I know this is a joke/meme, but I sincerely think of the Roman Empire a surprising amount of times. I find myself obsessing over how Roman citizens were living just as complex lives as we are today, or about Marcus Aurelius’ life and philosophy, or about how the Republic fell and became a totalitarian state.
Pretty often. One of my main research interests is the Gospel of Thomas which ends up extremely tied to events around the Roman empire.
Just a day or two ago I was looking at when Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura was popularly being read and cited given the apparent link between those two documents.