There’s a Twitter meme on how men constantly think about the Roman Empire. Some feminist friends objected that women think about Rome a lot too. To settle the matter, I included a question about this on this year’s ACX survey, “Have you thought about the Roman Empire in the past 24 hours?” (the Byzantine Empire also counted). Here are responses from 607 cis women and 4,925 cis men:
38% of women, vs. 43% of men, had thought about Rome in the past day - pretty equal!
Other things I noticed about demographics of respondents:
India was the only non-western country where I got a good sample; it had modestly less Roman interest, at 24% of 38 responses.
More religious people were more likely to think about Rome; numbers ranged from 37% of atheists to 59% of committed believers. Christians were a bit more likely than members of other religions, but there was no difference between Catholics and Protestants.
Although there was little difference between left, center, and moderate right, the far right thought about Rome much more than anyone else. Of 50 people who rated themselves 10/10 on a 10 point conservatism scale, 73% had thought about Rome recently.
There was a slight tendency for more educated people to think of Rome less, from 47% of community college grads to 41% of four-year college grads to 39% of PhDs. Maybe this is because more educated people are less religious and less conservative?
The most Roman profession was law, at 52%
These numbers come from ACX readers. How representative are they of the general population? I looked at the least-ACX-readerish ACX readers; those who had only been reading the blog for fewer than six months. In this group, the male average dropped from 43% to 37%. So there might be some indication that the population average is lower. But also, ACX selects against religiosity and conservatism, both of which were associated with higher Roman awareness, so it could go either way.
When people said they’d thought about Rome in the past day, I asked them an additional question about the context. Here were some representative and/or interesting answers, slightly edited for readability:
Reviewing Kindle highlights and came across some from Marcus Aurelius.
Was curious about what pre-early modern wagons were like, and Roman roads came up in that context.
Political situation today seemed like it resembled the early stages of the crisis of the third century.
In car with friends on a road trip, we were discussing predicting eclipses with ancient technology. The Roman empire came up as a benchmark for an advanced society in antiquity, and we discussed their time keeping methods.
Was in Peru, compared Inca empire to Romans.
This meme, shared IIRC by Tanner Greer or Bret Devereaux.
I have an Anki deck for all random things that I learn and don't want to forget and while reviewing yesterday there was a question about the Battle of Corinth and another about the first Roman emperor who claimed divinity.
I was thinking about Sulla.
I was discussing how many 4 year olds I could take in a fight and brought up Roman war tactics.
I'm reading some post-Roman-Empire historical fiction by Ken Follett, set in what's now the UK c. 1000 C.E., and naturally legacy of the Roman Empire comes up (e.g. Latin, the churches).
I am writing a monarch butterfly workbook for elementary schoolers, and Asclepius is the genus name for milkweed. I researched some of the mythology to include in the workbook.
There is a marker of an old Roman road near my place.
I listen to media about history daily. Was reading an article today about the eastern Romans negotiations with the Huns.
Mausoleum of Galla Placidia blue ceiling mosaics. (Take a look!) It's one of my screen wallpapers. Also, a lot of history interest in our house.
I read Bret Devereaux's blog, which is usually what gets me thinking about it.
Reading the ACOUP blog.
Reading A Collection Of Unmitigated Pedantry, of course.
Reading Bret Devereaux's blogpost 'On Roman Values' (I'm a stalwart ACOUP reader)
The most recent was probably when an email I was reading mentioned Elagabalus in a piece about Trans Day of Visibility.
I was thinking about how the Romans would have dealt with the Israel/Palestine situation.
Described aspect of Byzantine military doctrine to my girlfriend.
Usually in a negative light. Whenever I see cruelty or misery, I think about visiting the Coliseum and wonder if I am participating in a social convention that will later be viewed as grossly inhumane. Whenever I see most media, I think "bread and circuses". Whenever I see tomatoes, I think about how important tomatoes are for so many things, and usually that makes me think of a horrible video I saw where someone tried to recreate ancient Roman food and it looked awful. Last weekend, I was thinking about how sad it must have been to be a Vestal Virgin and I wondered if they were lonely, but then I thought it was probably better than most marriage at that time. During my foreign language classes, I think about all the stupid vowels and pointless letters like "u" and "v" in Romance languages and how much I hate them. This past week I was getting coffee and I thought about how the Romans ruined the lore of Ares by turning him into Mars and giving him main character syndrome. Mostly I think about how I don't get the hype around ancient Rome, and yet there are many similarities to our modern problems, which makes me mad, because I want to live in a society that is not like ancient Rome at all and I'm salty about it. But not as salty as ancient Roman food.
As an Italian, if I don't think about the greatest empire, at least once every 24 hours the ghost of Heliogabalus visits me.
Thinking of ways to prevent the descent into civil war in the late Republic, If I had a time machine
I was thinking about how Nero castrated and married a slave boy. I don't know why this thought came up.
Considering what I'd say to somebody who is completely in favour of current governmental restrictions of a kind that I imagine might have been relevant during Julius Caesar's rise to dictatorial power.
Thinking the phrase “this is my roman empire” about something else that is not the roman empire
Playing Crusader Kings 3.
Playing Age of Empires 2.
I'm an Orthodox Jew, so I was reflecting on the symbolic Roman Edom, which was envisioned as the eternal spiritual enemy of the Jewish people in the Gemara & Midrash.
Saw an article about Roman concrete.
Learned about Mark Zuckerberg's kids names.
Talking about a hypothetical patrician woman - gladiator romance smut novel.
Regularly get recommended YouTube videos about the Roman Empire (because I usually watch them when recommended)
Read the wiki about interior design, there was a picture of Roman recliners.
Connecting the problem of finding a successor CEO (or other private sector leader) to naming a successor emperor.
A friend and I joke about this a lot and he keeps track of the last time he thought of the Roman Empire in his discord bio. I noticed it when I opened his bio earlier today.
Optimal currency area
Listening to the Gladiator sound track while stripping wallpaper.
I don't know if this counts, but I compared my spouse to Herakles last evening.
Listening to a podcast about Mormonism, and the podcaster mentioned that at least one early Mormon leader claimed lack of polygamy is what caused the Roman Empire to fall.
Conversation about global policemen with my partner.
I was considering the similarity of Constantinople's Blues and Greens to our current political circus.
I was walking my dog and passed a place where I stood two years ago and googled to figure out why Emperor Nikephorous II Phokas had the nickname “the Pale Death of the Saracens,” which I had read somewhere. As I walked by yesterday, I remembered doing that.
Randomly thought about the meme about men thinking about the Roman empire.
The most common answers were blogs and podcasts (especially ACOUP), religion, stumbling across books, and memes. I couldn’t tell an obvious difference in contexts between genders.
So maybe this is a victory for feminism. But obviously the real winner is Rome. Imagine being so glorious that, 500 - 1500 years later, almost half of people still think about you daily, even on continents you never discovered.
Hail Caesar!
[As always, you can try to replicate my work using the publicly available ACX Survey Results. If you get slightly different answers than I did, it’s because I’m using the full dataset which includes a few people who didn’t want their answers publicly released. If you get very different answers than I did, it’s because I made a mistake, and you should tell me.]
