this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2025
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Rough Roman Memes

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A place to meme about the glorious ROMAN EMPIRE (and Roman Republic, and Roman Kingdom)! Byzantines tolerated! The HRE is not.

RULES:

  1. No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, bigotry, etc. The past may be bigoted, but we are not.

  2. Memes must be Rome-related, not just the title. It can be about Rome, or using Roman aesthetics, or both, but the meme itself needs to have Roman themes.

  3. Follow Lemmy.world rules.

Not sure where to start on Roman history?

A quick memetic primer on Republican Rome

A quick memetic primer on Imperial Rome

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[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 12 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Explanation: During Caesar's Gallic Wars, Caesar came into conflict with a Germanic warlord by the name of Ariovistus. During negotiations, Caesar rebuked Ariovistus for carrying on a war of conquest upon people who had invited the Germanics into their country in good faith. Ariovistus responded that what he did was no different that what Rome did to its neighbors, that the law of conquest obeyed no law but the sword, and that it was hypocritical for Rome to rebuke him for doing so while it carried on such conquests itself.

Now, Romans took the concept of ius bellum - justified war - very seriously. Whenever a Roman official decided to start or prosecute a war, it was important that they had reasons which made the war just and not opportunistic - things like offenses committed by the neighboring state, not just "We want their land."

HOWEVER

As the Romans were the dangerous combination of 'warlike' and 'legalistic', they very often could 'find' reasons to go to war whenever the gains were suitably tempting. And Caesar in particular, though one can make arguments one way or another about his treatment of his Gallic allies, at the very least was, on a surface level, doing the same thing Ariovistus had - taking a friendly invitation by an allied state to help them resolve a military matter, and then discreetly overstaying their welcome.

The image is of known grifter Dr. Phil, a man who exploits the trauma of people in miserable circumstances for audience laughs and entertainment, confronting a man he invited onto his show who did 'Homeless fights', if memory serves. The man (who was himself a shithead, fucking mind you) pointed out that they were both the same by coming onto the stage with a bald cap and a suit of the same tasteless variety as Dr. Phil.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm surprised they still aired that. I mean, sure, it's great TV, but he must have hated it being pointed out.

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Ratings über alles. And if memory serves, the audience booed the guy mocking Dr. Phil, so he might have felt some form of bizarre vindication at his special audience of bootlickers backing him.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 3 weeks ago

Absolutely disgusting, thank you for sharing.