Why We’re Still Fascinated by the Romans – and What That Says About Us

It was a TikTok video that made me laugh – and then think.

A woman turns to her partner and casually asks: “How often do you actually think about the Roman Empire?” The man doesn’t hesitate for a second: “Daily. At least.” She stares at him. He then proceeds to explain, with complete sincerity, why Roman sewage systems were a masterpiece of engineering.

What started as a harmless TikTok joke in 2023 became a global phenomenon within weeks. Millions of people asked their partners, fathers, brothers. The result was startlingly consistent: men apparently think about the Roman Empire with astonishing frequency. Daily. Sometimes several times a day.

And me? I write books about it. So I suppose I don’t count.

We Can’t Stop

Just look at what the entertainment industry has served us in recent years: Gladiator II by Ridley Scott grossed over $460 million worldwide in 2024 – despite a budget of over $300 million and mixed reviews. Those About to Die with Anthony Hopkins kept Amazon Prime viewers glued to the colossal Rome of 79 AD. And Netflix? Is releasing a new Asterix series in 2025. Again. Because they know it works.

From children’s books to prestige TV, from video games to historical novels – the Roman Empire is everywhere. And it won’t go away. It hasn’t for over 2,000 years.

Why, exactly?

The Convenient Explanation – and the Real One

The convenient explanation is: the spectacle. Gladiators, battles, intrigue, excess. The Roman Empire was loud, bloody, and megalomaniacal – of course that makes great entertainment.

But that’s not enough of an explanation. The Vikings were loud and bloody too. The Middle Ages give us dragons and castles. The Ottoman Empire spanned three continents. And yet we keep returning to the Romans, as if there’s something there we haven’t quite figured out yet.

The historian Mary Beard once put it this way: ancient Rome is “a kind of safe space for certain fantasies” – a mirror in which we can examine ourselves without being directly addressed. We project onto the Romans what preoccupies us about our own present: power and its abuse. Masculinity and its limits. Order that spins out of control. Empires that fall.

Sound familiar?

What Science Says

There’s a study I haven’t been able to shake since I read about it. Scientists discovered that Germans living today in areas that were once under Roman occupation – that is, south and west of the Limes – are on average happier and more sociable than people north of it. The Limes, that border wall from the second century, long since gone, still traces an invisible line through the German psyche.

Two thousand years. A wall of stone and wood, vanished long ago. And still felt.

This isn’t magic. It’s the weight of history. Institutions the Romans built – roads, legal systems, cities, administrative structures – shaped how people lived together across generations. And that shaping runs deep.

What Our Fascination Reveals

I believe we find the Romans so captivating for one simple reason: they attempted the greatest thing imaginable – and failed anyway.

The Roman Empire wasn’t an abstract construct from textbooks. It was an attempt to unite the entire known world under one roof, with shared laws, a shared language, a shared culture. An attempt that worked for centuries – and then didn’t.

When we think about the Roman Empire today, we’re really thinking about impermanence. About the hubris of power. About the fact that even the greatest, most stable, most seemingly indestructible things eventually crumble. The Colosseum still stands – but the empire is gone.

That comforts us somehow. And terrifies us at the same time.

Why I Write Roman Novels

When I started working on the Eagle Saga, friends asked me: “Romans? Isn’t that a bit… overdone?”

My answer: No. Never.

Overdone is a topic that no longer moves anyone. The Roman Empire still moves us – because the people who lived in it, fought in it, loved and died in it, were startlingly modern people. A legionary on the frontier of Britain, thousands of miles from home, asking himself the same things a soldier asks today: Why am I here? Will I make it back? What will remain of me?

That’s the core of what grips me. Not the spectacle. Not the battles as such. But the people inside them.

And perhaps that’s also the most honest answer to why we all – daily, sometimes several times a day – think about the Roman Empire: because we’re searching for ourselves in it.

And because we keep finding what we’re looking for.