Opinion by David M. Perry
Mon, September 18, 2023
Editor’s Note: David M. Perry is a journalist, historian and co-author of “The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe.” He is the associate director of undergraduate studies in the history department of the University of Minnesota. Subscribe to his newsletter Modern Medieval. The views expressed here are those of the author. View more opinion on CNN.
A funny thing happened on the way to the online forum: people wouldn’t stop talking about the Roman Empire.
David M. Perry - David Perry
Over the past few days, a viral trend has swept through TikTok in which women asked their husbands and boyfriends how often they thought about the Roman Empire. A surprising number claimed to think about the ancient empire as often as “every day” or least every week or two. It became a meme (are you even in a relationship if she hasn’t asked you about the Roman Empire?), spread to other social media sites, then received serious news coverage in multiple outlets. Now it seems like it’s everywhere.
The whole experience has left me, a historian (I focus on medieval Europe, but like many professors have taught “from Plato to NATO”), a little bemused. There are any number of specific reasons why men might think a lot about the Roman Empire, to be sure, but in my experience, lots of people spend a lot of time thinking about history. People like history.
When it comes to the Roman Empire, there’s a gender bias here, and also a racial one. Lots of men in particular think Rome is cool, though it’s mostly just vibes combining mythic ideas around ancient Greece and Rome — about a thousand years’ worth of history! This popularity is evident in history classes, books, podcasts, TV shows, video games, movies and more, including Mike Duncan’s podcast, Mary Beard’s SPQR, or the TV show Rome, but also more lyrical pathways into the history such as Madeline Miller’s novels “Circe” and “Song of Achilles.”
There’s just a lot (in a fairly narrow band) of Greek and Roman history to easily consume. What’s more, a small selection of surviving primary sources for the late Roman Republic and early empire are fun to read, lurid in sex and violence and available in cheap paperback translations. Try Livy’s histories for the early stuff, or Tacitus’ Annals for a dose of political intrigue (and murder).
Pundits like to compare our present moment to a mostly false narrative about the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, arguing that history justifies taking aggressive action against their pet concerns. In 1979, for example, an economics professor blamed welfare for the fall of Rome. The comparison tends to produce bad history.
But the pundits and politicians are in good company. People have been trying to use using bad history to try to claim the mythic legacy of Rome for centuries. Just look at our government buildings that claim to be “neo-classical” with their gleaming white columns—even though Rome was actually very colorful, it’s just that paint doesn’t last. More dangerously, there is a subset of people who are more seriously obsessed with an imagined past that they think supports a White supremacist narrative of history. It’s a notion that actual scholars of the incredibly complex and diverse ancient Mediterranean are pushing back against, because it’s both harmful and nonsense.
But the specifics of the ancient Mediterranean aside, it’s not surprising to me that people spend a lot of time thinking about their favorite histories. History is enthralling, and while access to sources is unequal for many reasons (what survives, what gets translated, what gets published cheaply), you can find fascinating stories from any place, time or topic.
And people do. Every time a stranger finds out that I’m a historian, like on an airplane, or at a bar or even recently at a gas station while I was filling up a leaking tire, they start telling me about their favorite history. It can be a red flag, like the Battle of Thermopylae or any time a White person in the South wants to talk to me about the Civil War, but in the vast majority of cases, it’s just someone who likes to think about the past. And if you asked them about it on video, they’d probably say they think about it almost every day.
I also see this from my students, including the many retirees who take advantage of a $10-a-credit program for Minnesotans over 62 to voluntarily come back to school and get a history major. They take classes. They write papers and exams. They do the reading. They do it for fun. It’s because people like history.
I keep asserting people’s love of history because we’re in a moment of professional collapse for those of us in the business of making new knowledge about the past. Enrollments in history classes and majors have been falling for years, and while the job market for professors has stabilized, it’s heavily skewed towards temporary positions and nowhere near as large as it was even a decade ago. The news is even worse for historians of the premodern world; American men may be low-level obsessed with ancient Rome, but only 8% of all of last year’s jobs focused on the history from the origins of humanity to the year 1500, according to the American Historical Association.
Some of that has happened because of shifting resources from the teaching of premodern Europe and ancient Greece and Rome to include more of the world — a necessary shift, it turns out, because the rest of the world also has fascinating, knowable, premodern history. I’ve never cared if anyone studies the areas of the world I study, but I do want students steeped in the past.
What to make of this disconnect in society? People love history, but the studying and teaching of history at the university level is slowly vanishing (I’m sure you could say similar things about the love for art and art history, love for literature and shrinking English departments, but I’m going to stick to what I know best). Students are told not to follow their interests, but to go to college to find a career, and are never told that strong humanities majors make more money than average business majors, or that history majors do just as well financially as majors like criminology or psychology.
The issues here aren’t easily solvable, but they start by recognizing that history and historians don’t have to be on the defensive about our topics. People want to learn about the past. We should make it easier for them in every way possible, and we need the public to make their love of history clear. Go on TikTok! Ask your boyfriend or girlfriend about history and share their answers. Make more history everywhere and in every way. There’s work to be done, and like Rome, we’re not going to build it in a day.
The 'female version' of the male obsession with the Roman Empire is — to the surprise of no one — completely different
Maria Noyen
Updated Sat, September 16, 2023
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Princess Diana, the Salem Witch Trials, and the Titanic are common answersAndrea Comi/Getty Images
This week the internet was shocked to discover that men are obsessed with the Roman Empire.
Some women found out their partners think of the Roman Empire as often as on a daily basis.
People are now discussing the "female version" of the trend.
Earlier this week, the internet was shocked to discover that men are obsessed with the Roman Empire — so much so that some even think of it on a daily basis.
The revelation came as a surprise to many partners, who have been sharing viral reactions to the men in their lives admitting how frequently they pondered the Roman Empire on TikTok and X, formerly known as Twitter.
The conversation took a new turn on Thursday when LA-based professional charcuterie artist Emmy Rener asked TikTokers to weigh in on a new question: what is the female version of the Roman Empire?
"What is something random that we all think about on a very regular basis that is female specific?" she said.
The answers Rener has received in comments and stitched videos on her TikTok revealed stark differences between men's and women's regular thoughts.
Kidnapping and violent crime are top of mind, some women say
Many of those responding to the TikTok said they would often think of serious subjects like being the victim of violence.
Danyelle Leyden, a TikToker who regularly shares content about her life and family, said being kidnapped was top of her mind in a response video.
"Definitely being kidnapped, or just in general somebody's gonna get me," Leyden said.
Speaking to Insider, Leyden said the number of women who have similar recurring thoughts to her is revealing societal differences.
"It speaks volumes for society that women are so cautious and have to feel on guard most of their lives," Leyden said. "I think unfortunately most women have had past experiences that led them to be this cautious."
"For me it also put into further perspective that as women we feel like prey subconsciously," she added.
Some people expressed similar views in the comment section of Leyden's TikTok. "Same," one user wrote in a comment that has over 6,500 likes. "I'm constantly thinking 'what if someone walks though my front door right now, what will I grab?'"
"I think it's being murdered, or assaulted," Melissa Urban said in a TikTok. She captioned the clip: "With a splash of did I leave the curling iron on."
In yet another stitch with Rener's original clip, "Awkward" star Greer Grammer expressed similar thoughts.
"Taylor Swift or getting kidnapped, I think about those two things every day. Every day," she said in her own post.
Princess Diana, the Salem Witch Trials, and the Titanic are common, too
Other common answers among women on TikTok included Princess Diana, Greek mythology, the Titanic, Helen Keller, and the Salem Witch Trials.
"I firmly believe that there are four," user @gertiethehippo said in a TikTok responding to Rener's question. "The six wives of Henry VIII, the Titanic, obviously, not the movie but the Titanic, the Romanov's, and, of course, Greek mythology."
Princess Diana.Tim Graham Photo Library/Getty Images
Further responses also included Taylor Swift and Stevie Nicks epic 1997 performance of "Silver Springs," which resurfaced and went viral earlier this year following the release of "Daisy Jones and The Six," Today reported.
Others said they also thought about the Roman Empire.
Carly Maris, a postdoctoral fellow at San Diego State University whose research interests including Rome, Persia, and Egypt, responded to the trend on TikTok, saying that for her "personally, the female version of the Roman Empire is the Roman Empire."
"Ladies, when they would do a good job at something they would get little leaf hats, they wore special dresses, their favorite color was purple," she added.
Emmy Renner, creator of the original female version of the Roman Empire TikTok, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.
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