How often do men think of ancient Rome? Who cares! It's these women who know it best.
When Irene Soto Marín, an assistant professor of Roman history at Harvard, goes on a first date with a man, one of two things usually happens: They’ll either start mansplaining the empire to her, or they’ll hit her with a bunch of bogus “facts.” Once, a man insisted that Cleopatra was Greek and that she had a child with Julius Caesar .
Marín is a Rome Woman for life. Like many other academics of her expertise, she’s fascinated by the idea that thousands of years ago, deep in the mists of antiquity, people toiled under the same weaknesses and strengths—miraculous kindness, petty grievance—that tell the recursive story of human civilization.
The subject has been top of mind for Marín lately, after a meme brought about a very masculine Latin reckoning. It all started with an Instagram Reel, made on Aug. 19, by a Romanophile page called @Gaiusflavius.
In the past week, I myself have received two texts—apropos of nothing—from women wondering how often I think about the Roman Empire. But I do understand why they asked. The Romans have been presented as a conservative, übermensch ideal in the broadest arenas of pop culture; what with all the chiseled-marble abdominals, well-drilled military formations, and, yes, highly sectorial philosophical ideations on class, citizenship, and statehood.
“For a long time I taught Introduction to Ancient Rome, and it filled up immediately. I could cap it at 200 or 400 students; it didn’t matter, and the gender divide was consistently equally balanced,” said Jen Ebbeler, an associate professor at the University of Texas, who studies—alongside Rome—early Christianity. “My approach is very historical and political.
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