Why do men think about the Roman Empire so much? That’s the subject of a new social media trend, where women ask their partners how often they think about ancient Rome.
Some men do it every day; one admitted to doing it three times a day. But why is it men who love the Empire so obsessively? ‘There’s so much to think about,’ one man said to his fiancée on TikTok. Another admitted he loved ‘their aqueducts and the fact that they had concrete that could harden’.
He’s right. The Pantheon in Rome was built out of a special Roman concrete that has held up its extremely delicate dome since 126 AD. Some academics say that the teaching of Roman history has concentrated on its masculine aspects: gladiators, legions, warfare and imperial eagles.
My early classical education certainly concentrated on that sort of thing. My first Latin text was Julius Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War and my first vocab lists were crammed with spears, shields, fortresses and defensive ditches.
It’s crazy to think of the study of Rome as a male thing.
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