Women Are Discovering Their Husbands & Boyfriends Think About The Roman Empire Constantly — & No One Knows Why

There's an old online joke that posits that when men, mainly straight men, reach middle-age they become fixated on one of two things: roasting meats, or World War II. It's just a thing for some reason, it seems.

But it looks like we might need to adjust that list. Because women online have discovered their boyfriends and husbands have another random fixation that a weirdly large amount them all seem to share.

Women are discovering that men think about the Roman Empire constantly — and no one seems to know why.

Of course, everyone has their weird obsessions and fixations. My little brother, for example, has an encyclopedic knowledge of the Chernobyl disaster. For me, I'm an earthquake footage guy — I'll spend hours on YouTube watching earthquake videos, earthquake news coverage, earthquake aftermath. (I don't know, it just scratches some itch in my brain.)

But it's not like my little brother and I share the same fixation, right? Disaster elements aside, Chernobyl and earthquakes have little in common. But according to Swedish content creator @GauisFlavius, a Roman history buff and re-enactor, most men are thinking about the Roman Empire, like... a lot.

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In an Instagram reel, Gaius Flavius posted, "Ladies, many of you do not [realize] how often men think about the Roman Empire. Ask your husband/boyfriend/father/brother, you will be surprised by their answers!" And it turns out he was not lying.

Women online asked their male partners and found that, sure enough, the men in their lives think about the Roman Empire constantly. 

This is downright weird, right? It sounds like just a bunch of clickbait nonsense to get a post to go viral, so imagine tons of women's surprise when, at the urging of Twitter (or X, whatever) user Rev. Kelsey Lewis Vincent, they asked their male partners if they think about Roman history a lot and found a bizarrely high number of them definitely do.

Photo: KelseyMLoo / Twitter

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Vincent posted that she had seen Gaius Flavius' Instagram Reel, so she put his claim to the test. "I asked my husband: 'How often do you think about the Roman Empire?' And without missing a beat he said 'Every day.' YALL! Why!?" Why, indeed!

Several women posted screenshots of text conversations they had with their partners and the answers they got were downright bizarre. Like the Twitter user below, whose partner's answer "left me with more questions."

Photo: latkedelrey / Twitter

Her partner reported that he thinks about the Roman Empire "multiple times a week... like basically any time I think about aqueducts or grain or salt or weird acronyms." (Respectfully, sir, who is out here thinking about aqueducts and grain?)

And lest you think all these scores of men are being baited into these answers with leading questions, think again. One woman did her due diligence by not revealing the context the question, then asking her man if he knew why she was asking it. His response: "not a clue."

Photo: DLind / Twitter

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But as common as this fixation seems to be, nobody seemed to have any idea why so many men think about the Roman Empire constantly. So, I decided to poll my own friends and family, and while I didn't get to the bottom of it (sorry), I did get some surprising responses.

I polled my friends and family to try to get to the bottom of why men think about the Roman Empire constantly, and what I found was pretty surprising.

Obviously, I'm no scientist or historian, but at least as a body of anecdotal evidence, what I found makes this whole thing even weirder. First of all, it's not just straight men who are always thinking about Rome — because I, too, a very gay man, also think about the Roman Empire constantly.

Photo: JohntheCraptist / Twitter

I thought I just liked history or something! (Or, you know, Russell Crowe's arms or whatever.) But after seeing Vincent's tweet I realized I don't think about any other kind of history as often as I think about Rome. It really is constant... and while I roasted aqueduct guy up there, I too think of Rome anytime I go under, say, a freeway overpass, as does the guy in the TikTok below. Why are we like this?!

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The bulk of my close female friends' partners were like, "What? Never. I never think about the Roman Empire," but that's just because they're liars. (Kidding.) But the more responses I got, the more the "no's" turned out to be outliers.

"Just asked Adam and he said 'honestly probably every other day, why?'" one friend responded. Others got whole treatises from their partners. "The Romans... are one of the only thing probably everybody knows about," one woman's husband told her. "If you're talking about corrupt leaders or something, Rome is the first thing you'll go to."

But surely this is just an American thing, right? After all, we are the closest analogue to the Roman Empire the modern world has, and not only our government but Washington D.C. itself are modeled after Rome. So maybe it's just embedded in our brains? 

That's what I assumed, until a New Zealander friend reported back that her British boyfriend also thinks about the Roman Empire "probably every other day."

Photo: Instagram

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And it turns out I'm not the only gay guy out here fixated on Rome — a fellow 'mo reported "Every day! And Greece!" Perhaps most fascinating of all was a trans woman friend who reported she used to think about it all the time, but rarely does anymore post-transition. (I would pay many, many denarii for a scientific study of that phenomenon.)

My own study did reveal, however, that Rome-obsession is not hereditary — my Chernobyl-obsessed little brother? He's a "very rarely... twice a year," according to my sister-in-law.

Photo: Instagram

So, what is the actual reason men think about the Roman Empire constantly?

Perhaps unsurprisingly there doesn't seem to be any hard data. The alt-right is known to have a fixation on Rome and Greece for obvious reasons — that whole worshipping the Alpha Male thing — but nobody in my sample nor on Twitter seems to fit that description.

So, file this under "bizarre phenomena" and cue up "Gladiator," I guess. Are you not entertained?

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John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.