I have watched many of the top rome documentaries on Youtube and there is so much to cover and there are so many books so many stories so many generations of Romans that within the roman civilization itself people looked back upon their own ancestors as "antiquity" And the Eastern Roman empire lasted all the way into the Byzantine Empire and so rome lasted a lot longer than people think....

The Movie Gladiator probably did more than anything else in our culture to spark an interest in Ancient Rome. That idea of a more simple civilization really attracted so many people! It must be natural to want to remember an older simpler time. It must have been very romantic and nice if you had wealth and power back then and could time travel to that time period but with the knowledge of today.... That must be how people far in the future must feel like when they visit us in todays time period :)