9 Big Misconceptions About Ancient Rome

Here are 9 big misconceptions about ancient Rome. 1. Most people in Rome died before the age of 25. Technically true, but this statistic is inevitably dragged down by the significant infant mortality rates in ancient Rome and in all pre-modern societies. The life expectancy of mid to late 20s isn't actually accurate for people who lived past infancy. Anyone who made it that far without dying could reasonably expect to live for at least 50 years, and a 2. Rome was ruled by the Senate and the people of Rome. The famous saying SPQR may lead you to believe this. And it is true that Rome existed for several hundred years, during which the Senate and people of Rome did heavily influence Roman politics and Roman society. But even in these somewhat more democratic times, the people really had very little influence on Roman politics The Senate was an incredibly elitist body that could circumvent the will of the people whenever it wanted. And there was no political organization among the people to counter this elite authority, save for a few populist movements during the late Republic, which was mostly just the elites taking advantage of the people to serve their own interests anyway. Once the Republic fell and was replaced by Augustus' empire, both the Senate and the people became basically irrelevant. The elections of public officials were always either rigged in favor of the Emperor's candidates or made powerless in comparison to imperial authority. Even the Senate became a rubber stamp for the Emperor. It was a glorified social club for rich people to pretend they were doing things that still mattered. 3. Nero played the fiddle while Rome burned. Yes, Nero did play instruments, but none of them were fiddles because the fiddle did not exist in ancient Rome. And no, he did not do so in the midst of a massive inferno engulfing the Eternal City. In fact, he actually was on the scene rather quickly after getting reports of the fire and actively coordinating relief and rescue efforts. Unfortunately, there was really not much that could be done to put out big urban fires in those days besides demolishing whole city blocks to choke the fire of fuel. The fiddle thing is sort of a piece of propaganda that ties into the narrative of Nero's disengagement from the responsibilities of imperial rule. However, Nero did actually do some things at times, such as plan and fund the construction and restoration of new city blocks in the ruined areas of Rome, ones that had wider roads that would be less conducive to the spread of fires in the future. Just so you don't think I'm being too generous to Nero, he also did the other thing, which was use 80 acres of destroyed land to build a big golden house and an even bigger golden statue of himself. 4. Roman concrete was so advanced and strong that modern society just cannot replicate it. I mean, if you really stretch it, it's technically true. We do have some recipes for Roman concrete from primary Roman sources, but modern scholars and materialist engineers are not certain of the exact proportions of each ingredient or about other precise procedures in the creation process. As such, modern societies have not been able to recreate this concrete in the precise way that the Romans made it. However, it is not true that Roman concrete is stronger than what modern societies can create. Modern reinforced concrete is less brittle, it can bear much heavier structural loads, and can be mass produced on a much wider scale. I think this is part of a common tendency in popular historical narratives to emphasize the lost knowledge of past civilizations as if they had something that we don't or could do something better than we do now. The real truth is that despite how impressive Rome's technological and organizational accomplishments were for the time, contemporary society is just far more advanced in every way than ancient Rome. The allure of lost knowledge brings only misconception, and it should go away. 5. The Roman destruction of the Library of Alexandria set humanity back a thousand years. Often cited as the steam engine that was apparently up and working in the halls of the library, as well as the centuries of scientific knowledge that was simply lost entirely when the This is another extension of the previous idea. In reality, the Library of Alexandria was not just a building complex that was destroyed in one fire, but it was a living and breathing academic institution. It housed not just machines and archives, but centers of learning and research and philosophy and other pursuits, sort of like a modern university, that evolved over the course of hundreds of years. Much of the knowledge in the library was also not secret or exclusive, it was knowledge that was shared among scholars across the Roman world. As scholars, philosophers, scientists, everyone does, they share stuff with each other, and that's how science and knowledge advances. The destruction of the library in any fire would not have meant that that knowledge was lost to humanity. Whatever ancient knowledge was in the library was not super-powered alien tech that could have accelerated the Industrial Revolution or whatever. Technological and For the record, the steam engine never really worked. The Greeks and Romans were a thousand years away from the metallurgy necessary to properly harness steam power for mechanical use. Ancient knowledge was brilliant and impressive, and much of it has been lost, but we would not be building a Dyson sphere around the sun if we had it all. 6. The Romans Conquered the World in Self-Defense This is a myth that stems from Livy, a known Roman nationalist and propagandist. The Romans were attacked many times, of course, but more often than not, the Romans were the aggressors, fighting wars with the objective of conquering and controlling people and territory. After they won the wars, too, Rome was actively trying to incorporate new territory into its political and economic systems. They also engaged in active colonialist ventures in Italy, Spain, Germany, Britain, the list goes on. Julius Caesar launched a conquest campaign against Gaul without provocation that killed a million people. Dacia was stripped bare of gold and silver with industrial-scale mines run by slave laborers. I don't even have to describe what the Romans did to Judea. The Romans were by no means acting in self-defense when they conquered the Mediterranean world. 7. The Barbarians Destroyed Rome In a way, Rome destroyed itself by failing to properly reform its economy away from slavery and preserve its political authority in the midst of a variety of crises, just one of which was a large wave of migrations into Roman Europe. Yes, there were barbarians fighting against Roman authority, but there were also barbarians fighting to defend Roman authority. Historically, the barbarians had always become Romans, and this continued to happen for a while, even after the fall of the West. For example, the Gothic king Theoderic crafted his authority in the mold of old Roman emperors. Generally, I think the image of barbarians tearing down ancient monuments and burning ancient cities is still too prevalent in the modern imagination. The destruction of Rome was a lot more subtle than that, and while the barbarians played a role, I wouldn't say they did it alone. 8. The Romans Were Tolerant of Homosexuality Like We Are Today Yes and no. The Romans viewed sexuality very differently from how we view it today. Basically, Roman society was all about dominance, hierarchy, and authority, and their sexual norms came to reflect that. It was incredibly taboo for a Roman male citizen to have sex with another Roman male citizen, as that was seen as a violation of the citizen's virility and masculinity. However, it was totally fine for a Roman male citizen to have sex with one of his slaves, male or female, as long as he was in the dominant position, of course. It was also okay for a Roman male have sex with women because of how male-dominant Roman society was. And then there's just no mention at all of female homosexuality because that was just so incomprehensible and so taboo that they didn't even see it worth mentioning. I think describing the Roman sexual standard as a penetrative ethos is appropriate. It was fundamentally centered around men and male roles in sexual acts. If a male was penetrating, it was probably okay, and if a male was being penetrated, it was probably not okay. Dominance, good. Submission, bad. The Romans also had no concept of sexual identity, which is what we mean today when we say sexuality. The act itself was the only thing that mattered as far as moral judgments and classifications. There were no terms for heterosexual or homosexual in ancient Rome. The only distinction was between the well-behaved and the sexually deviant. 9. America is Rome. No, it's not. If you have studied the history of Rome at all, you would know this. Rome was a slave society, a plunder economy ruled by an authoritarian regime. It had no central banking system, for example. It literally took four weeks to send a letter across the empire. I could go on. There are far too many differences and circumstances for these comparisons that I see a lot to make sense, and the analogy always breaks down when it's pointed out that the fall of Rome and the fall of the Republic happened hundreds of years apart. Will America fall like Rome? Probably not. Where it gets especially infuriating is when people try to take the comparison further and start corresponding specific Romans to specific people in American politics. Oh, is Trump Julius Caesar? Is Trump Gaius Gracchus? Shut up. Please shut up. This idea is part of a bigger fallacy in the reading or misreading of history, which is that history repeats. It really does not. And so you really shouldn't count on it to do so. It's also not helpful in the slightest to make the comparison. Usually when people do it, it's to herald some moral argument that our society is becoming morally decadent the same way that Rome did. I'm not going to deny that Rome and America have a lot of similar problems, but weaponizing and misrepresenting history to push harmful political narratives is just something that I can't stand for. If you like this video, I'm going to be making more of these types of videos, casual videos. So let me know what you like, what you didn't like, what I should do in the future. If you have any cool video ideas that are like this one, please let me know. Thank you for watching.