I know this is a joke/meme, but I sincerely think of the Roman Empire a surprising amount of times. I find myself obsessing over how Roman citizens were living just as complex lives as we are today, or about Marcus Aurelius’ life and philosophy, or about how the Republic fell and became a totalitarian state.

  • Lvxferre@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    59
    ·
    1 year ago

    I think on Rome fairly often, but it’s usually more often on the republic.

    about how the Republic fell and became a totalitarian state.

    I was thinking about this literally yesterday, on the nature of Octavian betraying the Republic, and how the Iulii and the Claudii simply kept themselves on power through the whole process. (Both gentes were already powerful in Republican times.) Or how some of the Claudii called themselves “Clodius” instead of “Claudius” for the sake of populism. (“See? I’m from the people! I even speak like a pleb!”)

    • Kayel@aussie.zone
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      Even the state of politics dating back to the Grachi. Gradually becoming more violent and turbulent and Rome’s reach and power grew. A society of adapters who could no longer adapt to the fast pace of change.

  • Klystron@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    31
    ·
    1 year ago

    Well in 5th grade I read Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief and later on every book after that. And there’s still a part of me that thinks I might be a demigod. So Monday, Wednesday, Friday, it’s the Greeks and Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday it’s the Romans. Sunday is a toss up.

  • aramus@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    24
    ·
    1 year ago

    I think about words and their etymology a lot. Of course many words have their origin in Latin. And then I am amazed how they used kind of the the same word ~2k years ago.

    • Lvxferre@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      1 year ago

      And then I am amazed how they used kind of the the same word ~2k years ago.

      This sort of borrowing tends to get crazy in the Romance languages. Because often the Latin word did survive, but underwent change, then someone re-borrowed the word from Latin and now it’s living side-to-side with its ancestor. …except that people in the Middle Ages were already doing this, so the reborrowed word might evolve, and someone might reborrow a third version of the word, recursively.

      In English there’s also the case of words being borrowed from Latin, except that those words have a native Germanic cognate, like verb vs. word.

      • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 year ago

        This just made me have a fun observation: Message Of The Day used to be a common thing in the earlier days of computing (still pretty normal on stuff like game servers), and the initialism MOTD contains the french word for “word” (mot)!

  • FoundTheVegan@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    25
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I have no idea when the last time I thought about Rome period, let alone in any sort of in-depth way. I’ve learned a bit in school and a few years ago went through a YouTube deep dive history phase but Rome was a topic just as much as any other culture.

    So exceptions aside… I never think about Rome?

  • BrandoGil@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    23
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Often, but not daily. Maybe not even weekly. Certainly monthly and it’s because THEY FUCKED UP THE CALENDAR. SEPT IS 7 NOT 9 ALL THE WAY UP TO DEC YOU BASTARDS. Seriously though, fuck Julius and Augustus.

    • Contramuffin@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      1 year ago

      Julius and Augustus didn’t add a month. They replaced a month. The 6th and 7th months had different names, and they simply renamed them to July and August. The actual reason why the month names don’t match up is because Romans originally only counted “business months,” kinda akin to how we count weekdays way more than we count weekends. In any case, no (or little) business was happening in the winter, so they just simply don’t count months during the winter. Those uncounted months would correspond to January and February. When January and February were added, people decided to put them in the front of the calendar rather than at the back. Hence, the 8th month (October) became the 10th month, and so on for all the months.

      You can read a bit more from the Wikipedia page here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar#Romulus

      • Lemmylaugh@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 year ago

        Why would they add months at the front? March makes sense to be the first month being spring and all

        • Contramuffin@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          If I recall correctly, it was mainly political. I’m not an expert in this topic at all, I’m just regurgitating what I read. But from what I remember, it was something along the lines of elections occur at the end of the year, and by placing January and February at the beginning rather than at the end, the new year would more closely coincide with office terms

  • xttweaponttx@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    22
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    Totally genuinely, I never, ever think about the Roman empire. Don’t understand how this is a thing across social media 😂🤷‍♂️

  • Lemmylaugh@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    1 year ago

    This is why we need an ask historian community on lemmy. Rome questions would have spiked about now

  • Fat Tony@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Have you ever read: I, Claudius? If not, you should. Going by your description, it should really scratch that itch in a very well written way. Recommended to you by a fellow Roman Empire fanatic ^^

    Edit: And to answer your question: Yes, quite often I do.

    • Tatters@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      The excellent “I, Claudius” BBC TV series was repeated recently (I think it was on BBC4). One of my all time favourites. I had forgotten how funny the Caligula episode is, and the demise of Messalina is truly bone-chilling.

  • MudMan@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    15
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    “The Roman Empire”, as most people understand it, meaning ancient Rome, is a period of somewhere between 500 and 1500 years spanning territory from Western Europe to Syria and from Northern England to North Africa.

    The reason this is a meme is that it’s the equivalent of asking “how often do you think about the US” and then being surprised that the answer is some number. If you have even a passing interest in things that happened not specifically right now the answer to this is nonzero.

    Now, the weird part is how many of the memers are getting things completely wrong or just generally fantasizing about the… I don’t know, look and feel of the thing. If and when I think back to this it’s mostly about petty neighbourly disputes leading to lawsuits and crummy politics.

  • N-E-N
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    1 year ago

    Whenever I see a post or comment about it online