Every once in a while, social media yields genuine psychological insights.
As evidenced by a recent TikTok trend, many women have learned, to their astonishment, that the men in their lives spend a good deal of time thinking about the Roman Empire.
Theories abound as to why the defunct empire still fascinates men. Three basic reasons seem most convincing.
Before exploring those reasons, however, it is worth noting that women have driven this social media phenomenon.
According to USA Today, TikTok videos accompanied by the hashtag #Roman Empire have garnered more than 1.2 billion views.
Each relevant video featured a woman asking the man in her life how often they think about the Roman Empire. The responses, often from husbands or boyfriends, left the women stunned.
Thus, the phenomenon originated in women wanting to know what their men think and why. The fact that women want to know those things about men who are important to them should surprise no one who has lived in the world.
Nor should it cause surprise that men and women often think about different things, though apparently readers needed reminding.
Do you think about the Roman Empire on a regular basis?
Yes: 46% (6 Votes)
No: 54% (7 Votes)
“There are actually some ways that men and women differ on psychological traits,” marriage and family therapist Erik Anderson told USA Today.
Of course there are. Women and men know this very well, and only silly or destructive cultural pressures would prevent them from saying so.
A heartening feeling accompanies the realization that women, despite those cultural pressures, still ask why men think as they do.
Thus, here are three possible explanations for why men think about the Roman Empire.
First, Rome conjures images of very masculine pastimes, such as building, fighting and conquering.
Amy Briggs, editor-in-chief of National Geographic History Magazine, shared a number of relevant insights with Fox News.
Men love things. They enjoy learning why things work the way they do and how structures came to be. In this sense, Rome tickles their fancy.
“There are so many Roman feats that still resonate, I think because there are so many we can still see and interact with — aqueducts, roads, monuments, temples, theaters and stadiums, works of art, literature,” Briggs said.
“This isn’t some lost city or vanished people,” she added. “The remnants of this culture are everywhere waiting to be devoured.”
Men love that. They also love the sort of combat that allows them to prove themselves.
“Because I’m big into martial arts,” Adam Woolard told his TikToking fiancee and former “Bachelorette” Hannah Brown. “Every time I fight people, I think about walking into the Coliseum.”
“Men, I think, to our core, we’re warriors,” Woolard added. “We have to be ready for battle at all times and the Roman Empire is all about battle. It’s common sense.”
It does indeed make perfect sense.
Second, the Roman Empire attracts men who feel demoralized in modern society.
Ronald Levant, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Akron, gave this reason special emphasis.
“What it reveals is there’s an intense interest in the question, ‘What is a man, and what should a man be?’ I think this is really probably the central thing that this is getting at,” Levant told USA Today. “What it does reflect is that what it means to be a man today looms as a very large question for a lot of men, particularly young men.”
If men feel confused about such questions, no doubt the attitudes of some hostile women contribute to the confusion.
“Girls, we’re always talking about like reproductive rights and political activism and ‘how’s your family?’ And guys just want to, like, Google the population of Minneapolis,” comedian Mary Beth Barone said.
“That’s what happens when you have all your rights. When you have all your rights, you wake up and you’re just like ‘Oh, what do I do today?’”
A more truthful perspective came from one TikTok user, who offered the female equivalent of men dwelling on ancient Rome.
“Maybe it’s fear about our own murder, maybe it’s about how other people were murdered … but 100 percent, the answer is murder,” she wrote.
Many women do seem to have an intense curiosity about forensic analysis and murder-related details. Men might enjoy murder mysteries as mysteries, but on the whole, we take no special interest in the murder element.
In any case, such comments merely highlight the natural psychological differences between the two sexes.
On the question of male demoralization and thinking about Rome, Michael Knowles of The Daily Wire had a different take.
“The answer seems rather obvious to me: The Roman Empire was the last time we had a unity of all of Western civilization. A perfect unity of it,” Knowles said.
That sort of unity contrasts with how people feel nowadays.
“We are all so fragile and now we are so extraordinarily fragmented. That is why people make these comparisons to the fall of Rome — because they know that was a travesty” Knowles added.
Knowles’ observation makes for a useful segue into the third and final reason men think about Rome: The empire fell.
Men dwell on mortality, not only their own, but that of human systems. Many men can fix things, but what goes so wrong that a civilization cannot be fixed?
Here again, Briggs offered a compelling insight. The American Founders, she told Fox News, were “obsessed” with Rome.
“They adopted Roman aliases when writing their 18th-century pamphlets and op-eds,” she said.
Furthermore, they “obsessively worried about being a parallel to the licentious Roman Empire.”
Briggs nailed it.
Modern Americans can scarcely imagine the seriousness with which men like Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison contemplated societal decay.
By the time they created the United States, they already had begun thinking about how their creation might decline.
When they thought about such things, their thoughts naturally turned to Rome.
In short, Rome’s decline began when it ceased being a republic and succumbed to imperial temptation.
The Founders believed that as the Roman Empire grew in power and more wealth flowed into the city from subjugated regions, Romans became addicted to luxury.
In the parlance of the 18th century, empire made Romans “effeminate.” Ironically, military conquests eroded Romans’ manly virtues.
Thus, the aforementioned Founders insisted on a small military establishment, preferably a militia-based system.
Likewise, to avoid dangerous concentrations of wealth and power, they built the U.S. national capital far from urban centers. Swampy Washington, D.C., remained an undesirable destination for more than a century.
Large cities bred every vice. To stave off inevitable social decay, therefore, they envisioned a republic of small farmers. Every citizen should own land. When they moved westward, they should do so for that reason.
The Founders learned all these lessons from the Roman Empire.
Small wonder American men still think about it.
