Even a Roman oracle would be pushed to predict the path of Brexit

‘Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?”, asked Reg in Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Steered the debate over Brexit, that’s what.

A study of more than a million public Facebook posts has revealed that the Romans were at the heart of discussions over the EU referendum. In the lead-up to June 2016, Remainers compared the civilising force of the EU to that of the Roman Empire. Brexiteers, meanwhile, portrayed the Romans as vicious oppressors. To vote Leave was to rebel like Boudicca against a controlling power.

Comparisons have long been drawn between Europe and ancient Rome. Boris Johnson himself described the EU as “the inheritor of the Roman Empire” in his 2006 book The Dream of Rome. Yet in this study, conducted at the Institute of Archaeology at UCL, Romans were invoked by both sides of the debate.

Why the Romans? It’s not as though they were complimentary to us. They were known to characterise the Britons as huge, remote, head-hunting brutes. And yet we persist in looking to them as authorities. The Romans are brought into every important discussion, often on dubious grounds, as if they can solve our problems from beyond the grave. The ancients, idealised from the Renaissance to the Third Reich, are seen all across Europe as gatekeepers to who we really are.

It’s partly because Roman history throws up scenarios that are instantly familiar to us – be it via Shakespeare or the resurgence of Classics in schools and popular culture. Look to the Republic for the rise of populism, revolutions against a ruling elite, the formation of dodgy alliances and frenzied back-stabbing. Look to the Empire for unbalanced autocrats, decline and fall.

Scholars still debate the causes of the fall of Rome. The 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon saw Christianity and invasions by “a deluge of barbarians” as contributing factors. Facebook-using Brexiteers similarly likened the fall of the Roman Empire to the collapse of Britain under the weight of foreigners and bureaucracy.

So how have the Romans come to be models to opposing sides? It helps that the sources are so malleable. There are enough gaps in the ancient narrative for us to feel it’s ours for the taking. We also seem to think that, the further we look back in time, the likelier we are to find a straightforward solution to our conflicts and crises of identity. Ancient Greece seems too far away, the Middle Ages too difficult to pin down, the Victorians too close. The Romans are so present in our landscapes and so obviously ahead of their time that they are the ones we measure ourselves against. It’s less a question of what the Romans have done for us than of what we have done to better them.

But while Remainers and Leavers alike may seek precedents for their feelings in the ancient past, they’re unlikely to find an easy solution in Roman Britain. The Romans, after all, were many things at once: merciless, culturally generous, tolerant of others’ traditions. We should be wary of trying to cram them into our boxes. A referendum poses a binary choice between one scenario and another. History doesn’t.

Daisy Dunn is the author of ‘Catullus’ Bedspread’ (William Collins) FOLLOW Daisy Dunn on Twitter @Daisyfdunn; READ MORE at telegraph.co.uk/opinion