The Eternal Echo of Rome
Why men can't stop thinking about the Roman Empire
Within the psyche of Western man, there is an undeniable gravitation towards the grandeur of ancient Rome. Beyond its martial prowess, its architectural marvels, and its complex culture, Rome retains an intangible allure that remains undiminished by the passage of time and invites endless contemplation. While there have been many astounding civilisational achievements in the West, they are unparalleled against the commanding presence of Rome, occupying an eternal place within our souls, which ignites a deep yearning within us that could almost be described as a spiritual homesickness. But why does Rome in particular maintain such a powerful hold over our imaginations and not some other time and place in history?
To understand the profound draw of Rome, we require an exploration of what Julius Evola referred to as “civilisational peaks”. First, let us state what such a peak is not: It is not technological, social, or cultural advancement, nor purely territorial expansion, nor anything else related to the material comforts and norms of a given civilisation. We could point to many eras that are exemplary of human achievement, but this is not the type of peak we are referring to in this context.
The peaks we are referring to are the ones that stand as luminous points in history, uniting the profane, material realm with the transcendent, spiritual realm and lending tangible expression to an eternal cosmos. These civilisations possess an atemporal character— because of their connection to the sacred realm, they exist outside the limitations of chronological time. In these civilisational peaks, we also find themes of the domination of the virile solar principle over the lunar and telluric principles, of the masculine spirit over the feminine matter. Civilisations that attain this character count themselves among the “peaks” that reach above the clouds of chronological history. They have a part of themselves that is situated in Being and deeply connected to metaphysical reality. Each peak can witness the others above the clouds, all occupying a part of the same eternal present. These civilisations of Being find their immutability as a result of their victory over “history”, impermanence, and Becoming.
One way to imagine this is to envision history as a series of waves which sometimes reach high enough to penetrate into and align with the metaphysical. Not every wave of history will reach this high. Some will get closer than others, some will spill into the metaphysical realm more than others. But that contact point at which “history” meets the eternal is where civilisational peaks are produced and the part of the civilisation that extends into the metaphysical and sacred realm becomes eternal itself, preserved as the archetypal idea, the expression of a cosmic truth, regardless of the specifics of its purely historical and material elements.
In Rome, we find a shifting of the centre of the historical West away from the lunar paradigm of the earthy, generative Mother to the solar paradigm of the virile, vivifying Father. As such, we also find a regal and heroic character among the spiritual currents of the patriciate class in which the theme of the domination and transfiguration of all that is “feminine” (lunar, chaotic, destructive, dark, yin, receiving, matter) by what is “masculine” (solar, order, creative, light, yang, commanding, spirit) permeates. But where Rome best exhibits its sacred character is through its embodiment of imperium. The sacred empire is the full flowering of the manifestation of the Law from Above on earth and the imperial element is one that subjugates Chaos to the transfiguring power of Order.
From a Traditional point of view, founding a city represented the establishment of a “centre”, an irruption of the sacred realm into the profane, an entry-point for divine Order. This Order was maintained, reinforced, and reinvigorated through the regular performance of the rites. That which was outside the bounds of the city was considered a realm of Chaos, of evil and danger, in the sense that it had no connection to the sacred. To establish a city was to “create a world”— a world in the sense of kosmos. Thus, a city was a material representation of metaphysical reality. The sacred empire, then, would be the same principle as applied towards expansion with the purpose of bringing more of Chaos under the dominion of Order— where the entropy of the profane gives way to the eternal of the sacred— and the general idea is that this is made possible by the empire’s alignment with that eternality which grounds it amidst the torrents of history and lends it a gravitas that makes all who encounter it desire to be part of it.
It is this connection to an eternal metaphysical reality, however imperfect a reflection of it the historical Rome may have been, that grants Rome as an idea its enduring, mythical appeal. There is something transcendent about it, something that resonates as right and true. And this is why it grabs the hearts and souls of men today. Modern man is in desperate need of a north star, something towards which to orient his compass and renew his spirit.
The modern world, with its evident despondency, drives people to long for another time and place. While linear progressives would have us believe that we are currently at the apex of human civilisation, the truth is that if we were actually at a civilisational peak right now, we would not be longingly thinking of an era from 2000 years ago. We would instead be actively participating in our own version of a civilisational peak, not reminiscing about one long past. Part of the desperation of modernity— the isolation, the lack of identity, the loss of any sense of meaning— these are all the reasons men think of Rome. Because when we think of an era in which we would want to live, there is something about Rome that feels like it expresses the essence of what we are seeking. We yearn for Rome’s transcendent element and so Rome feels like an antidote to the modern world and everything that is lacking in it. Rome offers us a better example of what it means to be alive, not just in body but in vivified spirit.
Even this reminiscing is still an attempt to participate in the transcendent nature of Rome, in the sense that it allows one to recreate it in their imagination. When we yearn for Rome, we yearn for its mythical element, which is to say, the element of it which speaks to the truth of a metaphysical reality. Only in the imagination can one begin to understand the abstract realities that myth speaks to; it is the only place where one can grasp at the ineffable. Myth dramatises that metaphysical reality and brings it into the sensible realm and it is that dramatisation, the story, that plants it firmly in the imagination where it can grow and thrive.
The fascination with Rome is in many ways very similar to the fascination some have with Tolkien’s Middle Earth mythology. Its fans obsess over the story, they like to think about it, imagine what it would be like to live in that world, they like to ponder the heroes’ qualities and motivations, and think of the heroic quest. There is a part of The Lord of the Rings that speaks to transcendent truths as well, a part of it that holds a metaphysical mystique. And whether it is a historical period like Rome or a fictional world like Middle Earth, they both represent one of those “waves” that reaches partially into the realm of the sacred and provides a connection point to metaphysical reality, both are myths that speak to transcendent truths, and in placing them in the imagination, they can become fertile ground to become more than just a story or just a historic era, but something that resonates in the soul as an orienting point, a north star.
Man needs a north star because he requires something true to orient his energy and actions towards and he needs to participate in something meaningful. For that, he needs a vision of something epic, powerful, and beautiful. The completely desacralised view of reality is a very recent phenomenon in human history and has rapidly proven to be detrimental to man’s well-being. Human life needs an opening towards the transcendent. Man cannot live in the pure chaos that is desacralised and profane life without becoming an animal.
But why is Rome in particular the favoured north star of so many? Why not the Persian Empire or Vedic India or some other civilisational peak that is equally majestic? There are certainly other peaks that would serve just as well to spark the imagination, but there are a few reasons why Western man is more likely to gravitate towards ancient Rome. One reason is that in the West, we have less of a cultural context for any of these other civilisational peaks. The languages of other historical eras in other parts of the world are not always available to the English-speaking world that predominates Western academia. We don’t grow up with the same level of cultural education about those other eras as we do about Rome. In the Western world, we learn about Rome, we dramatise Rome in film and fiction, we hear references to it everywhere… but when was the last time you had a random encounter with imperial China in your daily life? This would be a possible rationalist explanation, but Traditionalism offers another theory.
A certain “blood memory” must be considered as a possible explanation for Western man’s fascination with Rome and why he continually reaffirms his connection to it through his education and entertainment. A civilisational peak can only arise thanks to a supernatural and non-human force of a higher order, a force that we might refer to as Victory in the metaphysical sense, where that Victory is the triumph of Spirit over Matter, such that Order can predominate over Chaos. A people must first possess this quality within themselves, individually and collectively, and only then can they give rise to a Traditional empire that is itself an expression of the same Victory. The structure of a given society is a reflection of the structure of the souls of its people. But when a people loses contact with this force, which is the only thing that can provide true stability via its connection to the world of Being, then the race has lost its most subtle but also most crucial element, which is its race of spirit.
However, the supernatural Victory that a race may have once participated in continues to echo in the blood and biospirit of a people long after it has been snuffed out. It is a force that functions as something like an evolutionary pressure, promoting the generation of new bodies that are genetically suited to house the race of the spirit and imprinting itself into the collective psyche of the racial totem. These totemic residues form a “blood memory”, and as nearly every person of European descent has ancestors who lived in or served the Roman Empire in some capacity, every Western man has some part of him that is in touch with the collective memory of Rome. The part of man whose blood and soul recalls ever so vaguely the state of Being his people once participated in is the same part that resonates with the world of Being in which the entire civilisation participated in.
The symbols and stories of Rome function as contact points with that ancestral echo, as well as offer a glimpse of a transcendent opening, a pinprick of solar effulgence still glimmering in the Dark Age of the end of this cycle. Rome is not just a relic of history, but a manifestation of our deepest needs: for greatness, for purpose, for connection to the sacred. The memory of Rome is both a grounding force and a guiding light— in an era where the earth shakes under our feet and the skies grow dark, the patria provides us with a reminder of what we once were and what we could be again.
This is why men think of Rome.