How Often Do You Think About The Roman Empire?

Why Simply Everybody Should Be Thinking About the Roman Empire

C. N. Vujanovic

EVERY DAY, MULTIPLE TIMES A DAY.

Ask your friends ‘how often do you think of the Roman Empire’, but I challenge you to go one step further. Ask your friends why they think of the Roman Empire. I believe the answer to that question reveals the importance and profound impact of the Ancient World and Classics by extension. So why does old stuff matter? Why should I care about Ancient Rome or Greece? And what even is ‘Classics’?

Classics is the study of the culture of Ancient Greece, and Rome which includes their literature, languages, history, politics, and philosophy. Now that might sound like a lot of big words tied together but really all it means is that Classics is a very broad area of study that includes what we would refer to as ‘The Humanities’. 

So, does what happened over 2,000 years matter to you and I? Yes, it does matter because it profoundly impacts us to this day, having a foundational influence on our society. 

One example of the Classical world’s foundational influence on society is the birth of democracy. Whatever you think of democracy, it means you have a say in the future of Australia just like millions of Australians did a week ago in the referendum. The word democracy in fact comes from the Greek word ‘demos’, meaning people, and ‘kratia’, meaning rule. It is the system by which the ‘people rule’. Moreover, from the Classics we can ask ‘how democracy should function’ by looking at case studies in the past, seeing how they went well or wrong and making appropriate changes to our own systems of governance. 

Moreover, the impact and importance of the Classics is highlighted in demonstrating our differences, but also our similarities. Greek and Roman tragedy looked at the evil and suffering in the world and asked whether or not God/s exists. Virgil’s Aeneid looked at the expansion of Rome and asked whether imperialism can be justified. Plato’s Republic looked at the many perspectives of the Athenians and asked whether or not there is objective good and bad. And Pythagoras looked at the sides of a triangle and asked whether a rule underlies it (well actually it turns out he did not create the Pythagorean formula – he just said he did). The point being we are asking the same questions today when we see suffering, we are asking the same questions about colonialism, and we are asking so many other questions that the Romans and Greeks asked.

So, if we can go back and look at what the Romans said about imperialism, and how the Greeks dealt with death, maybe it can help us deal with our own problems. 

But that’s not all! Classics is just super interesting. It turns out that Boris Johnson (past UK Prime Minister), J.K. Rowling, Chris Martin (Coldplay), C.S. Lewis, Tom Hiddleston (the guy who plays Loki) and many more, all studied Classics! The Percy Jackson series is based on Classical mythology. One of Queen’s most famous songs, ‘Another One Bites the Dust’, which is now an idiom to us, actually derives from Homer’s Iliad (an epic about the Trojan War), where dying men ‘bite the dust’. I could go on, but studying and learning about Classics is like unlocking a new DLC that enables you to see the world in a whole different light.

How many times do I think about the Roman empire a day? Too many. The reason I think about the Roman empire every day is because it has provided the foundation for modern thought and it’s just super cool.