I've had a love of history generally, and I know a bit more than most about the Roman empire, and that's kind of a red flag i guess, but I genuinely think they're one of the worst things to ever happen to the world, much as i find the endless stream of civil wars and coups to be very fun to read, the brutality of their empire wouldn't be surpassed until England somehow went from a backwater to a globe spanning empire and to be quite honest i'm not a fan of them except as a gateway to knowing what some of my ancestors got up to.
Weird Ass Rome Guys are why the American feds are the way they are, it's obvious there is something deeply wrong with how Rome gets portrayed in popular media and stuff that makes this a seemingly wide-spread phenomenon, but honestly what's with the glorification of Rome? is it downstream of American Nationalism? No, that can't be, because Rome Guys go back so far we have popes making fake roman states and tsars and sultans trying to prove their dick is the most Roman. It's hard to miss a lot of Rome Guys are pretty regressive people. Like, you don't ever think something like "Augustus was a role model" unless you've got some twisted bullshit shit going on in your heart.
It makes me uncomfortable to engage with the history sometimes, because Rome Guys are always listening and ready to project their noble fantasy of them and the idiot narratives of Rome's decline as a sickness caused by foreign invaders sure does sound like deeply right wing revisionist history to me, but I've never really thought through the how and why of these guys, i wanted to solicit Hexbear's thoughts.
I think the interest in Rome is not only a product of Christianity, but that the widespread adoption of Christianity was also product of Rome in the first place, since Rome was a tri-continental pan-Mediterranean empire that spanned Europe, north Africa, and west Asia, and Christianity picked up speed after their destruction of the 2nd temple and Jerusalem by Titus Flavius. Jewish-Roman historian Josephus (who was in Titus's court) and Roman historian Tacitus provide some of the earliest non-Christian accounts of Christianity, and Christianity spread so far because it was the religion of slaves, poor people, and women, especially former Jews (since Christianity started essentially as a Jewish sect of which there were many during the 2nd temple period), scattered throughout the Roman empire due to Roman conquest in Judea. Christianity became a prominent religion because of its elevation to the status of a state religion by a Roman emperor. If it weren't for Rome, Christianity would not have come into existence (both from a theological and a totally secular perspective Rome is essential to Christianity), would not have had a convenient political landscape to spread through, full of people (slaves) who were keen on its message of salvation in the afterlife for even the most persecuted people, etc.