Try Not To Think About The Roman Empire

Preoccupation? That's the thing you think about before work.

There’s a trend on Tiktok right now of women asking the men in their lives how often they think about the Roman Empire and the men answering something like “literally sixteen times per hour, in fact I’m pondering the abdication of Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus right now and I’d like to get back to it,” and then they both do a cute little shuffle dance. Like all Tiktok trends, this is just three or four people having an authentic experience, another dozen jumping on a fun meme, and then the entire media industrial complex desperately pumping a few more drops of content out of it. But I need to pump a few drops of content out of the internet today so stay with me for a minute here.

Because I don’t think I’ve ever thought about the Roman Empire, unprompted? Like if there’s a Rome-themed TV show on, sure, naturally. I’ve sat through my share of history classes, both about the ancient world and about the ancient world’s philosophical influence on the modern world. I took Latin for a year in seventh grade, and I’m not gonna say my Latin teacher was old, but she was a native Latin speaker so it was a really enriching cultural experience. It’s not that I’m unaware of the Roman Empire. But it isn’t something I ever just randomly think about.

I started spiraling last night though when I asked myself: “what do I think about all the time” and I couldn’t come up with anything. Without external input, I feel like most of the time my brain is just playing an endless loop of the riff from Seven Nation Army.

But this morning, to my great relief, I finally realized what I think about every day, and it’s this: