It seems that chariot races and gladiatorial battles in the Roman Empire did not completely disappear over the centuries.
A new TikTok trend is pulling back the curtains over the minds of friends, couples and partners to reveal that many of them carry a burning fire in ancient Rome — including TODAY’s Carson Daly.
Carson said during PopStart on Sept. 15 that he thinks about the Roman Empire a lot.
“I do it every day,” Carson said to the shock of his co-hosts. “First of all, ‘Gladiator’ is in everyone’s top five favorite movies. Joe Rogan’s podcast is very popular, and there’s a trend to have this modern understanding of ancient philosophies like Stoicism, and cold plunging is a big thing right now,” Keto. The search for guidance and self-improvement all goes back to Marcus Aurelius. “This is the Roman Empire.”
In the past 24 hours, posts with the hashtag #romanempire have attracted millions of simultaneous views as women ask the men in their lives how often they think of the Roman Empire.
“How many times, say, a week, or how many times in general, do you think about the Roman Empire?” Ashley Lance — @idkhowyoufoundme — asks her boyfriend at the beginning of the post, which has now had 5.4 million views.
Lance’s partner seems amused at first before he genuinely stops to think about this.
He looks up and shakes his head. “What about the Roman Empire?”
(To be fair, it’s a long time.)
“Just anything about it,” Lance encourages.
“Not much. Why?”
“When was the last time you thought about me?” Lance urges.
After thinking about it, her friend replied: “Maybe a week or two ago.”
When she laughs, he reminds her that “the Roman Empire was a very big part of history.”
Shortly after she posted the video to her page on September 13, women on TikTok began confronting their partners.
Previous “detailed”. demands Nickelodeon actor Kira Kosarin in a post shared on the platform.
His initial answer was: “Three times a day.”
“I think technically, like every day,” user friend Georgia Ferraris (@GeorgiaFerrari_) is ignored in a separate function. “If you speak English, you think of the Roman Empire,” he adds.
At the end of the video, Ferraris drops the microphone to reveal her boyfriend’s phone wallpaper: an image of the “Oath of Horati” painting depicting a scene from the Roman myth.
A user who goes by @delara.esq on TikTok put forward a theory after polling several of her male friends.
“I will say it was a mixed bag,” Dilara explains. “At least half of them say daily, which was shocking to me, because who thinks about the Roman Empire daily? But then, the other half seem indifferent, and say, ‘You know, I’m working on my own empire or something. “.
As for the men who said they think about the Roman Empire daily, Dilara believes that that period comes to mind when they think about their lives in terms of direction.
“They really think about it in terms of love, war, strategy, betrayal, etc., and themes like that, that can be present in our everyday lives,” she explained.
As for the other TODAY hosts, Craig Melvin admitted sometimes he sees something that makes him think about the Roman Empire, but he said some men seem to think about it on their own.
“I think that becomes part of the psyche of the new guy,” Carson replied.
However, TODAY’s Al Roker had a completely different reaction: “I haven’t thought about it since I took Latin.”
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