The trend came about when Instagram user @gaiusflavius posted a reel saying "Ladies, many of you do not realise how often men think about the Roman Empire."
Asking men this question and filming their answers quickly became a trend on TikTok, and...well, here we are!
In many videos and comments, a lot of people are surprised and amused by how often men seem to be thinking about Rome.
And they're not the only ones. "Why does there seem to be a gender divide in who is daydreaming about ancient Rome today?" asked the Washington Post in an article published Thursday. But the answer is that actually...there is no gender divide.
As a classics major and a huge lover of Roman history, this trend left a little bit of a weird taste in my mouth. I saw no reason why women wouldn't also be thinking about ancient Rome — I literally think about it every single day.
So...I decided to call, like, every single person I could think of (plus a few more) and ask them how often they think about ancient Rome.
I asked 50 men and 50 women, and honestly expected things to be pretty evenly split — maybe with men thinking about Rome a liiiiitle more often. But my results surprised me: Only 48% of the men I asked said they think about Rome often, as opposed to 66% of the women. Who knew?!
That might seem like a huge gap, so just to be safe (and because I'm super nerdy) I broke out my high school statistics knowledge and conducted a chi-square test of independence to see if this difference in percentage really mattered. Men, you're off the hook: According to my little study, there's no statistically significant difference between how much more often women are thinking of ancient Rome than you.
Also — since this is the internet — I do want to say that there is a world of difference between earnest interest and love of history and, well, weirdo behavior.
But, people, why in God's name are we thinking about Rome so much?! I mean, I'd estimate that over half the population is thinking about Rome "fairly often."
A large amount (and variety) of people gave answers like "I just wonder about what the hygiene was like," as well as "I just think gladiators are f—cking dope." Others stated interest in Roman engineering, building practices, and aqueducts. Seriously, I got sooo many aqueduct answers. And TBH, yeah, aqueducts deserve it. They're the coolest.
My friend Blake (who thinks about Rome once a day) told me, "I'm never like 'aw hell yeah, time to think about Rome! But it's tangentially related to enough stuff I like that I think about it pretty often.'" He told me he thinks about military strategy, Roman infrastructure, and mythology.
Quite a few people said they think often about how Rome impacted European and Middle Eastern history through engineering, religion, and politics.
He and a handful of others (one of these being my lovely mom) also drew a parallel to the political structure of the United States and its current state of affairs. With the US government having been modeled after the Roman Republic, it's easy to think about the late Republic when one is considering corruption and other issues in our own government.
Still MORE people said they enjoy listening to history podcasts and learning about the past in general. One woman (who said she thinks about Rome probably twice a week) told me that for her, it's all about contextualizing history, seeing how cultures influence each other, and considering what values and powers-that-be still affect our daily lives today.
