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Comment by peder | Hacker News Reader

My initial take is that this article is trash. To build up their empire, the Romans literally conquered people that weren't like them; you could probably argue they should have had more conquering zeal and xenophobia.

Also, why does the tech community have an obsession with Rome?

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As someone in the tech community who fell into an obsession with Rome, I think my fall into it was mostly just familiarity. Out of all the great empires of the ancients (China, Rome, Persia, Khans, Greeks, etc), who is the most responsible for what I am today? I write in Roman letters and speak roman words thousands of years later. My ancestors from England lived in cities built by Rome and lots of American political culture is Rome-inspired. Heck, Cincinnati is named Cincinnatus who was responsible for saving Rome on more than one occasion.

The question isn't why are we obsessed with Rome. It's why not.

> Also, why does the tech community have an obsession with Rome?

This question comes across as a bit sneering (more so one of its answers), but I'll say general intellectualism. This is what the orange site is about after all.

See a defence of the classics here: https://acoup.blog/2021/09/10/meet-a-historian-michael-taylo... - The blog ACOUP is probably better than the submission, so I'll agree with your first point.

You could make a case for Chinese history being equally rich, if not more. But note that the language and cultural barrier would be greater for most people on this site. Its relevance for the shaping of the "Western" world would be less relevant. The amount of study material and analysis in the English language would be less. But if there were decent enough articles on it, it would result in a flood of submissions to this site.

> Also, why does the tech community have an obsession with Rome?

American centric negativity combined with self aggrandizing projection.

The comparisons to Rome are the new JavaScript frameworks of HN.

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