For our generation, the world’s various problems today share a common element: their lack of precedent. From nuclear war to climate change to domination by artificial intelligence, we seem to face so many threats for the first time as a species, forcing us into action without the benefit of past examples to guide us.
Yet at Cornell, I’ve come to realize that, by this point in history, to think that anything at all is unprecedented is simply to have not read enough history. There is no question that someone else has not already tried to answer, no issue that another society has not previously addressed (if not in content then at least in form). If, therefore, we find ourselves so unable to locate a prior moment comparable with our own, perhaps we just need to look further back in time.
Throughout my studies in literature and the humanities, I’ve been surprised to discover that many of the figures I find most relatable belong to a period much detached from my own — Ancient Rome. Despite the huge temporal disparity between us and the Romans (or perhaps precisely because of it), the accounts of writers like Horace, Seneca and Tacitus may feel more familiar to a modern reader than even those of later writers, revealing societal conditions unexpectedly reminiscent of our current age.
The letters of Pliny the Younger, for example, are concerned not with heroic struggles or lofty idealism, but with, in the words of historian Ronald Syme, “Betrothal and matrimony, wills and bequest, the illness of a friend or bereavement in a family, the first flowering of poetical or oratorical genius,” and so on. Pliny’s writing deals with the everyday Rome of the middle-to-upper class, showcasing a society in which people matured slowly (with some reaching their sixties and seventies), worried about their careers and enjoyed cosmopolitan creature comforts — all exactly as we do now.
And just like us, these privileged Romans inhabited a bubble within their society — a stable intellectual center, maintained by a periphery of empire and conquest. Does this not remind us of our own position here, seated in our exclusive education, tucked away in our snug corner of Upstate New York, only dimly aware of the strife occurring elsewhere in our country and on our planet?
In some ways, our world may resemble that of Pliny more than even that of recent generations. You’ve likely encountered the meme, ‘My parents at age 24 vs me at age 24,’ in which your parents are preparing to buy a house or have a child — while immature you, in contrast, are obsessing over some TV show or video game. This meme, self-deprecating as it is, has a positive implication at its core: that our generation is under less pressure to grow up quickly, and that we are at greater ease to take our time in life than our parents were. After 2,000 years on the fluctuating sine diagram of history, it seems that humans (at least, the ones reading this) have managed with our generation to return to a point of general affluence, idleness and security comparable to those of Ancient Rome. In that sense, classical antiquity might be the most relevant and overlooked parallel to our own moment.
Rather than fix our eyes exclusively on the history of the past century or two, we ought to extend our gaze further and consider the lived experiences of the people whose situations were most congruent with ours. For Cornell students, this is an easy step to take. Whether you are seeking to engage in politics and the pressing issues of the day, or are simply searching for advice in negotiating the demands of your everyday life, the answer remains the same: take a classics course. Read beyond the scope of your own era, and be willing to acknowledge that it might not be as special as we love to think.
It is the example of the classical writers that we need right now, as we fight the battles of friends and family, career and ambition, anxiety, depression and existential meaning — all while struggling with a consciousness of the hidden atrocities and exploitation over which our lives have been built. And perhaps, in making these connections, in tending to the small, personal and mundane stuff, we might stumble across an answer to the bigger stuff — the end-of-the-world stuff — as well.
Max Nam ‘26 is part of the Milstein Program in Technology and Humanity, the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship and the Humanities Scholars Program.
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