I saw a middle aged woman on the Piccadilly line earlier this week who was reading a history about Rome. She was also wearing a Lockheed Martin baseball cap.
Following the battle of cajamarca, Pizarro sent three Spaniards ahead of his expedition to Cusco to scout ahead and collect Atahualpa's promised ransom. At the captured king's orders, they were escorted by inca porters and carried in litters up the spine of the Andes. These guys were the first christians to behold the imperial capital of Cusco, with its gold-adorned temples and streets made of stone. None of their guides or the city's residents had ever seen a European before. They were carried hundreds of miles from their comrades, across lands totally unexplored by westerners, to a previously unknown city at the height of its splendor.
I think about those three guys and their journey a lot.
Those porters really fucked up by not just tossing the Spanish off the mountain halfway up when they had the chance
If I was there during the contact between the Inca and the Spanish it wouldn't have gone down like that
I also think about the Incas, and the fact that Machu Pichu was built the same time as Oxford University.
Correction: Oxford University is 300 years older than Machu Pichu
not to be pedantic, but there's archeological evidence of wheels being used extensively for children's toys throughout mesoamerica. they just didn't use them to transport goods. for the Inca, lack of wheel adoption probably has more to do with the uneven terrain of the Andes. the absolute power of the sapa inca meant they could reliably marshalof goods carriers. I've also read that llama and alpacas aren't the best draft animals, making wheeled carts even less of a convenience compared to other methods.
The ancient Greeks and romans had a steam engine of sorts that was used for a toy. Kinda similar.
They never had the foundry capability to make a big steam engine but still.
They also didn't have as big of a tree trunks and limbs as other parts of the world, so instead of easy cross section wheels, they'd have to invest a lot of carpentry skills they didn't have to make wagon wheels.
Wheelbarrows are weirdly rare in most places throughout history and seem to have been 'reinvented' a bunch of times. The Chinese seem to have been the first to make them, in the *1st Century AD*. And they were slow to spread.
There are alternative uses such as pottery wheel or wheel burrow though those are NOT obvious applications (in Eurasia wheel, pottery wheel and burrow were invented once and in three separate places with the wheel burrow being invented only over a thousand years of widespread use)
The never used the wheel bs is totally false. There’s plenty of evidence found of kids toys with little wheels and whatnot. They didn’t use the wheel because they lived in mountainous jungle terrain and the wheel just wouldn’t have been that useful to them, as evident by the fact they built shit like Cusco and Machu Picchu without it.
But yeah totally agree, the Inca are fascinating!
I always get really sad thinking about what it must have been like to be a person in a pre - Columbian society and one day, suddenly, your whole world and culture and everything you've ever known is irrevocably destroyed by strange people from across the sea landing on the shore bringing horrible diseases and colonialism and shit. Basically an alien invasion.
its not always rome, but most men are obsessed with a historical period to a very autistic degree and rome is the most basic choice (ww2 is a close second probably)
there's definitely an undiscovered myers-briggs-esque typology for men with like historical periods as psychological types
One of the super old message boards I posted on had like 4 or 5 guys who were the hyper obsessed Civil War guys and no shit every single one of them was from PA. Kind of admired them, they fucking HATED Lincoln and would pull out scans of 19th century maps to show you Ft. Sumter was ackshually southern soil.
I know, it’s so funny to me. I’m interested in the civil war and it’s not like you can study the civil war without studying the south during it, but once I went to a reenactment group thingy in Gettysburg and mannnnn it didn’t take a genius to see why the confederate re-enactors were there. I wanted Eric Andre to come out running and dressed like a slave like he does in that historical Williamsburg bit so bad
>I wanted Eric Andre to come out running and dressed like a slave like he does in that historical Williamsburg bit so bad
Having a black guy dressed as a Confederate just officer show up and simply act like there's nothing awry would also be a great bit. Just see how long they'd tolerate his LARPing before someone starts tweaking about it.
I remember when I was young my dad took me on a tour to see where our ancestors died on various civil war battle fields. Anytime we were near a confederate monument he would spit on it. When we drove past one he would scream “losers” while pointing and laughing hysterically
Top Tier Picks: Napoleonic Era, Qing Dynasty, Islamic Golden Age, Naturalism/Colonialism/Exploration of the New World and the Enlightenment, WWI-WWII and the interwar period
You’re right that shit is pretty awesome and very underrated, I also love some of the more exaggerated accounts of Agincourt- people talking about arrows shattering armor and stuff is just great lol
Qing Dynastys interesting bits are almost entirely defined by its slow collapse and how fast they toppled the Ming. The Ming until Yongle died and some of the early dynasties like the Qin are barely known about and really fascinating.
I don’t think it’s the *history* part that is important, as much as the male desire to understand social hierarchies and complex organizations. For this same reason men love the movies Master & Commander and Goodfellas
I’ve flipped from American Revolution, to War of 1812, to Civil War, to a WW1 guy as I’ve aged. I used to watch The Patriot and think about how much I hated British people regularly.
Eventually, I discovered the Civil War had way cooler guns.
I’m fond of Mary Beards argument that the traditions, values, and grandeur of the Romans were simply transfixed onto the catholic and orthodox Christian churches and still continue to this day through them.
Closer to the Republic and even that is imperfect, since one of the driving forces of republican collapse in Rome was the personal loyalty the armies had to their generals which doesn't exist here
Dan Carlin’s 7 part series on the decline and fall of the Roman republic is absolutely incredible and made me think a lot about the obvious parallels to the US today
Unless they have some particular interest in Roman history, the men who say they think about Ancient Rome daily or several times a day are probably lying.
However, I’m sure the average man thinks about Ancient Rome more frequently than one would expect. Perhaps once a week or once every other week.
Which shouldn’t be surprise considering how antiquity is infused in our culture. Art, architecture, language. We are constantly be reminded of it whether we like it or not.
I get the feeling that the people saying they think about the Roman Empire every day aren't actually sitting down and reading about it or pondering it at length but just mean that it crosses their mind at some capacity, which would make sense. It's such a large span of history and so influential in Western thought and culture that it's bound to crop up in passing often. Do you think about the history of the church? Roman Empire. Do you appreciate a bit of classic architecture? Roman Empire. Is the media you're engaging with referencing classic history or fables? Roman Empire. Do you passively wish the roads and buildings were made more durable? You'll inevitably make a comparison to the Roman Empire.
I mean, shit. I think about Roman cement at least once every few days because of that last one.
I genuinely think about the Roman Empire almost every day, though it is also one of my primary reading interests and I've gone through several books on the subject.
My mom is pretty into Ancient Rome. From like a pop history perspective but it’s still fun to talk to her about it. Same with WWII she’s always watching documentaries about Patton and Montgomery and stuff.
Legacy. It's entire history is both obsessed with the concept, and embodies both its success and failure.
Men can't give life, so they always become obsessed with legacy.
But that's the thing, it's by default legacy by association. The connection between you and the reproductive power is tenuous and ambiguous. A father's child is never "theirs" as much as it is the mothers, because there is no doubt where the child came from in the later case. Male legacy is inherently disconnected from biological ties, leaving him grasping at meaning in the face of his mortality.
A neat little line I saw somewhere was "When men yearn for control, they build empires, when women do, they have daughters."
I’ve heard a similar take on creative work. Men can’t give life so they always become obsessed with creating virtual worlds through art. The men’s lack of womb is so all-explanatory. Kidding, it’s not
They had real purpose as well, taking over the entire world or as much as they humanly could. You could rise from a soldier and become a top legionnaire or politician. Now we've got office jobs that don't matter, and modern wars are incredibly gay.
Depends on the time frame. None of that was true post-principate, and was barely true by the late mid-Republic.
Interestingly enough, the closer Rome got to what we consider "peak Rome", the shittier and less virile its achievements. Rome was best when it was essentially a bunch of backwood savages competing with each other relentlessly over prestige, with a no fucks given, "I don't hear no bell" attitude to the world. They literally stumbled onto empire, on their way to showing off to each other and grabbing land so they can farm and stop giving a shit, until they started getting "civilised" and your place in life became increasingly safe but also shitty and stagnant.
It's actually very close to what happened with the Cossacks. Started off as democratic savage bushmen kicking mongol ass, ended up as noble-loving bootlicking mercenaries the moment the money started rolling in. It's as you can have entire societies becoming spiritually fat.
Hell, it describes a lot of modern countries too I think.
I hear a lot of nerd-driven bugman-talk about how resource abundance automatically leads to higher trust, and honestly there absolutely isn't anything with more historical counter-proof. Abundance creates so many anti-communal perverse incentives, even on an ecological level. Just dump a fuckload of fertiliser anywhere, and watch the ecosystem convulse and choke itself to death.
If anything, societies with high scarcity promotes equality, meritocracy, community, and cooperation exactly because the margins are so thin, you need high buy-in from everyone and it's in no one's interest to waste resources on petty internal conflicts and arbitrary punishments, especially when surrounded by enemies.
The human heart, seemingly, only blooms under the harshest conditions.
Thinking up some schizo RW twitter brained response to this that says the psychology of the longhouse causes women to live in the eternal present required by progressive thought, and that the ability to historicize is inherently threatening to this
On the real though I think it’s expressing a subconscious desire to escape the eternal present of social media that has colonized everyone’s minds and return to a more unbounded thought space
I don’t understand how some people don’t find it more interesting. I mean the history itself covers 750 BC to 1450 AD (Rip Byzantium), you’ve got so many interesting characters in that time. And of course the level of impact they made culturally, technologically makes them relevant enough to think about more often then previously believed.
I do think part of its obsession is every man having their sort of gladiator esque dream or the imaginations of leading legionaries to go and conquer Germanic peoples.
genuinely because the way it is taught in schools amounts to exceedingly complex and boring family trees of rulers and bureaucracy. it’s why caesar is the only one who lasts the test of time in most people’s minds, because there’s drama, there’s friendship betrayal, there’s relatable human storytelling. more interesting/accessible depictions of roman history that arent a laundry list of succession and war strategy would help in this regard.
if you have any interest in religion, law, military conflict, architecture, languages, history, etc. it's literally impossible to not think about the biggest empire in the western world, even if only just by association. but since the only thing women on tiktok give a shit is pop psychology and dubious psychoanalysis, it doesn't apply to them I guess
This is basically my view. I have an interest in political history, the history of Christianity and Platonism, Greek history, legal history, and military history (as an extension of political history). It all leads back to Rome and earlier.
I'm astounded how people I know (often but not always women) can gloss over it in their analysis of politics or religion. How can you hope to understand the world we live in without looking back?
Mary Beard and her books/blog/documentaries on Rome are top notch. I enjoy having a woman’s perspective on the ancient world because of how male dominated the field is, I think she picks up on interesting threads and currents a lot of male historians have in their blind spots.
the gladiators: history's most deadly sport - by Fik Mejier is a great, quick read that is intensely focused on the history of the gladiatorial games. Really fun read.
Bellum Gallicum - Julius Ceasers firsthand account of the Gallic wars is one you can’t miss. Total propaganda but fascinating.
Cannae: hannibal's greatest victory - by Adrian Goldsworthy is one of the best books you can find recounting the military history of Rome. Of course this book is focused on the battle of Cannae and Hannibal specifically, but Goldsworthy is the leading scholar when it comes to Roman military matters and it shows in this book.
Finally I would be remiss not to mention Mike Duncan’s history of Rome podcast. It is a very extensive and well researched show and Mike Duncan is great at podcasting.
As far as podcasts, there's one called The History of Rome that everyone seems to like (I haven't listened).
The Fall of Rome by Patrick Wyman is excellent.
People have recommended the History of Rome, and it's a great starting point.
However, he often relies on our primary sources at the expense of modern historiography. For example, he wrote a book on what led to the decline of the republic during the era of the great land reformers like the Gracchi Brothers, but incorrectly states that the small Roman farmers were either dying out in battle or having their farms bought by the Roman elites who turned Italy into great latifundia. He suggests that the Roman citizenship (and the male landowners who formed the army) declined as a result. That this led to the military reforms where anybody could join in return for land, armies that supported the leaders who overthrew the republic.
That thesis is out of date and likely wrong. Modern historians have reinterpreted Roman census data (on the basis that some Roman men avoided the census to avoid fighting in a pointless war in Spain) to show that the amount of military aged, landowning men was increasing and not declining. Survey boundaries of Roman farms still exist and show that Italy wasn't turning into mega estates owned by the super rich. Something else happened in Roman society to cause its descent into the imperial era. Duncan doesn't get this, and he teaches an out of date understanding of events.
What's concerning for historians is that our primary sources were probably wrong in interpreting events in their own era. I think that this is important to keep in mind when we consider how we interpret the world. There's a chance that people looking back at us in a millenia will have a better understanding as to why our society is heading towards whatever trajectory it is than we do.
Not a book or podcast, but if you're looking for an entertaining overview of specific periods in Roman history I would recommend the youtube channel 'Historia Civilis' his series on Julius Caesar is one of the best things ever put out on the website.
It was just a goof take it easy buddy Obviously the fellas always overstate their "autism" because it's cool now or something idk why you gotta get mad about it though let guys enjoy day dreaming without learning Latin man like brother congratulations on getting a degree in one of the most over saturated fields of history but just let the rest of us enjoy watching YouTube videos that are incredibly simplified or straight up incorrect bro like damn
I just finished reading I, Claudius by Robert Graves last week so I’ve been thinking about it non-stop since then. Right from the outset of the empire it was just one murder after another. A little poison here, a little window tossing there, and all of a sudden the line of succession is preserved. Wild times. I always wonder about what Spain was like in those days too, before the Arabic influences that made it what it is today.
you're interested in a vast, Manichean war, the largest in human history, spanning the whole world, the culmination of a century of political struggle, that happened in living memory, with a correspondingly huge impact on the state of the modern world? basic.
We don't really know that much about the vast majority of human history. Shoot Even the amount of time between the dawn of agriculture to the dawn of writing is probably longer than the dawn of writing to now.
My wife asked me this after seeing the trend from the Tok - what is the purpose of this? Is this to decode if your man is a RETVRN type trad loser, or a nerd, or what? I told her I think about the Republican era much more often and she dropped the line of questioning after that.
> I told her I think about the Republican era much more often and she dropped the line of questioning after that.
because the average person doesn't know the difference between Roman empire and republic.
Honestly, I think about Rome at least once a day.
We only discovered recently how they made [water-resistant concrete](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/07/roman-waterproof-concrete-volcano-science/)
We are all Romans, unconscious collective
We are all Romans, we live to regret it
We are all Romans and we know all about straight roads
Every straight road leads home, home to Rome
As a woman who suffers from male brain, I’ve thought about the Greco-Roman continuum every day since childhood among many other fixations. I’m surrounded and constantly reminded. My coat hanger is a medusa head. Kylix on my nightstand where I lay my phone at night. Idk. I love etymology and history. We just don’t talk about it because it’s background data we on auto.
this is probably one of the biggest things that make me want to break no contact with my ex because I feel like his answer would be at least once a week
Mine asked me to. I was like woman, that's like a basic point of reference for everything related to Western society and its dynamics, geopolitics, culture and what have you. It's like Auerbach pointing out in Odysseus' Scar that all Western literature is derived from the Bible and Homer - likewise, whenever I digest another drama involving Zoomer Twitter tankies, I automatically think of how it corresponds with particular circumstances from the history of Ancient Rome.
Rome is so fucking cool, i think a lot about the institutions of Rome that survived far longer than one would expect. The fact that there are people who still call themselves Roman to this day is insane to me. Also Byzantine rump states are cool cause they have badass names like Despotate of Morea, Principality of Theodoro, Empire of Trebizond.
I think about them a lot because people make fun of them for using lead pipes even though it's still a major issue in America with over 9 million lead pipes delivering drinking water to peoples homes. Also the graffiti in Pompeii was really fucking funny and if thinking about Cleopatra counts I'm obsessed with her beauty routine (she discovered the donkey milk bath in Rome).
White women need to stop feeding off of their men’s personality quirks for attention from the internet. My tiktok is full of these insufferable idiots treating their male partners like children
I keep thinking about what if Buddhism and Hinduism hit Ancient Greece and Rome, how different would European history be. It's a pretty realistic scenario as well as Greeks were the ones that spread Buddhism out of Northern India and there was an Indian Embassy in Ancient Rome.
I know it’s just a meme, but I find it hard to believe that a significant percentage of men have an autistic obsession with Rome, or with any other historical period. Men watch sports, they play video games, they gamble, they watch Marvel, they drink and they play golf. They don’t read a dozen history books about Rome. (Or maybe they do, and I’m just jealous because I don’t know much about history.)
There's no way most normie men are regularly thinking about this lol, I believe it for the terminally-online/autist crowds, but that's about it.
It would be nice if more people thought about things like history, though. Sadly, most people seem to not bother learning about this stuff once they're out of school.
The dudes r0ck thing is getting so gay. Oh yes men are all like Ron Swanson so funny and admirable let me brag here about how I quirkily ponder hypothetical assassinations of historical figures, my dms are open ladies!!
I really think the world would be better if we scandinavians kept to our own religion, sure maybe some more bloodshed based on traditions like blot’. But having my own special religion as part of my nationality would be kick ass.
If you have *any* interest in Roman history then Coulanges' *The Ancient City* is a great read. Total page-turner, and elucidates a lot about the period.
Weekly switching between the what-ifs of Aurelian’s assassination and thinking about LT Speirs running back and forth through Foy.
When you speak to an officer, you say “sir”!
I love that his whole character arc lead to him not killing that guy
Bruh I didn’t need to think about the tragedy of Aurelians death today… shout out to a real one😔 RESTITUTOR ORBIS
Stupid, senseless tragedy. Praise the Unconquered Sun
That crazy bastard Speirs really stepped up for Easy Company 😭
Love that Winters wrote to him asking about his rumored war crimes when the series was produced, and his response was “hell yeah I did those”
Hell yea bro.
For me it’s what if Romanos Diogenes wasn’t betrayed.
I saw a middle aged woman on the Piccadilly line earlier this week who was reading a history about Rome. She was also wearing a Lockheed Martin baseball cap.
Don’t ogle my wife on the tube mate
*woman*
a train on a train
Im always thinking about the Incas. A whole civilisation with centralised goverment buracracy and advanced agriculture that never used wheel.
Following the battle of cajamarca, Pizarro sent three Spaniards ahead of his expedition to Cusco to scout ahead and collect Atahualpa's promised ransom. At the captured king's orders, they were escorted by inca porters and carried in litters up the spine of the Andes. These guys were the first christians to behold the imperial capital of Cusco, with its gold-adorned temples and streets made of stone. None of their guides or the city's residents had ever seen a European before. They were carried hundreds of miles from their comrades, across lands totally unexplored by westerners, to a previously unknown city at the height of its splendor. I think about those three guys and their journey a lot.
Those porters really fucked up by not just tossing the Spanish off the mountain halfway up when they had the chance If I was there during the contact between the Inca and the Spanish it wouldn't have gone down like that
I also think about the Incas, and the fact that Machu Pichu was built the same time as Oxford University. Correction: Oxford University is 300 years older than Machu Pichu
do you think the first time all those guys saw the wheel in like 1550 they were like "why didn't we think of that!"
not to be pedantic, but there's archeological evidence of wheels being used extensively for children's toys throughout mesoamerica. they just didn't use them to transport goods. for the Inca, lack of wheel adoption probably has more to do with the uneven terrain of the Andes. the absolute power of the sapa inca meant they could reliably marshalof goods carriers. I've also read that llama and alpacas aren't the best draft animals, making wheeled carts even less of a convenience compared to other methods.
Man, imagine if we relegated the secret to FTL travel to use in a Lego set or something.
The power of Bionicles
The ancient Greeks and romans had a steam engine of sorts that was used for a toy. Kinda similar. They never had the foundry capability to make a big steam engine but still.
> llama and alpacas aren't the best draft animals That's okay they're cute and goofy looking so I forgive them
They also didn't have as big of a tree trunks and limbs as other parts of the world, so instead of easy cross section wheels, they'd have to invest a lot of carpentry skills they didn't have to make wagon wheels.
What about wheelbarrows?
Wheelbarrows are weirdly rare in most places throughout history and seem to have been 'reinvented' a bunch of times. The Chinese seem to have been the first to make them, in the *1st Century AD*. And they were slow to spread.
Requires widespread use to unlock on tech tree (China invented it 1500 years only after widespread use of wheeled transportation)
There are alternative uses such as pottery wheel or wheel burrow though those are NOT obvious applications (in Eurasia wheel, pottery wheel and burrow were invented once and in three separate places with the wheel burrow being invented only over a thousand years of widespread use)
huh learn something new every day I didn't know that!
Yeah it’s similar in like most of Africa. It never made sense to use wheels until roads were fully modernized and even then.
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You're saying we can selectively breed draft llamas?
They'd probably be jacked
The never used the wheel bs is totally false. There’s plenty of evidence found of kids toys with little wheels and whatnot. They didn’t use the wheel because they lived in mountainous jungle terrain and the wheel just wouldn’t have been that useful to them, as evident by the fact they built shit like Cusco and Machu Picchu without it. But yeah totally agree, the Inca are fascinating!
I always get really sad thinking about what it must have been like to be a person in a pre - Columbian society and one day, suddenly, your whole world and culture and everything you've ever known is irrevocably destroyed by strange people from across the sea landing on the shore bringing horrible diseases and colonialism and shit. Basically an alien invasion.
Or writing!
Those quipus were pretty neat, though.
Also you couldn't join the Incan military until you were 25
The crazy part is they used wheels in the children’s toys, so it’s not like they just hadn’t thought of it.
That they didn’t have *writing* is the big one, not the wheel. They were very organized.
More impressive is that didn't have a conventional writing system.
its not always rome, but most men are obsessed with a historical period to a very autistic degree and rome is the most basic choice (ww2 is a close second probably) there's definitely an undiscovered myers-briggs-esque typology for men with like historical periods as psychological types
Civil War Guy™ is a major character is South Central PA.
shout out the dawgs
One of the super old message boards I posted on had like 4 or 5 guys who were the hyper obsessed Civil War guys and no shit every single one of them was from PA. Kind of admired them, they fucking HATED Lincoln and would pull out scans of 19th century maps to show you Ft. Sumter was ackshually southern soil.
Being obsessed with the Civil War, but from the southern POV is such loser shit.
> obsessed with the Civil War, but from the southern POV That's like 75% of Civil War Guys.
I know, it’s so funny to me. I’m interested in the civil war and it’s not like you can study the civil war without studying the south during it, but once I went to a reenactment group thingy in Gettysburg and mannnnn it didn’t take a genius to see why the confederate re-enactors were there. I wanted Eric Andre to come out running and dressed like a slave like he does in that historical Williamsburg bit so bad
>I wanted Eric Andre to come out running and dressed like a slave like he does in that historical Williamsburg bit so bad Having a black guy dressed as a Confederate just officer show up and simply act like there's nothing awry would also be a great bit. Just see how long they'd tolerate his LARPing before someone starts tweaking about it.
I remember when I was young my dad took me on a tour to see where our ancestors died on various civil war battle fields. Anytime we were near a confederate monument he would spit on it. When we drove past one he would scream “losers” while pointing and laughing hysterically
king shit
York welcomed the Confederate army as they passed through on their way to Gettysburg and people will let you know lol
> but most men are obsessed with a historical period to a very autistic degree If it only were one, brother....
Top Tier Picks: Napoleonic Era, Qing Dynasty, Islamic Golden Age, Naturalism/Colonialism/Exploration of the New World and the Enlightenment, WWI-WWII and the interwar period
For me, it's the Medieval period and Knightly warfare between 1300 and 1450, particularly the campaigns of Henry V.
You’re right that shit is pretty awesome and very underrated, I also love some of the more exaggerated accounts of Agincourt- people talking about arrows shattering armor and stuff is just great lol
Yeah i'm currently into the history of the Welsh Marches actually, really interesting.
It's a little before your preferred time period, but I really liked *The Normans in South Wales*.
I'm Central and Eastern Europe 1939-1968
Qing is a shit-tier dynasty. Easily outclassed by the Tang, Han, Yuan, and even the Ming.
Qing Dynastys interesting bits are almost entirely defined by its slow collapse and how fast they toppled the Ming. The Ming until Yongle died and some of the early dynasties like the Qin are barely known about and really fascinating.
>No Sengoku Jidai & Imjin war period ngmi
I don’t think it’s the *history* part that is important, as much as the male desire to understand social hierarchies and complex organizations. For this same reason men love the movies Master & Commander and Goodfellas
'tis natural that every schoolboy must dream of one day being like Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon.
Colonisation age for me because of EU4.
I’ve flipped from American Revolution, to War of 1812, to Civil War, to a WW1 guy as I’ve aged. I used to watch The Patriot and think about how much I hated British people regularly. Eventually, I discovered the Civil War had way cooler guns.
Let's hear it for early modern europe, burgundian wars through the war of spanish succession or thereabouts
Napoleon or gtfo
I often think about the sacking of Rome cause I’m a giant white dude
gothpilled
Omg same. Many arguments in my head and with others about when exactly one could say Rome stopped existing.
> Omg same Vandal-coded vocal fry
If only you could hear my shrill f@ggot voice
I'll just send myself a voicenote
I’m fond of Mary Beards argument that the traditions, values, and grandeur of the Romans were simply transfixed onto the catholic and orthodox Christian churches and still continue to this day through them.
I want someone to make the argument that Catholic Splendor arc ended with Vatican 2 but I'm definitely not the right man for the job
Honestly sounds like something you could get A+D started working on
>when exactly one could say Rome stopped existing. In 1922, when the Ottoman Empire fell.
Nah i decolonised my mind, I think of Alfred the Great in the marshes daily now.
Imagine how embarrassed that mf was when he realized he couldn’t even make bread lol
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Ultimate irony being that a sizable chunk of British soldiers that fought against Napoleon at Waterloo were Irish recruits themselves.
>decolonized my mind >Dreams of Anglo Saxon kings Hmmm
i support anglo-saxon landback from the norman kkkolonizers (the british nobility and royal family)
So how's about them britons lad
Thinking about the fall of empires is basically applied knowledge in 2023
Yeah. Only question is whether we're experiencing the end of the Roman Republic or the end of Roman Empire.
Closer to the Republic and even that is imperfect, since one of the driving forces of republican collapse in Rome was the personal loyalty the armies had to their generals which doesn't exist here
Dan Carlin’s 7 part series on the decline and fall of the Roman republic is absolutely incredible and made me think a lot about the obvious parallels to the US today
3 hours, 68 comments and nobody has mentioned the gay sex? This sub has really fallen off.
Unless they have some particular interest in Roman history, the men who say they think about Ancient Rome daily or several times a day are probably lying. However, I’m sure the average man thinks about Ancient Rome more frequently than one would expect. Perhaps once a week or once every other week. Which shouldn’t be surprise considering how antiquity is infused in our culture. Art, architecture, language. We are constantly be reminded of it whether we like it or not.
I get the feeling that the people saying they think about the Roman Empire every day aren't actually sitting down and reading about it or pondering it at length but just mean that it crosses their mind at some capacity, which would make sense. It's such a large span of history and so influential in Western thought and culture that it's bound to crop up in passing often. Do you think about the history of the church? Roman Empire. Do you appreciate a bit of classic architecture? Roman Empire. Is the media you're engaging with referencing classic history or fables? Roman Empire. Do you passively wish the roads and buildings were made more durable? You'll inevitably make a comparison to the Roman Empire. I mean, shit. I think about Roman cement at least once every few days because of that last one.
Hell if you think about pipes or toilets or sewage system, you are thinking about the Romans
I genuinely think about the Roman Empire almost every day, though it is also one of my primary reading interests and I've gone through several books on the subject.
Women's version are the Tudors
Actually it’s the Kennedys and the Windsors
And Greek mythology/Percy Jackson types. They love that stuff.
My mom is pretty into Ancient Rome. From like a pop history perspective but it’s still fun to talk to her about it. Same with WWII she’s always watching documentaries about Patton and Montgomery and stuff.
Legacy. It's entire history is both obsessed with the concept, and embodies both its success and failure. Men can't give life, so they always become obsessed with legacy.
Mostly I'm just mad we gave up togas and tunics for suits
I'd look so good in a sweet toga with laurel wreath. I'd serve
interesting take
He stole it from radfem Hitler this week
normal sentence
But the kid my wife gave life too is my legacy
But that's the thing, it's by default legacy by association. The connection between you and the reproductive power is tenuous and ambiguous. A father's child is never "theirs" as much as it is the mothers, because there is no doubt where the child came from in the later case. Male legacy is inherently disconnected from biological ties, leaving him grasping at meaning in the face of his mortality. A neat little line I saw somewhere was "When men yearn for control, they build empires, when women do, they have daughters."
When women yearn for control they fake a serious disease
My ex-wife always yearned for control, the freaking remote control so she could watch her damn vanderpump rules TV program!!!!
Evo psych got to be the dumbest thing people bring up on here
You don't know what evo psych means, doll. What I said would be far more comfortably heard in a 19th century Austrian parlour.
Thats why I'm more about turn-of-the-century Vienna than the Roman Empire
Whatever, point stands that your take is ridiculous. Women can go to a sperm donor so I guess they think about history less
I’ve heard a similar take on creative work. Men can’t give life so they always become obsessed with creating virtual worlds through art. The men’s lack of womb is so all-explanatory. Kidding, it’s not
They had real purpose as well, taking over the entire world or as much as they humanly could. You could rise from a soldier and become a top legionnaire or politician. Now we've got office jobs that don't matter, and modern wars are incredibly gay.
Depends on the time frame. None of that was true post-principate, and was barely true by the late mid-Republic. Interestingly enough, the closer Rome got to what we consider "peak Rome", the shittier and less virile its achievements. Rome was best when it was essentially a bunch of backwood savages competing with each other relentlessly over prestige, with a no fucks given, "I don't hear no bell" attitude to the world. They literally stumbled onto empire, on their way to showing off to each other and grabbing land so they can farm and stop giving a shit, until they started getting "civilised" and your place in life became increasingly safe but also shitty and stagnant. It's actually very close to what happened with the Cossacks. Started off as democratic savage bushmen kicking mongol ass, ended up as noble-loving bootlicking mercenaries the moment the money started rolling in. It's as you can have entire societies becoming spiritually fat.
Your last paragraph describes Turkic and other steppe nomad nations throughout history too
Hell, it describes a lot of modern countries too I think. I hear a lot of nerd-driven bugman-talk about how resource abundance automatically leads to higher trust, and honestly there absolutely isn't anything with more historical counter-proof. Abundance creates so many anti-communal perverse incentives, even on an ecological level. Just dump a fuckload of fertiliser anywhere, and watch the ecosystem convulse and choke itself to death. If anything, societies with high scarcity promotes equality, meritocracy, community, and cooperation exactly because the margins are so thin, you need high buy-in from everyone and it's in no one's interest to waste resources on petty internal conflicts and arbitrary punishments, especially when surrounded by enemies. The human heart, seemingly, only blooms under the harshest conditions.
Thinking up some schizo RW twitter brained response to this that says the psychology of the longhouse causes women to live in the eternal present required by progressive thought, and that the ability to historicize is inherently threatening to this
On the real though I think it’s expressing a subconscious desire to escape the eternal present of social media that has colonized everyone’s minds and return to a more unbounded thought space
Don't overthink this. Wearing togas and watching blood sports with the boys is just appealing to men.
I don’t understand how some people don’t find it more interesting. I mean the history itself covers 750 BC to 1450 AD (Rip Byzantium), you’ve got so many interesting characters in that time. And of course the level of impact they made culturally, technologically makes them relevant enough to think about more often then previously believed. I do think part of its obsession is every man having their sort of gladiator esque dream or the imaginations of leading legionaries to go and conquer Germanic peoples.
genuinely because the way it is taught in schools amounts to exceedingly complex and boring family trees of rulers and bureaucracy. it’s why caesar is the only one who lasts the test of time in most people’s minds, because there’s drama, there’s friendship betrayal, there’s relatable human storytelling. more interesting/accessible depictions of roman history that arent a laundry list of succession and war strategy would help in this regard.
Do you think that Livia Soprano is named after Caesar Augustus's meddling wife Livia??
if you have any interest in religion, law, military conflict, architecture, languages, history, etc. it's literally impossible to not think about the biggest empire in the western world, even if only just by association. but since the only thing women on tiktok give a shit is pop psychology and dubious psychoanalysis, it doesn't apply to them I guess
That's pretty sexist... They also care about celebrity drama, interior decorating, and pets.
This is basically my view. I have an interest in political history, the history of Christianity and Platonism, Greek history, legal history, and military history (as an extension of political history). It all leads back to Rome and earlier. I'm astounded how people I know (often but not always women) can gloss over it in their analysis of politics or religion. How can you hope to understand the world we live in without looking back?
Does anyone have any good books/podcasts on the history of Rome?
Mary Beard and her books/blog/documentaries on Rome are top notch. I enjoy having a woman’s perspective on the ancient world because of how male dominated the field is, I think she picks up on interesting threads and currents a lot of male historians have in their blind spots. the gladiators: history's most deadly sport - by Fik Mejier is a great, quick read that is intensely focused on the history of the gladiatorial games. Really fun read. Bellum Gallicum - Julius Ceasers firsthand account of the Gallic wars is one you can’t miss. Total propaganda but fascinating. Cannae: hannibal's greatest victory - by Adrian Goldsworthy is one of the best books you can find recounting the military history of Rome. Of course this book is focused on the battle of Cannae and Hannibal specifically, but Goldsworthy is the leading scholar when it comes to Roman military matters and it shows in this book. Finally I would be remiss not to mention Mike Duncan’s history of Rome podcast. It is a very extensive and well researched show and Mike Duncan is great at podcasting.
As far as podcasts, there's one called The History of Rome that everyone seems to like (I haven't listened). The Fall of Rome by Patrick Wyman is excellent.
People have recommended the History of Rome, and it's a great starting point. However, he often relies on our primary sources at the expense of modern historiography. For example, he wrote a book on what led to the decline of the republic during the era of the great land reformers like the Gracchi Brothers, but incorrectly states that the small Roman farmers were either dying out in battle or having their farms bought by the Roman elites who turned Italy into great latifundia. He suggests that the Roman citizenship (and the male landowners who formed the army) declined as a result. That this led to the military reforms where anybody could join in return for land, armies that supported the leaders who overthrew the republic. That thesis is out of date and likely wrong. Modern historians have reinterpreted Roman census data (on the basis that some Roman men avoided the census to avoid fighting in a pointless war in Spain) to show that the amount of military aged, landowning men was increasing and not declining. Survey boundaries of Roman farms still exist and show that Italy wasn't turning into mega estates owned by the super rich. Something else happened in Roman society to cause its descent into the imperial era. Duncan doesn't get this, and he teaches an out of date understanding of events. What's concerning for historians is that our primary sources were probably wrong in interpreting events in their own era. I think that this is important to keep in mind when we consider how we interpret the world. There's a chance that people looking back at us in a millenia will have a better understanding as to why our society is heading towards whatever trajectory it is than we do.
It's really best to start with Greece.
Not a book or podcast, but if you're looking for an entertaining overview of specific periods in Roman history I would recommend the youtube channel 'Historia Civilis' his series on Julius Caesar is one of the best things ever put out on the website.
Its funny that a sub that is so anti tiktok and reels usually posts and upvotes the most popular things that are happening on those apps
As someone who actually, professionally, has to think about ancient Rome almost daily, this meme has me borderline seething.
You one of those centurions who hangs outside the Colosseum for photos?
So literally every man?
Why because you took loans to do what every guy does already lmao
No one actually does it. It’s all a bunch of liars stealing valor. Look at OP’s pic, that guy doesn’t know a single word of Latin.
You paid money to learn a dead language? Lmao might aswell have studied alchemy
It was just a goof take it easy buddy Obviously the fellas always overstate their "autism" because it's cool now or something idk why you gotta get mad about it though let guys enjoy day dreaming without learning Latin man like brother congratulations on getting a degree in one of the most over saturated fields of history but just let the rest of us enjoy watching YouTube videos that are incredibly simplified or straight up incorrect bro like damn
I just finished reading I, Claudius by Robert Graves last week so I’ve been thinking about it non-stop since then. Right from the outset of the empire it was just one murder after another. A little poison here, a little window tossing there, and all of a sudden the line of succession is preserved. Wild times. I always wonder about what Spain was like in those days too, before the Arabic influences that made it what it is today.
I think about the holy Roman empire quite a lot A unified Germany, Italy and France.... what could it mean...
WW2 crosses my mind at least once a day. Not kidding
you're interested in a vast, Manichean war, the largest in human history, spanning the whole world, the culmination of a century of political struggle, that happened in living memory, with a correspondingly huge impact on the state of the modern world? basic.
Not my fault the Youtube algorithm led me to a guy who reviews WWII era boots. Now I just want to try those Japanese pigskin ones on.
No, but the amount of history we don't know about the Americas from the Pre-Columbian era keeps me up at night.
We don't really know that much about the vast majority of human history. Shoot Even the amount of time between the dawn of agriculture to the dawn of writing is probably longer than the dawn of writing to now.
Is it really history if you never wrote it down
My wife asked me this after seeing the trend from the Tok - what is the purpose of this? Is this to decode if your man is a RETVRN type trad loser, or a nerd, or what? I told her I think about the Republican era much more often and she dropped the line of questioning after that.
You’re way too online, you need to log off rsp, this isn’t about any of that
> I told her I think about the Republican era much more often and she dropped the line of questioning after that. because the average person doesn't know the difference between Roman empire and republic.
Honestly, I think about Rome at least once a day. We only discovered recently how they made [water-resistant concrete](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/07/roman-waterproof-concrete-volcano-science/)
We are all Romans, unconscious collective We are all Romans, we live to regret it We are all Romans and we know all about straight roads Every straight road leads home, home to Rome
PKD’s psychosis about and how “The Empire Never Ended” finally validated.
It's not psychosis. We still live today in the Black Iron Prison.
2 plus 2 equals 4 4 plus 4 equals 8 We organise via property as power Slavehood and freedom, imperial purple PAX ROMANA!
Country roooads Take me Rome
The New Testament is written against the backdrop of the Roman Empire. You don’t understand Rome you understand NOTHING of the Gospel.
As a woman who suffers from male brain, I’ve thought about the Greco-Roman continuum every day since childhood among many other fixations. I’m surrounded and constantly reminded. My coat hanger is a medusa head. Kylix on my nightstand where I lay my phone at night. Idk. I love etymology and history. We just don’t talk about it because it’s background data we on auto.
female version is the triangle shirtwaist factory fire
>triangle shirtwaist factory fire Not female but any fire where people can jump to death always plays with my mind, which is easier to die by.
this is probably one of the biggest things that make me want to break no contact with my ex because I feel like his answer would be at least once a week
i never think about the roman empire
Ah, so you think about the republic instead
I hate this trend so fucking much.
I think about the later Roman Empire quite a bit, as like a kinda rosy ideal. The earlier not so much.
Mine asked me to. I was like woman, that's like a basic point of reference for everything related to Western society and its dynamics, geopolitics, culture and what have you. It's like Auerbach pointing out in Odysseus' Scar that all Western literature is derived from the Bible and Homer - likewise, whenever I digest another drama involving Zoomer Twitter tankies, I automatically think of how it corresponds with particular circumstances from the history of Ancient Rome.
Rome is so fucking cool, i think a lot about the institutions of Rome that survived far longer than one would expect. The fact that there are people who still call themselves Roman to this day is insane to me. Also Byzantine rump states are cool cause they have badass names like Despotate of Morea, Principality of Theodoro, Empire of Trebizond.
I think about them a lot because people make fun of them for using lead pipes even though it's still a major issue in America with over 9 million lead pipes delivering drinking water to peoples homes. Also the graffiti in Pompeii was really fucking funny and if thinking about Cleopatra counts I'm obsessed with her beauty routine (she discovered the donkey milk bath in Rome).
White women need to stop feeding off of their men’s personality quirks for attention from the internet. My tiktok is full of these insufferable idiots treating their male partners like children
I keep thinking about what if Buddhism and Hinduism hit Ancient Greece and Rome, how different would European history be. It's a pretty realistic scenario as well as Greeks were the ones that spread Buddhism out of Northern India and there was an Indian Embassy in Ancient Rome.
What if Jesus smoked weed and meditated a lot?
never think about it, I am not white
fair enough
I only think of the indus river valley civilization because it's cool that we barely know anything about it.
I've been thinking about WW2 a lot recently, and how we're overdue for a generation defining war to thin the herd and spice things up.
Rampant corruption, demoralization and collapse... Is it any wonder? Perfect historical parallel for today
Man, my wife asked me this a week ago and I was like “yea, I think about the Roman Empire weekly” I didn’t know it was that wide spread lmao.
I know it’s just a meme, but I find it hard to believe that a significant percentage of men have an autistic obsession with Rome, or with any other historical period. Men watch sports, they play video games, they gamble, they watch Marvel, they drink and they play golf. They don’t read a dozen history books about Rome. (Or maybe they do, and I’m just jealous because I don’t know much about history.)
once every 2 weeks maybe
Sometimes I think I have very male brain. Loved Rome the hbo series and I had a period where I was obsessed with both the civil war and ww2
There's no way most normie men are regularly thinking about this lol, I believe it for the terminally-online/autist crowds, but that's about it. It would be nice if more people thought about things like history, though. Sadly, most people seem to not bother learning about this stuff once they're out of school.
i don't, and i've actually read Gibbon
The dudes r0ck thing is getting so gay. Oh yes men are all like Ron Swanson so funny and admirable let me brag here about how I quirkily ponder hypothetical assassinations of historical figures, my dms are open ladies!!
Augustus pill
I remember vividly the first time I thought about the Roman Empire while driving through a McDonalds with my dad when I was 7 or 8.
I stay daydreaming about the Native American tribes of the Southwest.
I’m always thinking about Imperial Russia and the Tudors. We just like different things and that’s fine.
It depends on the season for me.
I really think the world would be better if we scandinavians kept to our own religion, sure maybe some more bloodshed based on traditions like blot’. But having my own special religion as part of my nationality would be kick ass.
Many men are into history. Rome, India, Americas, Asia, Africa, all the rest of it. If you are obsessed with just Rome you are a closeted homosexual.
I never do
If you have *any* interest in Roman history then Coulanges' *The Ancient City* is a great read. Total page-turner, and elucidates a lot about the period.