Do You Think About Ancient Rome Every Day? Then Browse a Wealth of Videos, Maps & Photos That Explore the Roman Empire

This month, more than a few Tik­Tok-using women have asked the men in their lives how often they think about the Roman Empire. And to the aston­ish­ment of these women, more than a few of these men have respond­ed that they think about it on a dai­ly basis, or even more often than that. By now, this par­tic­u­lar man­i­fes­ta­tion of mutu­al incom­pre­hen­sion between the sex­es has swept sev­er­al social-media plat­forms, and accord­ing to reportage in the New York Times and Wash­ing­ton Post, it actu­al­ly began on Insta­gram. “Ladies, many of you do not real­ize how often men think about the Roman Empire,” post­ed a Swedish ancient-Rome reen­ac­tor who calls him­self Gaius Flav­ius. “Ask your husband/boyfriend/father/brother — you will be sur­prised by their answers!”

Even if you’re not a hus­band, boyfriend, father, or broth­er, you may count your­self among these Rome-enrap­tured men. You may think about Rome prac­ti­cal­ly all day, every day, and not be a man at all. Or per­haps you’re one of the women who, hith­er­to unaware of the appar­ent­ly wide­spread Roman intel­lec­tu­al pro­cliv­i­ties among the oppo­site sex, have begun to feel a twinge of curios­i­ty about the sub­ject.

If so, you could do worse than start your his­tor­i­cal jour­ney to antiq­ui­ty’s might­i­est empire — the ances­tor of today’s West­ern civ­i­liza­tion — with this twen­ty-minute primer nar­rat­ed by Suc­ces­sion’s Bri­an Cox. Con­sid­er also accom­pa­ny­ing it with this ani­mat­ed map visu­al­iz­ing both the Roman Empire’s rise to cov­er half the known world and its sub­se­quent fall — or this ver­sion with a scrolling time­line of the face of every emper­or.

The word “Rome” com­mon­ly stands for the Roman Empire, but, of course, it can also refer to the great cap­i­tal itself. Here on Open Cul­ture, we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured vir­tu­al tours and fly­overs, as well as a phys­i­cal scale mod­el, of the ancient city of Rome at its peak. You can also watch a re-cre­ation of the destruc­tion of Pom­peii, whose ash-pre­served ruins have taught us a great deal about life in the Roman Empire. That empire could hard­ly have extend­ed as far as it did with­out the tech­no­log­i­cal mar­vel of Roman roads, which you can learn about through videos on their con­struc­tion, sub­way-style maps, and even a trip-plan­ning web appli­ca­tion. Even the con­crete used to build those roads — not to men­tion the Roman Empire’s for­mi­da­ble aque­ducts — has been an object of fas­ci­na­tion, not least because the secret of their dura­bil­i­ty has only recent­ly come to light.

If Rome was about noth­ing but con­quer­ing emper­ors and sprawl­ing infra­struc­ture, it would be easy to explain its being a pre­dom­i­nant­ly male inter­est. But we’ve also fea­tured numer­ous oth­er aspects of its cul­ture, from the sound of Roman music and the Latin lan­guage to the col­ors of its stat­ues. Like all human beings, ancient Romans ate food — whether by fol­low­ing recipes at home or going out to “snack bars” — and wore shoes (and san­dals, alas, with socks). Our own fas­ci­na­tion with its civ­i­liza­tion has its own his­tor­i­cal roots, as under­scored by these nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry pho­tographs of Roman ruins. Nor does that fas­ci­na­tion know cul­tur­al bound­aries. I live in Korea, and recent­ly a man told me about his younger days as a sol­dier in KATUSA, the Kore­an Aug­men­ta­tion to the Unit­ed States Army. Why did he enlist in that par­tic­u­lar pro­gram? “I want­ed to know what it would be like to serve the mod­ern Roman Empire.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Most Dis­tant Places Vis­it­ed by the Romans: Africa, Scan­di­navia, Chi­na, India, Ara­bia & Oth­er Far-Flung Lands

When Iggy Pop Pub­lished an Essay, “Cae­sar Lives,” in an Aca­d­e­m­ic Jour­nal about His Love for Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1995)

The Ups & Downs of Ancient Rome’s Economy–All 1,900 Years of It–Get Doc­u­ment­ed by Pol­lu­tion Traces Found in Greenland’s Ice

The Splen­did Book Design of the 1946 Edi­tion of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

11-Year-Old Mar­tin Scors­ese Draws Sto­ry­boards for His Imag­ined Roman Epic Film, The Eter­nal City

What Life Was Like for Teenagers in Ancient Rome: Get a Glimpse from a TED-ED Ani­ma­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.