If you do decide to identify as a man, maybe you could change your name to Will-I-Am?
After thinking about sex every seventeen seconds and thinking about Rome several times a day, I'm surprised we men have time left to think about anything else.
Since someone up thread made the dumb comment:
Uh, they had slaves.
Brilliant observation. You don't own a slave so you're so much smarter than Cato, Ceasar, Alexander or Plato.
We used to have a lot of movies about Rome and the ancient world in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. The funniest, if dumbest movie, was "Spartacus". We're supposed to root for the slaves, led by Kirk Douglas, against those nasty Romans. Kirk, and his merry band of slaves, just want to leave Italy and go home. But of course, evil Larry Olivier wont let him and Kirk gets Crucified ( Just like Jesus, get it?) and after Tony Curtis gets a knife in the gut.
At one point, Kirk tells the slaves who want to do a little raping and pillaging "What, are we Romans? Are we going to stoop to their level?" And of course, they sheepishly comply and behave like Little lord Fontleroys.
In the real ancient world, everyone owned slaves. Jews didn't ban owning Jewish slaves IN WESTERN EUROPE till 1000 AD, for example. The only difference bewtween the Romans and everyone else is the Romans were more successful. And the Spartacus slave army, more or less plundered raped and pillaged throughout Italy, until a Roman army finally destroyed them.
When did Japan and China get rid of slavery? Hmm...it certainly wasn't in 1865.
And yes the founding fathers did look to Ancient Rome for lessons. But the also looked to Ancient Greece. And the Dutch Republic, which in 1789, was one of the few democracies in the Western world.
Empire, Republic . . . it was an Imperial Republic before it was an Empire, and we Westerners tend to gloss over Byzantium (big mistake). The West that Fell was Rome, a few garrison towns, and a lot of chilly weather; the East that persisted had Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and trade with the rest of Eurasia.
Not for nothing did the Ottomans call themselves Sultans of Rom after 1453.
I'm not at all surprised by the (mostly) male displays of knowledge here--I would have been surprised to not see them.
If you liked the miniseries "I, Claudius" you might like the source material--Robert Graves's novel of the same name.
I'm not sure about L. Green's AGC scenario as a yardstick, though. I would bite, and my wargaming friends, but most other guys? IDK.
Can't end the day without my favorite Rome : USA comparison: We are most Roman in our vices.
And one more observation: To the Romans, War was a continuation of engineering with the admixture of other means.
Now do what women think about every day.
The phenomenon is not restricted to ancient Rome. Try this one;
She; "Would you like to see a map of the political boundaries in SouthEast Asia during the 14th century?"
He; (looks around) "Where is it?"
Clau-Clau Claudius.
In my case I think about Ancient Rome at least three or four times a day as I read the news. Not just the Western Empire, but the Republic as well, and sometimes the Eastern Empire/Byzantium and even the Roman Kingdom.
Tarquinius Superbus is a superb name.
Oderint dum metuant
A couple of weeks ago my wife told me about a great podcast that had got her attention. It was a history of the Roman Empire. I'm not sure which podcast it was, but I had already listened to one a year earlier. So...either she was testing me, or it's spread to the womyn. I mean...women.
Honestly, I don't think about it unless I'm looking at YouTube videos of Israel and see the enormous number of Roman ruin sites throughout that country. Why...it's as if they lived under Roman rule. And yes, the aqueducts are unbelievable engineering feats. I look at the roads when I'm up in Michigan and I think...if only we had some Roman engineers around today instead of cousin Vinnie and his automatically renewing contract with the State.
Seriously though, the topic does come up regularly these days when comparing the decline of Western Civilization, or just the decline of the American Empire to that of the Romans Empire. You know...Barbarians at the Gate and all. But the Roman Empire was much greater and lasted much longer than we will.
My wife and I just completed a Viking cruise on the Danube. The Danube river being a major boundary of the Roman Empire, every stop had some reference to Roman times. Almost every city was originally a Roman military camp. It's impossible not to think about it after a trip like that.
I walk my little dog twice a day in our neighborhood. The sidewalks date to 1962 and are in excellent condition, better than many that were constructed decades later. Every twelfth panel is stamped in deep, clear Roman letters:
JOHN W LATTIMORE
CONTRACTOR
1962
This man built really high quality infrastructure and went to considerable trouble to make a permanent record of his achievement.
Twice a day I am reminded about the invention of concrete by the Romans and the permanence of the structures and inscriptions they made with it. Lattimore would have made a good Roman engineer. In ten thousand years, when the ruins of the city of Phoenix lie under towering sand dunes, as dead and gone as Pompeii, those inscriptions will be readable. Not one other person's name from this time and place may still be in the mouths of men, but his will.
This is the sort of thing that puts Rome in the minds of those with a sense of history. People who live in the moment with the attention span of a gnat, a group which skews heavily young and female, wouldn't understand. As this viral fad demonstrates, they clearly find it bewildering and peculiar.
Let's Get DOWN, to Brass Tacks...
Rome=>Togas=>Toga Parties=>Animal House=>
Are Men, Seriously going to try to pretend.. that they DON'T think about Animal House 5+ times a day?
SERIOUSLY? two words: Otis Day and the Knights
The width of the standard gauge tracks of the Western railroads are a direct descendant of the Roman chariot. The steel bands of chariot wheels left grooves in the roads of England. It was easier to lay the tracks in those grooves so the grooves determined the width of the tracks: 4', 8-1/2".
You can still see the grooves of the chariot wheels in the stone under the Arco dei Gavi in Verona, Italy. They are indeed about the same width as the standard gauge railroad track.
The way I heard this story told was as follows:
The booster rockets on each side of the Space Shuttle's fuel tank would have been more efficient if they were of larger diameter. But they can't be larger, because they were built by Thiokol in Utah and had to be transported in segments by railroad, instead of by barge. Thus they had to conform to the width of a railroad track. The first makers of railway cars were formerly carriage makers, and they already had jigs and axles and such of the standard width for carriages, so that's what they used, and the width of the track has been the same ever since. But why were carriage axles made at a fixed width, instead of by the carriage maker's whim? Because if the wheels were a non-standard width apart, the axles or wheel hubs would break as soon as you drove into the ruts and put buckling stresses on them at other than perpendicular directions. Why were the ruts that particular width? Because they had always been that width since the first wheeled vehicles drove over them. What were the first wheeled vehicles in England? Roman chariots. What dictated the width of a Roman chariot's axles? The width of two horses hitched up side by side.
So, when you look at some engineering problem and say "What horse's ass wrote the specs for this job?" - now you know.
Horatio Hornblower and Jack Aubrey and even the Flashman occupy an entirely different Eera than the Roman Empire, but to think about them is to think about Empire, and to think about Empire is to think, sooner or later, of Rome.
It is easier to think about Rome than many other, lesser, things.
A boyfriend of my daughter gave me a Roman coin for a gift one Xmas. Boyfriend is long gone from daughter's life. Coin remains.
“To extrapolate from there to say women aren't interested in history is ignorant,” I don’t need to extrapolate from that. I can look at the many decades of my life and know perfectly well but very, very few women care about history. And you know that perfectly well, you just don’t like it because you want to feel like a victim, and you think it’s critical of women to tell an obvious truth about women as a group. Yeah, we can all think of women who care about history, like my mother, for example. They are unusual. Men play video games based on historical scenarios all the time, there are countless millions of them. Women mock these guys snd consider them beneath notice, because women want men who will give them wealth and status. Saying obvious truths about group differences, on average, recognizing there are outliers, is considered rude these days. Good. Say rude things. The moral standards of the day are retarded and fucking gay, and should be ignored. Yeah, I said it that way to be offensive.
I was talking to a male friend today about small towns that still have brick streets and he brings up the freakin' Appian Way.
I do know that discussing history at dinner is a date killer.
I dunno, my husband and I went out to happy hour tonight and I regaled him with a recounting of the connections I'd drawn between the primatology/early human anthropology lecture I'd just listened to, concerning the differences between chimp and human societies WRT female reproductive strategies, and the interview with a guy who was pointing out the connection between affordable electricity and female liberation from the washboard and cooking fire, and he seemed interested throughout. I guess it depends on the guy?
Hassayamper said...
"The width of the standard gauge tracks of the Western railroads are a direct descendant of the Roman chariot ... So, when you look at some engineering problem and say 'What horse's ass wrote the specs for this job?' - now you know."
I would just like to add that this specification - which has had such a massive impact on the world over the last two millennium - took not just one but two horses' asses to come up with.
NorthOfTheOneOhOne,
"The US Navy c.1940-1946", eh?
Did you know my father? Visit the (now defunct) museum on Mare Island? I spent hours in my youth poring over some of his naval history volumes, and by high school would grab the Proceedings when it arrived and see if there were any articles of interest. (He himself spent some of those years you mention aboard the USS San Francisco (CA-38).)
There is an excellent historical television drama titled "Rome" that aired for 2 seasons from 2005 to 2007. I watched it on Netflix and highly recommend it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_(TV_series)
I studied Latin in high school and Greek in college, so I've always been fascinated by ancient history.
Anne-I-Am,
What kind of weirdo has Russell Crowe come to mind and doesn't think, rather, of the Royal Navy???
At what point in a F to M gender transition do Roman Empire thoughts begin to intrude upon the patient's consciousness?
And conversely, in a M to F process, at what point does the patient experience relief from these thoughts?
Just in case a Twitter thread accusing the Althouse blog of disseminating "misinformation" erupts like a festering pimple on the tip of my nose, here's the real, completely non-Roman origin of the standard railway gauge.
Like everything else we confidently believe, the influence of Rome on our current age is at once shallower and deeper than we suspect.
who was stupid enough? to think that thinking about something, meant APPROVING of something?
Questor, that link was very interesting. Many things we think we know and repeat, just aren't so.
Thanks Quaestor for the link. I knew that the other origin theory was widespread but couldn't recall the details of how it was wrong.
Love this place.
How often do women think about shoes?
"How often do women think about shoes?"
Who do I look like, Dylan Mulvaney?
OTOH, I used to think a lot about women's shoes, because I was trying to sell them. College job, for about a year. Commissions could be pretty good in Gayoso (Ladies Better) Shoes.
A library colleague of mine has a librarian wife with a legendary, insatiable love of footwear. The lovely reno they made on a big 1920's Neo-Tudor cottage featured enough shoe racks for a battalion.
But she's an outlier.
Tik Tok is a series of aqueducts that go into your phone
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