A while ago, the internet had one of its favourite anthropological moments: women discovering that many men think about the Roman Empire weekly, if not daily. It was a meme, yes — but like all good memes, it revealed something true about how people use history to locate themselves in the present.

For many men, the Roman Empire represents a world of crystalline certainty: defined roles, visible hierarchies, clear missions. There were battles to fight, cities to build, leaders to follow. Life had direction — expand, conquer, protect, achieve. Purpose wasn’t something you had to excavate from within; it was handed to you from the outside.

By contrast, the modern world feels markedly more ambiguous. There are fewer obvious quests, fewer sanctioned arenas for proving oneself, fewer scripts that say: this is who you are, this is what you do. And whether or not we accept the premise, a popular idea circulating online suggests that part of the contemporary male malaise — the burnout, the drifting, the quiet sense of inertia — stems from the disappearance of that external structure.

This isn’t about glorifying war or longing for empire. It’s about noticing how identity is shaped by the cultural scaffolding around us. Historically, men were given battlefields — literal or symbolic — on which to test their courage and form their sense of self. Those structures no longer operate in the same way, and so many men are searching for new equivalents: gym-as-discipline culture, the rise of stoicism podcasts, morning routine optimisation, and a general fascination with ancient history.

Interestingly, there is one Roman trend experiencing a revival that we can wholeheartedly support: bathing. Modern “wellness culture” may package it differently — cold plunges, steam rooms, infrared saunas, bathhouse memberships — but it echoes the Roman belief that caring for the body is a gateway to caring for the mind. Communal bathing spaces were once places of rest, reflection, conversation, and resetting the nervous system. If men are rediscovering that lineage, then perhaps not all returns to antiquity are about conquest. The Roman Empire becomes shorthand for clarity, order, and a story big enough to step into.

But perhaps the most revealing part is that this isn’t a gendered critique so much as a human observation. All of us — men, women, and everyone in between — crave systems, rituals, and narratives that tell us who we are and what matters. We just look for them in different places.

Maybe the Roman Empire trend simply reminds us that even in a world that feels increasingly chaotic, we’re all still searching for direction, coherence, and meaning. And history, as always, offers a familiar place to begin the search.

Watch a video that imagines: What if Mark Antony lived in 1989AD instead of 39BC?