Thinking About the Roman Empire

 A piece in the business section of Sunday's New York Times mentioned in passing that social media had shown this year that men spend a lot of time thinking about the Roman Empire. I had no idea what this meant. Our son, home for Christmas, explained that there was a Tik-Tok meme or fad in which women would ask men how often they thought about the Roman Empire. I must have looked puzzled, for he then asked me how often I do.

Quite a bit, it seems. He is in part to blame, for he gave me a copy of Adrian Goldsworthy's Rome and Persia for my birthday this fall: the Rome of the title is almost entirely the empire, for the republic had only a few years left when Rome and the Parthians first confronted each other. And then I did pick up a volume of Tacitus to look something up the other week. Also I have been reading Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, which intermittently involves emperors pagan and Christian, Gothic invasions, and so on.

 I wonder whether this is simply an unusual stretch of preoccupation. But I can't observe myself not thinking of the Roman Empire, can I? And I wonder how many men, who hadn't thought about the Roman Empire since high school history class, found it impossible to avoid such thoughts after they were asked.