I know this is a joke/meme, but I sincerely think of the Roman Empire a surprising amount of times. I find myself obsessing over how Roman citizens were living just as complex lives as we are today, or about Marcus Aurelius’ life and philosophy, or about how the Republic fell and became a totalitarian state.
I think on Rome fairly often, but it’s usually more often on the republic.
about how the Republic fell and became a totalitarian state.
I was thinking about this literally yesterday, on the nature of Octavian betraying the Republic, and how the Iulii and the Claudii simply kept themselves on power through the whole process. (Both gentes were already powerful in Republican times.) Or how some of the Claudii called themselves “Clodius” instead of “Claudius” for the sake of populism. (“See? I’m from the people! I even speak like a pleb!”)
Well in 5th grade I read Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief and later on every book after that. And there’s still a part of me that thinks I might be a demigod. So Monday, Wednesday, Friday, it’s the Greeks and Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday it’s the Romans. Sunday is a toss up.
Sorry, that’s already my designated day for thinking about Ancient Egypt.
You’d think one of the four days named after Germanic gods (in English, at least) would be for the Norse
I probably close to never think of the Roman Empire if there is no external cue
I think about words and their etymology a lot. Of course many words have their origin in Latin. And then I am amazed how they used kind of the the same word ~2k years ago.
And then I am amazed how they used kind of the the same word ~2k years ago.
This sort of borrowing tends to get crazy in the Romance languages. Because often the Latin word did survive, but underwent change, then someone re-borrowed the word from Latin and now it’s living side-to-side with its ancestor. …except that people in the Middle Ages were already doing this, so the reborrowed word might evolve, and someone might reborrow a third version of the word, recursively.
In English there’s also the case of words being borrowed from Latin, except that those words have a native Germanic cognate, like verb vs. word.
I have no idea when the last time I thought about Rome period, let alone in any sort of in-depth way. I’ve learned a bit in school and a few years ago went through a YouTube deep dive history phase but Rome was a topic just as much as any other culture.
So exceptions aside… I never think about Rome?
