Saw this while walking in Mumbai last year...
this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2025
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Now read it again and replace "Hitler" with "Caesar" and "the West" with "the Present"
Which one?
Regardless, I don't think anyone is in the dark about the brutality of Roman leaders, even if the "Gaius Julius got kidnapped by pirates and was an absolute legend in that situation" is widely appreciated. That doesn't mean we want to model our own time on their examples, or revere them.
I wasn't aware of the pirate story but many modern people are fascinated by him. There even was a meme "how often do you think about the Roman Empire" and some people where like "twice a day"
Fascinated, sure. There's a lot of history to be fascinated by, doesn't mean you have to think it was good.
The pirate story is a great one. Probably exaggerated at best, if not almost entirely made up, because Dignity and Glory (I have capitalized those because they were concrete concepts) were huge things in Rome in those times, and those were earned through war. Having such a tale ascribed to you was a way to earn Dignity and Glory if you had political aspirations and were not (yet) able to actually go to war.