Can't Stop Thinking about the Roman Empire...

"You ever hear of Masada? For two years 900 jews held their own against 15,000 Romans.  They choose death over enslavement.  The Romans? Where are they now?

"You're looking at them asshole..."  - The Sopranos (1999)

So, this TikTok phenomenon of Ask Your Man how often he Thinks about the Roman Empire is super irritating...

Now, I know in Internet time I'm very late to this "issue".  But, the Roman Empire isn't going anywhere...

I guess part of this is the feeling I want to have that I was into Rome before it was cool (kind of like the phenomenon of liking a band before they were big) but, of course that's not in anyway reality.

The Roman Empire has been forefront in the minds of Europeans since Odoacer was named Rex of Italiae in 476.  And of course, Charlemagne thought of nothing but the Romena Empire before and after his coronation as Emperor in 800.  William Shakespeare (if you believe Shaxkspere wrote Shakespear) wrote 4 plays about "The Roman Empire", 

And Edward Gibbon's 6 volume Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is as old as the United States.

There have also been famous novels turned into films or series, such as Quo Vadis by Polish Nobel Laureate Henryk Sienkiewicz and Robert Graves' I, Claudius and Claudius the God.

And then there is The Film Industry, in Hollywood and abroad, which has been making films and TV series about Rome and the Roman Empire for over 100 years.  Certainly many of them are biblical in nature, Ben-Hur or The Robe starring Vic Mature come to mind.  Of course, modern revamped interest in Rome writ large probably stems from the Russell Crowe/Ridley Scott film Gladiator in 2000.

New Speaker Mike Johnson can't stop thinking about all the Gay Sex those virile muscular Roman sword swishing gladiators were engaged in.  But, it seems that the current fascination with "Rome" per se is this toxic masculinity nonsense associated with this Hard Times paradigm.

And this whole stupid Hard Times meme featuring a silhouetted faux hoplite is nothing more than a dumbed-down bastardization of the Polybius cycle of government.  and reminds me of all the stupid incels and men going their own way posting I Studied the Blade memes and We Hunted the Mammoth rhetoric.

I guess Chuck Palahniuk was 20 years too early with Fight Club...