Do You Ever Think About The Roman Empire?

An Empire That Never Leaves the Mind

It all started with a question that seemed extremely simple:

Do you ever think about the Roman Empire?

Do you ever think about the Roman Empire?

In 2023, Swedish content creator Saskia Cort asked her followers to ask the men in their lives this question. The aim wasn't to test their historical knowledge; it was simply to examine a peculiar observation: that men think about the Roman Empire more often than women might anticipate.

When the responses started coming in, it became clear that the observation was not unfounded at all.

Women were turning on their phone cameras and asking their husbands, boyfriends, fathers, or brothers how often they thought about the Roman Empire. The expected answer would likely be "never" or "the last time was in school." But instead, they found men calmly saying things like "a few times a week," "almost every day," and even "I thought about it twice today."

The funny thing was that the people who responded didn't even consider how surprising this might be.

For them, Rome was already one of the natural inhabitants of their minds. When they saw an aqueduct, discussed how long a concrete structure would last, when a political institution began to crumble, when a road stretched straight ahead to the horizon, or simply wondered how an empire could have grown so large, Rome somehow reappeared. It was like a mental room they didn't feel the need to mention, but visited regularly.

The question, translated into English, quickly spread to TikTok and from there, particularly to Britain's humor culture. In this region, the memory of Rome was not entirely abstract. Beneath London lay Londinium, in the hot springs of Bath Aquae Sulis, and to the north, Hadrian's Wall, stretching across the country. Sometimes, all the Britons needed to do to think of Rome was to look just a little way under the pavement.

Within a few weeks, the question had grown into something bigger than its own answer.

People are now beginning to call not just the Roman Empire, but anything that inexplicably and repeatedly returns to their minds, "my Roman Empire." A single scene from a film watched years ago, an unsolved historical mystery, a finished relationship, the fate of a particular celebrity, or an embarrassing moment one inexplicably recalls at night... Anything that establishes a permanent province for itself in the mind could become a personal Roman Empire.

But beneath all the humor, there was still a real question that remained unanswered:

Why Rome?

Perhaps because Rome is almost too well-designed a subject to ponder.

The transformation of a small settlement first into a vast political empire on the Italian peninsula, and then around the Mediterranean, is simply incredible. When the empire reached its greatest extent in 117 AD, during the reign of Trajan, it stretched from Britain in the north to North Africa in the south; from the Atlantic coast in the west to Mesopotamia in the east. The Mediterranean was no longer a sea on the edge of a map, but a great waterway at the heart of the Roman world. The Romans calling it Mare Nostrum— “Our Sea”—was a perfect summary of both their attained power and their self-confidence.

But Rome's true success wasn't just about conquering territory. History is full of armies that briefly seized vast lands. What made Rome enduring was its extraordinary insistence on connecting the territories it conquered with roads, ports, laws, taxes, water systems, cities, and a common administration.

When a legion advanced, a road often followed. And along the road came merchants, messengers, tax collectors, stonemasons, and new settlements… Mountains were cut, valleys crossed by bridges, and aqueducts built over rivers. Roman roads carried not only soldiers; they carried news, goods, languages, beliefs, dietary habits, and epidemics. Within the same network, olive oil could reach Hispania from the Rhine, Egyptian grain to Rome, wine to Gaul, and spices via the Red Sea and Indian Ocean to Mediterranean ports.

People living thousands of kilometers apart could hold the same coins, visit similar baths, encounter concepts of Roman law, and recognize the emperor's face on a coin without ever having seen him. This was partly the empire's success: transforming Rome from a mere city into a replicable system.

Aqueducts carried clean water from distant sources to cities. Baths became more than just places for bathing; they were public spaces where news, trade, and social life circulated. The use of concrete, arches, and domes changed the scale of architecture. Roman law, the idea of citizenship, and administrative language endured far beyond the political existence of the empire.

Of course, this wasn't just an innocent story of genius and engineering.

Both merchants and armies marched on Roman roads. The prosperity of magnificent cities, nourished by aqueducts, depended on taxes collected from conquered lands, minerals extracted, and the labor of enslaved people. Rome connected the cultures it encountered, but often did so by first conquering them. The empire's shadow was as vast as its marble.

Perhaps this is precisely one of the reasons why we think about it so often. Rome shows how magnificently and terrifyingly humankind's capacity for order and its desire for dominance can be combined in the same structure. We can admire an aqueduct and question the power that made it possible. We can marvel that a Roman road can still be traced two thousand years later, while also considering which legion it first carried where.

When designing the tea called "Do You Ever Think About the Roman Empire?" , we weren't trying to recreate an ancient Roman drink.

Black tea, after all, wasn't a drink of the Roman world. Star anise originated in Southern China and Vietnam; lemongrass belonged to the warm climates of South and Southeast Asia. The widespread history of the orange varieties we know today in Europe would also take shape centuries after Rome. To place them in a Roman cuisine would be a pleasant-looking fiction, not history.

We considered something else: the geographical appetite of the Roman Empire.

Rome was not a closed world content with what grew within its borders. It stood at the edge of trade networks stretching from Egypt to the Red Sea ports, and from there to the Arabian Peninsula and India. Black pepper from South India became such a sought-after commodity on Roman tables that Roman writers complained about the flow of gold and silver to the East. The empire's armies may not have reached India or China; but its ambitions, its money, and its merchant ships extended far beyond its political borders.

Therefore, the ingredients in the recipe do not represent Rome's actual food supply list, but rather the idea of bringing together distant parts of the world around a single center.

Turmeric carries imperial gold into the cup. Its bright, warm, and almost ceremonial color evokes triumphal processions, eagle banners, the afternoon sun beating down on temple facades, and Rome's self-confidence in considering itself the natural center of the world. But its origins take us eastward, to India. Thus, turmeric represents not only the splendor of Rome, but also the distant worlds that splendor sought to reach.

Star anise is the small map of the prescription. With its pointed arms branching out from the center, it resembles roads stretching out in different directions from Rome. Of course, not all roads actually led to Rome; but Rome was the kind of city that wanted every possible road to lead to it. The origins of star anise, stretching to Southeast Asia, transcend the empire's borders. It brings to the cup a wider world that Rome did not possess, but which it approached through trade and imagination.

Lemongrass introduces a refreshing breeze into this heavy historical narrative. With its sharp, green, and vibrant scent, it's an unexpected freshness that penetrates through the stone, marble, and armor. It comes from tropical lands not marked on the map of Rome; thus, it adds a foreign voice to the recipe, a reminder that no empire can ever possess the whole world.

Dried oranges carry the memory of the Mediterranean sun. Here, rather than directly representing a historical Roman fruit, they evoke the warm sea around which the empire was built, the coastal gardens, and the sun-dried fruits preserved. Their glossy peel is complemented by the golden color of turmeric; but the dried form also suggests that every splendor can lose its moisture over time, leaving only a fragrant memory.

Licorice root is one of the oldest and most direct links between this remedy and the Roman world. Known in the medicinal traditions of the Mediterranean and Western Asia, this root was used in antiquity to soothe the throat and quench thirst. Its taste is also peculiar, befitting Rome: sweet at first, then rooty, dark, and long-lasting. Like an empire, it makes its presence felt immediately and continues to reign on the palate even after it has passed.

Black tea is the main road upon which all these distant geographies are built. It is not Roman in origin; however, with its strong, regular, and load-bearing structure, it takes on the role of Roman roads in the recipe. It connects turmeric, star anise, orange, lemongrass, and licorice root to a single route. Each ingredient retains its own character; but now they move within the same system.

In a sense, this is what Rome did: it didn't always invent what it encountered, but it collected, adapted, scaled, and reorganized it under its own name. It incorporated the gods of other peoples into its pantheon, their engineering ideas into its cities, their soldiers into its legions, and their elites into its administrative system. One of Rome's greatest talents was transforming what belonged to others into a functioning part of the Roman system.

The box naturally features a Roman bust.

With his stern gaze, thin face, and receding hairline, this face evokes the familiar portrait tradition of Julius Caesar. Caesar's presence here also carries a beautiful historical detail: he was not technically a Roman emperor. He was the lifelong dictator of the Roman Republic; but the empire as we understand it today was born after his assassination in 44 BC, when his adopted son and heir Octavian seized power as Augustus.

So the man on the label is not the ruler of the empire; he is the person standing on the threshold between the republic and the empire.

Caesar conquered Gaul, built a bridge over the Rhine, launched a campaign into Britain, won the civil war, and irrevocably changed the political order in Rome. Then, one March morning, while attending a Senate meeting, he was assassinated amidst the fear created by his own achievements. Those who killed him thought they had saved the republic. Yet the assassination only accelerated the transformation they sought to halt.

Caesar died, but his name lived on. Caesar ceased to be merely a surname and became a title for Roman rulers. Centuries later, the German Kaiser and the Russian Tsar would continue to echo the same name. Few people can transform their name into a political office after their death.

The bust on the label is therefore not simply a visual way of saying “Rome.” That face carries the historical irony of a man becoming the symbol of an empire before it was even founded. It looks at the question on the box with a hint of suspicion:

Do you ever think about the Roman Empire?

The bust's answer would probably be, "Which empire?"

Because when Caesar died, there was no longer a formal Roman Empire.

Today, when we think of Rome, we mostly recall a single image: marble columns, red cloaks, eagle banners, legions, and amphitheaters. Yet the true story of Rome is far more diverse, multilingual, and geographically complex. It is the story of millions of people—soldiers, slaves, merchants, citizens, foreigners, and emperors—from the rains of Britain to the granaries of Egypt, from Anatolian cities to North African ports.

It is no coincidence that the recipe brings together ingredients from very distant origins in the same cup. Turmeric, star anise, lemongrass, orange, and licorice may not belong in a Roman recipe. But together they encapsulate Rome's greatest idea: that the world, from vastly different parts, could meet around roads, trade, and the desire for a great center.

The empire eventually crumbled. The political structure in the West collapsed, some of the roads fell silent, statues were toppled, and the stones of the temples mingled with the walls of other buildings. But Rome did not disappear entirely. It continued to live on in languages, legal systems, city plans, calendars, political titles, and in our minds.

Perhaps that's why people still think about him a few times a week.

Perhaps the real achievement is that, even two thousand years later, a marble face on a box can still make us ask the same question.

Do you ever think about the Roman Empire?

Now you're thinking.