Because apparently this is a thing according to social media.
- Daily
- Weekly
- Monthly
- Never unless I’m watching a movie about it or something.
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Scientific studies have shown that men think about the Roman Empire about once every 7 seconds (or was that something else?)
I was literally reading a Wikipedia article on an ancient Rome-related subject within the last five minutes, although I answered ‘Weekly’.
Somewhere between monthly & never. I read a lot about politics and international relations, and of course the Romans were big in that stuff in their era. So their examples cast a long shadow over history.
Outside of that the main context where I think of the Roman Empire is a Steve Martin sketch where he is playing a Roman Centurion. Where his assistant utters the memorable line “Perhaps they mean to vex us.” To which Centurion Martin responds casually “Have them put to death.”
So whenever I encounter someone vexing me, that skit and tangentially the real Roman Empire come to mind. Slow line at the grocery store? Pettifogging bureacracy at the rental office? “Perhaps they mean to vex us.” “Have them put to death.”
Try it; you’ll find it’s a great stress reliever. 
I need an Other choice. Earlier this year I read Tom Holland’s two big books on the Roman Republic (Rubicon) and Roman Empire (Dynasty). So for a while I was comparing everything else to Rome. Lately, though, not so much.
“Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?”
I live nearly on top of a Roman aqueduct and every time I dig a hole in my garden I might find something. So pretty much daily
Yeah, definitely. I am on old ex-history major with a few shelves of books on Roman and Roman-adjacent history. But it’s not like I think about that topic all the time (right now I’m back into Henry III of England). I might go quite awhile before thinking about the Roman state per se, but then when I do I might be concentrating on it for a fair bit. I know of no way to even half-accurately average that out.
This. Some thread today mentioned the Life of Brian, something like that or a movie might make me think about it briefly. Possibly most often when I look into the history of machines because the Roman Empire is often cited as a timestamp for the existence or development of some technology in the past. Turns out the Italians and the Chinese invented everything.
The last time I thought about the Roman Empire was a few months ago when I wanted to think up some music soundtrack for it. Other than that, no.
This report is based on a misunderstanding. The research actually showed that men’s thoughts are frequently roaming.
I think about it sometimes to reflect on something Christopher Hitchens once wrote. The story is he was talking to a high-ranking US military officer about Vietnam and said, “But we don’t want a Carthaginian peace!” To which the officer replied, “Well, I don’t think we’ve had much of a problem with the Carthaginians since then.” Hitchens admitted he was startled, and it was some time later, in a Treppenwitz or l’esprit de l’escalier moment he observed that “But we’ve sure had our problems with the Romans!”
Mind you, at a meeting yesterday, the technical stuff didn’t work, and someone said, “I hate living at the end of empire–the aqueducts don’t work, nothing!”
I’ll go weekly because of going to church. I do read a lot of history and European medieval history has been my focus for 2023 so the Roman Empire does factor in.
If you count all the times I come up with some Latin-sounding phrase as “thinking” about Rome, then maybe once a month.
I’ve been binge watching Time Team on You Tube. They dig up Roman stuff all the time.
A paraphrase of a line from Starship Troopers. Hmmm.
Several times a month, I go to Wikipedia. For every day of the year, they have a page with lists of famous peoples’ births, famous peoples’ deaths, and famous events that happened on that date. There is often something on that page from ancient Rome.
Here is the page for today. Nothing from the western Empire, but one event from the Byzantine Empire.
I was looking for fermented fish sauce in the shops this week because I wanted to know what garum, which was hugely popular in ancient Rome, tasted like.
Let’s say weekly. As a Classics graduate, Ancient Rome is very much on my mind.
Basically never.
I have to admit, everything about the Roman Empire occupies the same mental category for me as works of fiction. It doesn’t feel real to me. And it has similarities with fiction that I don’t much care about.
Probably a great deal of this is due to the connection with Christianity. It presents a history which obviously is almost entirely fabricated. So the rest of it ends up with a kind of guilt by association.