At the start of the year, as I reached for SPQR, Mary Beard’s magnificent history of ancient Rome, I felt some trepidation, and not only because the internet has shot my ability to read books straight to dopamine-addled, monosyllabic hell. 

No, my main concern was because of something I had read back in 2023, when some news organisations that really ought to know better but need to woo the under-25s, reported a curious phenomenon first revealed by an Instagram celebrity and then amplified on TikTok: that men spend an inordinately large amount of time thinking about the Roman empire. ..

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