Why Men Are Obsessed with the Roman Empire

Late last year, a meme emerged (below) about how much men tend to think about the Roman empire. Apparently, it’s quite a lot — which begs the question, why?

My initial thought (influenced in part by my PhD research) was that this was a pseudo-right-wing glorification of the “good ol’ days” vis-à-vis the West. And while this certainly accounts for at least some of the enthusiasts, it did not characterise a great many, and so I began to think about men more broadly and what in the popular image of Ancient Rome they related to.

I thought about the Roman’s reputation for innovatory organisation — borne, in large part, by martial concerns. As Mary Beard writes in SPQR, ‘Roman military expansion drove Roman sophistication’:

If we were to ask what transformed the relatively simple world of the [fifth century BCE] into the relatively complex world of the year 300 BCE, the most influential factor would surely be the sheer size of Rome’s dominion and the organisational demands of fighting on a large scale. Simply the logistics of transport, supply and equipment…