Knowing the thread, i don't really see a correlation ( and it seems te exagerated + coincidence considering the timing in the reddit thread - ~4 hours between)
Depends on what you mean by "almost" and "Europe" I guess. They never conquered (all of) present day Germany, Poland, Scotland or Ireland. None of the entirety of Scandinavia, or the Baltic states, etc.
At the peak of the Roman Empire, the Iron Age had been going for about 400 years in Northern Europe, so it was clearly inhabited and not completely backwards: and if anyone feels like making the argument that there was nothing "worth" conquering in these parts anyway, consider that 1) you're just parroting what the Romans themselves would have said and 2) if that is true, why did the Romans ever attempt to conquer the Germanic Tribes? It's not like present-day Germany was a bastion of so-called "civilization" compared to present day Scandinavia. The simple answer is that the Romans couldn't.
So without taking anything away from how absolutely gigantic the Roman Empire was, I can't agree with the statement that they "acquired almost every piece of land in Europe" -- not that it really makes that much of a difference since many parts of the Roman Empire were firmly outside of Europe.
The power of the Roman Empire was extraordinary - that was my only point.
Thank you!
The expression for variations of "who cares" would be "Sticazzi" (~= "these dicks") and is a particularly important expression in roman culture! "Not caring" is core to our being, in most bad and good ways :)
There's even a short story whose origin I can't recall:
When God finished making the world, God was looking at his creation and some people showed up:
- Lord, we'd like to ask for Power - Let it be granted - said the Lord, and those became the Kings and Queens and Emperors
Then some more people showed up:
- Lord, we'd like to ask for Power - The Powerful already have that - Well, we'd like to ask for the Wealth then - Let it be granted - said the Lord, and those became the rich people.
Then God saw the Romans walk by and yelled at them
- Hey folks, I'm sorry, there's neither Power nor Wealth left!
The romans looked at each other in confusion, and replied "sticazzi?"
God thought about it a bit:
- Let it be granted!