Are you not entertained? Italian entertainers dressed as gladiators and legionnaires in Rome. Photo / Getty Images
Are you not entertained? Italian entertainers dressed as gladiators and legionnaires in Rome. Photo / Getty Images
Friends, Romans, countrymen: “How often do you think about the Roman Empire?”
It’s a TikTok trend that, like Rome’s Eternal City itself, appears to have sprung up from the wilds of social media - raised by wolves.
The viral challenge urges social media users to ask their other halves how often they think about the ancient civilisation. According to the internet, the answer is a lot.
The hashtag #romanempire has been associated 1.3 billion posts on TikTok alone (that’s 1300000 Ms in old numerals!).
It didn’t take long for airlines to try to convert the inexplicable interest in the Pax Romanus airlines to ‘thru pax’.
Last week, United Airlines jumped on the chariot, offering return fares to Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino airport, in honour of the bizarre travel trend “making it easier for ponderers to experience the destination for themselves”.
On the ground in Italy, Rome and its Latin surrounds have seen a bumper summer for visitors. The Italian Agenzia Nazionale Del Tourismo reported two million airport arrivals this summer. Despite a blistering heatwave, tourism increased year-on-year by 86 per cent, with visitors from Australia and New Zealand accounting as the fifth largest contingent (4.1 per cent of arrivals).
It seems many were following in the sandal steps of Russel Crowe visiting the Colosseum, or “Flavian Amphitheatre”. The film star from the Antipodes was in town this year filming a sequel to the 2000 hit Gladiator.
Romans are getting their vengeance, in this life and the next: Russell Crowe in a scene from the film 'Gladiator', 2000. Photo / Getty
Though, until now, it is one that has had slightly nerdy undertones. The Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg - Nerdus Supremus - is said to have a soft spot for Augustus Caesar, and named his daughter after the Roman general.
One might be slightly suspicious of anyone who heaps praise too highly on a blood-soaked empire in which the national sport was watching slaves fight to the death, feasting would end in vomiting and best friends might draw daggers the moment your back was turned. It’s an interest that you’d expect of a Marvel supervillain, not your average Joe publicum.
But thanks to social media, the interest has gone mainstream. For better or worse.
As historian Tom Holland explains in his book Pax: War and Peace in Rome’s Golden Age, being interested in Romans doesn’t mean condoning Rome.
“They are a people who command our fascination above all by virtue of being different, unnervingly compellingly different,” he concludes.
But what did the Romans ever do for us? Besides bread and the circus?
Which country thinks most about the Roman Empire?
How often we actually think about the Roman Empire depends on where you are.
New Zealand is the fifth-most Rome-obsessed nation according to Google search trends. In the English-speaking world, only Ireland, Australia and the US care more about toga-clad emperors.
Perhaps haunted by the ghosts of a different voracious empire, the Anglosphere scores highly, although the United Kingdom ranks just eighth, with far more interest coming out of Northern Europe, the Philippines and even the UAE.
The epicentre of the new Rome obsession - Impeditus Maximus - is Iceland.
Curiously Italy, Spain and France - the old seat of the Latinate world - don’t give a fig. Italy registers as 37th out of 55 search areas for its interest.
Japan, meanwhile, hardly ever thinks about the Roman Empire.
