7 ways that today’s Sweden is reminiscent of the Roman Empire

Women all over the world are now surprised that men around them think so much about the Roman Empire.

But maybe it’s weirder not to care.

Rome has a lot to say about our own time.

Here are seven parallels between ancient Rome and today’s Sweden.

It is said that men often think of the Roman Empire.

In that case, it is not a new phenomenon.

The British historian Edward Gibbon – who began publishing the monumental work “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” in 1776 and definitely thought a lot about the Roman Empire – noted that the Romans themselves already thought a lot about the Roman Empire.

Theodosius, emperor from 379–395, according to Gibbon, had history as his greatest hobby, and he tried to use his lessons from Rome’s past to govern his empire.

“The annals of Rome, over the long period of 1,100 years, gave him a varied and magnificent picture of human life,” Gibbon wrote.

Rome may seem far away now, but the fact is that the time that has passed today since the fall of Östrom in 1453 is half as short (570 years) as the time from Rome’s mythical founding to the time of Theodosius (1,132 years).

– Anyone who picks up a book from antiquity or a letter from Cicero is struck by how easy it is to understand, and how similar that world seems, says Ida Östenberg, professor of ancient culture and social life at the University of Gothenburg.

The differences are, of course, significant.

Rome was a strictly hierarchical class society that was never democratic in any real sense. The divides were enormous, society was imbued with warlike ideals and a human life was not worth much. Diseases ravaged, care was often lacking, child mortality was high. The gladiatorial games at the Colosseum were slightly more bloodthirsty than the Melodifestivalen.

Society was also extremely patriarchal. Daughters in patrician noble families didn’t even get their own names – all the women in the Julian family were simply called Julia, and if you wanted to distinguish them for some reason, they were called Julia the Little and Julia the Great, or something similar.

It is possible to continue.

But the question is whether the similarities still prevail.

Here are seven ways that today’s Sweden is reminiscent of Rome:

1. A common public

Rome’s politics played out on an often open stage, which placed great emphasis on spectacle and theatrics. No one was king by the grace of God.

– The rhetoric we still learn comes from the ancient schools of rhetoric, because you had to be able to persuade others to pursue a political career, says Ida Östenberg.

In the Roman Republic, all male citizens had the right to vote, and the people had an obvious political role.

– When a person who is believed to be Cicero’s brother writes a book about how to win an election, he says that it is important to have many followers. Unlike today, it was then about physical followers who show up, say good morning, and then lead their patronus down to the Forum. Then it appeared that an important person had arrived. It is an obvious parallel to our social media.

A Roman learned to live in public, to transform his self into a public persona.

– A Roman was never alone, and in a way we are not either, because we live our lives in the digital public, says Ida Östenberg.

2. City life

Rome may have had 1 million inhabitants at most. After the fall of the empire, it would take until the 19th century before any European city became that large again.

The urban city life, with high-rise buildings, pubs, overcrowding and crowded streets, is something many modern Swedes would recognize in ancient Rome – even if Rome was much dirtier and more colorful, and both smelled and smelled more, says Ida Östenberg.

3. Multiculturalism, diversity and tolerance

The Roman Empire was multifaceted with a variety of cultures, languages ​​and religions.

It was a big difference from what it was like in the city-state of Athens, where anyone not born in the city could never become a citizen, and where the world was strictly divided into those who spoke Greek on one side and barbarians on the other.

As Ida Östenberg also points out included in the Roman self-image, on the contrary, that the city was created by refugees from Troy far away in the east, and that the first ruler Romulus created the Asylum, a place where thieves, beggars and bandits were welcomed to increase the population of the small village of Rome.

These origin myths were seen by the Romans as a reflection of their strength and character.

– It was no problem to have an identity both as coming from Palmyra and being Roman at the same time, or being from Britain and having one’s tombstone written in Latin. You could come from Spain or Syria or North Africa and become emperor in Rome. As a slave, you could buy yourself free, rise through the ranks and reach high positions, says Ida Östenberg.

Rome conquered territories militarily, and used indiscriminate violence against those who resisted.

– But there were also opportunities for large migration, large movements of people, for social mobility and for maintaining different kinds of identities.

Rome also often exhibited a religious tolerance that may feel more modern to a secularized observer today than the narrow Christian monotheism of the Middle Ages.

– Antiquity does have a constant divine presence, but it is much more multifaceted in its polytheistic way, and allows for many different expressions for the most part, says Ida Östenberg, adding that Roman reprisals against Jews and Christians, on the other hand, were very harsh and brutal.

4. Social media and graffiti

The Romans had loved social media and TikTok. So says the British historian Mary Beard, probably the world’s most famous expert on ancient Rome.

– The Romans like graffiti. They had loved sharing the equivalent of graffiti. The Romans were masters at creating and reproducing images. You can see idealizing – in our terms photoshopped – pictures of Emperor Augustus everywhere. In that sense, they are very modern. They want to share every single wall. They want to say, “Marcus was here,” she says to Time.

Roman emperors were also not behind influencers in their attempts to control the image of themselves. Although most didn’t conquer much new territory, they did quite a bit put up statues of themselves in full battle gear.

– They make a kind of show of the image of their brand, says Mary Beard.

5. Gang conflicts

Sweden is rocked by gang violence, and so was Rome, undeniably.

But in order for us to reach the same proportions as in the late Roman Republic, we have to turn a few more turns on our current reality.

We can then think of the rivals Rawa “Kurdish Fox” Majid and Ismail “Strawberry” Abdo as wealthy politicians, who use armies of street fighters in the fight for high offices, and who alternately support or betray their close allies Ebba Busch and Magdalena Andersson.

That is exactly how Titus Annius Milo and Publius Clodius Pulcher acted in Rome in the 50s before Christ. They each raised private armies of trashcans and gladiators, and used them as political weapons.

Buildings burned, elections were postponed and politicians were attacked in the street, before Clodius himself was killed in a fight with his rival. During his funeral, his supporters burned down the Senate building Curia Hostilia.

6. Cultural influences

In the same way that Sweden today adopts trends from the USA, Rome was an obvious trendsetter for the Sweden of the time.

On a gold medallion from late Roman times found near Trollhättan, the local Nordic ruler wears a diadem on his head, just like the Roman emperors of the time. His effigy is also surrounded by text, just as on similar Roman medallions.

“In the power and in the way of behaving in the most aristocratic circles in Scandinavia at this time, it was included to surround oneself with writing,” writes the Historical Museum.

But just like today, the clumsy Swedes were clumsy in their cultural appropriation: the runic text on the medallion looks to the researchers like nonsense, imprinted just to look good, not to be read.

One might add that Rome was also particularly sensitive to trends. By 16, for example, the importation of Chinese silk had become so popular—and expensive—that Emperor Tiberius tried to ban it.

Clothing, hairstyles and jewelry were used to signal status. Never a popular garment among ordinary workers, the impractical toga tended to become more expensive and voluminous the higher up in the hierarchy its wearer rose.

7. It was better before – and it is better over there

In his new book “A farewell to Bullerbyn?” the social democrat Åsa Eriksson describes a Sweden that has “changed, from a country characterized by ideals of folk homes and Bullerby feeling to shootings, gang crime and a cemented segregation”.

Roman historians such as Livy, Sallustius and Tacitus had nodded their approval to this approach.

Contrasting today’s problems with an idealized past was a trick they all used.

Bullerbyn is of course not real, but a “romantic consideration” of a society that never existed already when Astrid Lindgren told about it.

But using images of a more glorious past to criticize contemporary problems was a common Roman trick – as was invoking the virtues of others, to accentuate the depravity of one’s own country.

Horace Engdahl’s famous description of Germany as “a Sweden for adults” falls into the latter category.

In his book “Germania”, Tacitus paints the Germans as indeed barbaric, but at the same time morally high, in contrast to the decadent and morally lost Rome. The Germans lived, Tacitus let the reader understand, as Romans should live, uncorrupted by modern conveniences and close to earth and nature.

FACTS The Roman Empire trend

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