Why did the Italians spend centuries cosplaying as Romans? Not just building in Roman style or reading Roman texts, but reconstructing an entire cultural identity based on an empire that collapsed a thousand years earlier?
Ada Palmer, historian and science fiction author, explores this question in a short discussion with Dwarkesh Patel. The answer is not what you would expect. It is not nostalgia. It is something closer to deliberate cultural engineering.
Choosing Your Ancestors
Renaissance Italy did not inherit Roman identity. It constructed it. Scholars dug up texts, studied architecture, reverse-engineered political philosophy. They made choices about which bits of Rome to revive and which to ignore. Classical Latin, yes. Imperial expansion, less so. Republican civic virtue, absolutely. Gladiatorial combat, not so much.
This was not passive cultural transmission. This was active reinvention. A society looking at its present circumstances - fragmented city-states, economic competition, political instability - and deciding that a particular version of its past offered a useful framework for Going ahead.
Palmer's point is that cultural identity is not fixed. It is performed, rehearsed, chosen. The Italians chose Rome because it gave them language, legitimacy, and a shared story that transcended local rivalries. It worked because enough people agreed to perform the same cultural script.
The Renaissance as a Reconstruction Project
What is striking is how much had to be reconstructed from fragments. The linguistic gap alone was enormous. Latin had evolved into Italian dialects. Classical Latin was a learned language, reconstructed through careful study of ancient texts. The architecture, the philosophy, the political models - all of it required deliberate scholarly effort to piece back together.
This was not a natural cultural evolution. This was a project. Led by scholars, funded by patrons, performed by artists and politicians who saw advantage in Roman association. The Renaissance was not Rome returning. It was Italy deciding that Rome was a useful story to tell about itself.
Palmer's work often explores how societies construct their own narratives. This short discussion touches on a theme that runs through her fiction and her academic research: we are not passive inheritors of culture. We actively choose which legacies to claim and which to set aside.
What This Means Beyond History
The parallel to now is not subtle. We are living through a moment where technology is reshaping how we work, communicate, govern ourselves. The temptation is to treat this as inevitable, as something happening to us. Palmer's analysis suggests otherwise.
Cultural identity - including how we think about technology, progress, and what kind of future we want - is constructed. The Italians cosplayed Romans because it served their needs. We are currently cosplaying a version of the future that was written in Silicon Valley boardrooms. That is a choice, not a destiny.
The question Palmer leaves hanging is: what would it look like to make different choices? To reconstruct a relationship with technology that serves different values, draws on different legacies, tells a different story about where we are going?
Renaissance Italy shows it is possible to reach backwards and forwards simultaneously. To reconstruct a past that never quite existed in order to build a future that does not yet exist. The Romans they were imitating were not the actual Romans. They were an ideal, a framework, a set of principles extracted and repurposed.
The Deeper Point
This is not about historical trivia. This is about agency. The ability to look at the stories we tell ourselves - about who we are, where we came from, what we value - and recognise that those stories are not fixed. They are performed. And performance can change.
The Italians cosplayed Romans because they needed a unifying identity that transcended local politics. They built it from fragments, scholarly reconstruction, and collective agreement to perform the same cultural script. It worked because enough people committed to it.
We are telling ourselves stories right now about AI, progress, the future of work, what it means to be human in a world of intelligent machines. Those stories feel inevitable. Palmer's work reminds us they are not. They are constructed. And what is constructed can be reconstructed.