If Ancient Rome Had the Internet

As a former Classics major and a social media "maven," as I've been called, I found the following post from No man is an iland, an email marketing blog, worth sharing. It's not often that you get to see a creative combination of our techno-powered present and the ancient world. (I wonder how many other Classics/social media types there are out there?)

One of the things I enjoyed most about my Classical education was the ability to study a wide variety of subjects - history, drama, literature, philosophy, language, politics. Over and over again, I was astounded to observe that throughout the ages, despite the changes of civilization and technology, human nature remains constant. To wit, I give you:

If Ancient Rome Had the Internet:

• The destruction of Pompeii in 79 A.D. is the most viewed video at YouTube. The first comment is..."OMG so cool! Volcanos ROCK!"


• Attila the Hun has his own MySpace page. Nobody ever rejects his "invite a friend" emails.


• The soothsayer's "Ides of March" email fails to get Caesar's proper attention as it's inadvertently filtered into his junk folder.


• But at least Caesar's "Et tu Brute?" comment is available as a free ringtone download.


• The domain gladiator.rome sells for the record sum of 1,000,000 denarii.


• The owner of hadriansucks.rome is compelled to hand over both the domain name and selected body parts by an independent domain tribunal chaired by...Emperor Hadrian.


• "Naked Cleopatra" is the top search term on Google.


• Unfortunately, the Queen of Egypt dies an early death after misunderstanding IT's call to embrace an ASP solution.


• Hannibal blogs his way across the Alps with posts like, "Whoops, lost another elephant today."


• But he runs out of money when his PPC budget is plundered by an Iberian click scam organized by Publius Cornelius Scipio.


• Tiber.com opens, initially selling scrolls and tablets before expanding to include togas, pottery, and do-it-yourself mosaic kits.


• Websites like handsome-literate-male-british-slave.com pollute the search listings thanks to generous commissions at the slaves.co.rome affiliate program.


• Roman programmers moan about projects outsourced to cheap coders in Mesopotamia.


• The Colosseum is renamed the eBay Colosseum, with free wireless hotspots outside the lark's tongue restaurant.


• The volume of spam collapses when the penalty for not providing a working opt-out mechanism becomes equal billing with the lions at the eBay Colosseum.


• But we still get emails featuring Brunhilda, the lonely Visigoth, and hot deals on cheap peacock livers from Gaul.


• Nobody invents a spam filter good enough for the House of the Vestals.


• Classical geeks wear t-shirts proclaiming, "there's no place like CXXVII.0.0.I" (bonus points if you get that one)


• Finally, Rome burns to the ground while Emperor Nero battles online with Hakkar the Soulflayer in World of Warcraft.

Actually, I'd probably change the last entry to "Nero Twitters while Rome burns."