Column: Thoughts from Dr. Joe: Lessons for today from ancient Rome
“Kaitzer!” I blurted. “What did you do with my copy of Frommer’s “Europe on 5 Dollars a Day?”
“You have to be kidding me,” my wife replied, and she began to laugh. Actually, I wasn’t kidding. In 1972, when backpacking through Europe, the book served me well. I thought that now I’m retired I could navigate my way on pennies a day.
I threw my backpack over my shoulders, stuffed my friend Palma Vincenti’s notes on Umbria in a side pocket and once again, I was on the loose.
“Don’t get arrested,” Kaitzer said, as I walked out the door. I didn’t make any promises.
My first stop was Rome. Before I left for Tuscany and Umbria, I’d spend a few days visiting my niece Ashley and her husband, John. Since our daughter Simone is studying Italian culture in Rome, I’d hang out with her and make sure she’d understood why Rome is called the Eternal City.
During a five-hour layover in Montreal, I attempted to devour Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy,” which is considered one of the preeminent works of Italian literature and one of the greatest works of world literature. However, Dante’s story, “La Vita Nuova,” would be critical to the research I would undertake in Florence. His muse Beatrice, the love interest in “La Vita Nuova,” was the catalyst of his genius. I would follow the paths that he traveled, hoping to find his spirit and understand his soul. Read me next week and I’ll tell you of the path of Dante.
What could one possibly say about Rome? That all roads lead to it. For millennia, Rome has embodied and repelled every cliché, description and act of comprehension or explanation applied to it. As a city, it has been built and destroyed and rebuilt. It has celebrated and signified and outlasted Caesars and barbarians and popes and fascists and prophets and artists and pilgrims and schemers and migrants and lovers and fools. That must be the reason why it is called the Eternal City. But finding its Zen is beyond my pay grade. One thing for sure, you won’t find it in the guide books.
As I write these thoughts, I’m sitting in Piazza Venezia. The piazza, overlooking the ancient city, is where Romulus founded Rome and where emperors lived surrounded by opulent wealth. I can sense the smoky skies, the rank smell of the Tiber, and the exotically spiced cooking fires of a hundred different nationalities. I can hear the hum of more people, speaking more languages than Romulus had ever imagined crammed together on seven hills whose contours had long ago disappeared beneath ages of humanity. Rome was the heart of the world.
It’s not the sights that are compelling, it’s understanding the history and how that history equates to today.
The dangers we face today do not evolve from our religions or our ideologies. Instead, they evolve from a growing intellectual bankruptcy that is symptomatic of a dying culture. In ancient Rome, as the republic disintegrated and the Caesars were deified, as the Roman Senate became little more than an echo chamber of the emperor, the population’s attention was diverted by triviality, elaborate spectacles in the arena. The excitement of entertainment consumed ancient Rome’s emotional and intellectual life. It poisoned civic and political discourse. Social critics no longer had a forum in which to speak. They were answered with ridicule and rage. It was not the prerogative of the citizenry to think.
I’m left with the realization that after 2,000 years, nothing has changed.
I hear 15 bells chime from a distant church. It’s 3 p.m. I must leave immediately to meet Simone at Piazza Cavour. It will take 50 minutes to walk there. Frommer’s “Europe on 5 Dollars a Day,” suggests you walk everywhere.
JOE PUGLIA is a practicing counselor, a retired professor of education and a former officer in the Marines. Reach him at doctorjoe@ymail.com. Visit his website at doctorjoe.us.
