The Roman Empire meme is a viral trend that originated on Instagram and has since spread to TikTok and other social media platforms. The meme involves women approaching the men in their lives and asking them how often they think about the Roman Empire. Clips of boyfriends, husbands, dads, and brothers admitting that they think about the Roman Empire often, even multiple times per day, have gone viral on the video-sharing platform. The trend has even entered "real life," with people asking the question outside of social media.

The memes origins can be traced back to Swedish influencer Saskia Cort, who went viral in 2022 after telling her followers to ask their male partners how often they think about the Roman Empire. The trend returned in August 2023, after history enthusiast Gaius Flavius posted the same prompt in an Instagram reel, which popularized the meme to the point where it reached TikTok and exploded into the mainstream.

The meme has also spawned a catchphrase, "My Roman Empire," where people share what their "Roman Empire" is, meaning something that they think about very often. The phrase started to gain popularity on sites including TikTok and X, formerly Twitter, in mid-September 2023, about a month after the original trend was popularized on social media.

The meme has become popular because it highlights an amusingly gender-specific obsession with the legacy of Rome, which still burns bright in the minds of men across the world. The most likely explanation for why so many men are supposedly thinking about the Roman Empire in 2023 is the obsession many men, particularly the older generation, have with history and wars in general, and understanding the legacy of our forefathers.