Chapter XVI: Six days in Ancient Rome

I keep losing things. I've already mentioned the blood testing kit and described the devastating few hours without my insulin. Less importantly, I'm down one umbrella and one pair of sunglasses, but that's not surprising: they're disposable items, they inevitably either break or disappear. I lost a jumper in Lisbon, and its replacement later fell in the line of duty in Romania. My camera case lasted until Greece, and is being replaced in the interim by a sock, the pair of which didn't make it out of Avignon. 

I needed to replace my eye mask - for a second time - in Bulgaria. If there are travel shops in Sofia I couldn't find them, but there's no shortage of sex shops so, after looking both ways to make certain there was nobody from the hostel around I darted inside one, avoiding eye contact, and bought a rather fetching blindfold with gold floral motifs. 

The insulin aside, by far the most upsetting casualty of the trip was a 2012 Swans premiership polo shirt, one of only three I own. Apart from work and other obligatory semi-formal settings I am rarely spotted wearing anything else, and given the way the Swans are going this year I am less than hopeful of being able to replace them with updated models any time soon. Losing one was a bitter blow. 

Its absence was actually discovered on the same day my insulin briefly went AWOL, but I didn't mention it then as negotiations were at a delicate stage, and I didn't want to tempt fate. See, I wasn't leaving this one behind. It's too precious. After contacting three hostels I was finally able to track it down in Florence and, after some back and forth arranged for it to be couriered back to me in Rome. The Florentine hostel understood its importance because they had washed and ironed it for me. They even put it in bubble wrap.

I don't seem to learn, however. I lost my pants in the Vatican.

*

I've written before about my egocentric notion that you might 'know' some places to be real, but not quite *believe* they are real until you've verified their existence personally. Rome's ancient Forum is one of those places. A pile of stone foundations and the occasional surviving column is all it might be now, but when I suddenly realised in October 2013 that this trip was on - that enough stars had aligned that I could make it happen - it was in the Forum that I imagined myself walking.

I'm fascinated by Ancient Rome, and have been since I first read Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series, a sprawling (fictionalised) epic that tells the story of the fall of the Roman Republic over 80 years, seven books and about 6,000 pages. I've mostly wriggled loose from McCullough's influence over the years - I no longer share her unwavering admiration for Julius Caesar, who might just have been the love of her life - but it's a story I keep coming back to. 

Let me recap events in 300 words or less. Roman politics was split into two factions: the conservative, oligarchic Optimates and the reformist, albeit rabble-rousing Populares. The respective leaders of the factions in around 90BCE, Gaius Marius, who was Julius Caesar's uncle, and Sulla, who was posthumously Caesar's grandfather-in-law, fought a war, which was continued after Marius's death by his ally Cinna, who was Caesar's first father-in-law, before he married Sulla's granddaughter.

Caesar himself rose to lead the Populares, despite having the bluest of blue, blue patrician blood himself. After Pompey, his former ally and son-in-law (detecting a theme here?), married into the Optimates the two fought another war, which Caesar won. A brief dalliance with Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, followed, but not long after Caesar had achieved absolute power he was assassinated by a group that included his cousin, Decimus Brutus (a rather disloyal bastard who was even named in Caesar's will, they were so close), and another Brutus -  Marcus - who was the son of Caesar's former mistress, Servilia. 

Caesar's nephew-turned-adopted-son, Octavian, and Caesar's cousin, Marc Antony, who was also later Octavian's brother-in-law, allied to despatch the Brutes and co. But they later fell out themselves, and Antony humiliated his wife, Octavia, by himself taking up with Cleopatra along the way. When Octavian defeated them - murdering Cleopatra and Caesar's son, his adoptive-half-brother, into the bargain - he was the last one left standing, and the Republic was finished. 

How could you not be fascinated? It's House of Cards meets Game of Thrones meets Days Of Our Lives. 

This was the period of history I was in Rome to bring to life. Unlike most cities, where I set out for an aimless wander, this time I had a plan. I was staying near the train station (on land that I think was once the barracks of the Praetorian Guard. I cross-referenced modern and ancient maps to find out. Yes, I'm obsessed). My first day (and second) were always going to revolve around ancient sites, but I wanted to build up towards the Forum, which had the most significance to me, so I made an enormous loop that took me north - to the Ara Pacis museum, via the obligatory (but not ancient) Trevi Fountain, and on to the Pantheon. I had braced myself for crushing crowds everywhere, but it was only at the Trevi and the Vatican that I felt claustrophobic. It's a pretty fountain though.

The Pantheon was one of my most anticipated sites. Originally a pagan temple built by the emperor Hadrian way back in 126CE (on the site of a former, damaged version), and later co-opted by the Catholic Church (they're good at that), it's remarkably well preserved for a building that age. The re-purposing undoubtedly helped save it: the Romans were such good builders that most of their great public buildings weren't destroyed by the ravages of time but by deliberate vandalism, either during wars or, frustratingly, to scavenge the building materials. 

What makes the Pantheon unique among Roman architecture is its enormous circular dome ceiling, with a light well in the middle that causes the sun to shine on different shrines inside at different times of the day:

From the Pantheon I gradually made my way south towards the Circus Maximus, skirting around the ancient core of the city by sticking close to the River Tiber. The Circus was once a racecourse that could seat 250,000 people: it's now a grassy car park that was being set up to host the Catholic Church "Golden Jubilee of Charismatic Renewal", which sounded mysterious but probably not my sort of thing at all. The Pope was due to be in attendance, and the city was already noticeably full of pilgrims, so I made a mental note to avoid the area on the coming Saturday and moved on, approaching the Colosseum from the south. 


The Colosseum is the most prominent and famous symbol of Ancient Rome, but it's one of my least favourite. Animals slaughtered by the thousand, slaves forced to fight to the death and gruesome, public executions of criminals: this was not a nice place, and I didn't linger too long. But it has an interesting exhibition about the afterlife of the arena after the fall of Rome: as a fortress, as a church (of course), and as a ruin, overgrown with vegetation, that inspired artists during the Romantic period. After the empire collapsed the population of Rome fell from over a million to perhaps as low as 10,000. It must have been an eerie, empty, post-apocalyptic sort of place when the people were gone but the great buildings were still standing. You could have had your choice of derelict villa.

By the time I was done at the Colosseum it was much too late in the day to tackle the Forum and Palatine hill, which have a combined entry. So I settled for a first glimpse, from outside the gates, of the once-centre of the Western world and came back the next day. The moment I was inside I had to stop, sit down and collect myself. I guess my reaction to being there was a combination of the purely personal importance of having arrived - making it to that place where, as I said earlier, my imagination of this trip had first taken me - and the significance of the Forum itself. The emotional response I should have had but didn't get during my blighted trip to the Athenian Agora - Europe's other, even older birthplace of modern politics - came here in full force.

The republican-era forum is almost entirely gone, built over first by Caesar, then Augustus, with various other construction - and then deconstruction - projects in the following centuries. There is very little left standing even of the imperial-era site:

But it didn't matter to me. I found the spot where the Curia - the Senate chamber - had stood: where Cato the Elder pestered the state into declaring war against Carthage, where the radical reformist Saturninus was murdered by conservatives who climbed on the roof and dropped tiles down upon his head inside, where Caesar declared that his wife must be above suspicion, and where the radical Clodius (also murdered, very few of them died of natural causes) was cremated by the mob, who burnt the building down around him. The site of another funeral pyre - Caesar's - is in the centre of the Forum and, bizarrely, people still lay flowers there.

Later in the stay I went back to the Forum after dark, when they light up the best preserved of the ruins:

I'd planned to go to the Colosseum at night, too, but I got lost on the Capitoline Hill (the centre of the ancient Roman religion, it directly overlooks the Forum) and by the time I found my way it was too late for the diversion.

I was largely done with the major ancient Roman sites after the first two days, but I went to the Baths of Diocletian - a truly enormous public baths complex, think spas the size of Olympic swimming pools - on the Sunday. It's now one of the sites of the National Museum of Rome, and as it was the first Sunday of the month it was free. More interesting than the exhibits was a mini music festival with a string quartet, a jazz quartet, a trio with an accordion being entirely drowned out by two tenors, and an Italian folk band (read: middle aged men in tights with flutes and a tambourine). Not bad for a lazy Sunday.

My visit to another National Museum site - the Palazzo Terme - was blighted by an encounter with another patron. There were a group of four Americans trying to buy tickets when I arrived, led by a tall, rippling fellow who was on holiday from his day job as an entitled, obnoxious, bullying prick. The Italian man at the desk was explaining how the ticket options worked - you could either buy tickets for one or multiple museum sites - in perfectly clear English. I suspect, though, that the last time Frat Boy actually listened to something was a recording of himself crooning to his own reflection in the shower. Instead of processing a straightforward equation - he could pay €7 for this one museum, or €12 for a ticket that got him into five - he kept turning to his posse and saying "what? WHAT?!", before turning back to the hapless cashier and demanding he explain it to him again.

I had priceless Roman frescoes and busts to see, so I tried to help squeeze the stupid through the gates and explained to his insufficiently embarrassed friends how the tickets worked, and jumped in and bought my own while they huddled to determine whether they wanted to be uncultured boors in one museum or five. Shortly afterwards, though, we crossed paths again when I walked into a gallery to find Frat Boy gripping onto, and trying to move, a large vase from the House of Livia. No. No, no, no, no, no. Don't do that. Just don't do that. 

There were security cameras in the room, so I swallowed my horror and hoped the cameras were being monitored live. But sure enough, in the very next gallery I see his paws all over a 2200 year old marble republican bust. My gag reflex kicked in. I couldn't swallow any more horror.

"Hey, mate", I said. "You can't touch those."

"What?" Frat Boy turned around, facing perhaps the first person to impose any sort of censure on his behaviour since he was in pre-school. "What did you say?"

"You can't touch those. They're 2200 years old. Conservators would never handle them without without gloves, and you're an over-energised anthropomorphic slime ball, so who knows what damage your gooey hands are doing".

(It is possible that this is no longer a literal account of the conversation, but you're getting the gist.)

Anthropomorphic Slime Ball denied touching anything, but when I named the two specific artefacts I'd seen him grappling with, and warned I'd go to security if there were a third, he recognised something he might have had no direct prior experience with in his life: accountability. He started glaring, and nodding, and he glared and nodded for a while. Remember Tony Abbott's "you're not saying anything Tony?" interview? It was like that, but with more muscles to tense (sorry Tony). "Yeah", he eventually spat. "I got it".

"Good, I'm glad", I said, and turned and walked away. I wasn't entirely confident that I wouldn't be king-hit, but I suspect he enjoys intimidating people and I wasn't inclined to oblige. He was the very prototype of an 'ugly American', right down to struggling to comprehend instructions given to him in English, but I don't think it's a fair stereotype. I met some wonderful Americans in Rome - a medical student named Will, with whom I shared pasta and ideas for boosting Democratic turnout in the midterms - and Erica and Delaney, a pair of art students who showed up on my last night and who, to my utter delight, swallowed my story about drop bears in full. I've met one Anthropomorphic Slime Ball, and dozens of friendly, easy-going Americans along the course of this trip. They get to define my expectations. Not him.

I had left the Vatican to my last day, as months earlier I'd booked an excavations tour and been allocated the Monday. The tour would take me through the excavated Roman-era cemetery they'd found when they started digging underneath St Peter's Basilica, which includes the tomb of the Pearly Gatekeeper himself. I had to be there at 9AM - God only knows how I'm going to go back to work because this seemed impossibly early - so I caught a bus for the only time during my stay in Rome. Along the way I chatted to a high school student who had done an exchange in Sydney and loved it so much she had the city's coordinates tattooed on her wrist. I assured her that Melbourne is better in all respects except harbours and football teams.

I had been skeptical about them having found St Peter's tomb, but I wasn't aware that having the tomb at its centre is the entire point of the Basilica being where it is. Christian shrines have been on the site for 1800 years or so, so it's certainly plausible that the burial site was known at the time. When they excavated the tomb itself they found bones inside, and took a few small pieces that are now in a box in the Papal Apartments before re-interring the rest. So there you go.

The tour finished in the Papal Grottoes under the Basilica, where more recent Popes are buried, and from there I could also access the Basilica itself without having to line up. I went through briefly, but I'd been unable to buy tickets to the Vatican Museums online, and I wanted to line up ASAP to at least see if the queues were tolerable enough to hang around for. It wasn't *too* bad - an hour and forty minutes, about half a Versailles - and I was able to pass the time by chatting to a young Romanian couple, whose naked envy as I described my trip itinerary, which they couldn't possibly save the money for back at home, was a good reminder of just how much of a privilege all this is. I don't feel guilty: I worked hard to make it happen. But sometimes people who work hard forget that their work builds on foundations laid by others. 

To be perfectly honest, once inside the Museums are a bit hit-and-miss. I was unlucky in that the Egyptian Room - one of the most interesting parts - was closed, and the classical collections were so choked with people, and indeed with sculptures, that it was a bit too overwhelming. They have statues poked everywhere, crowding each other out: it's not a good display technique. But the highlights here aren't the 'collections' per se, but the paintings on the walls themselves. The Sistine Chapel, though crowded, was astonishing: I was surprised to discover that the vaguely homoerotic scene of Adam reaching out to God is only one small part of the ceiling. Perhaps my favourite, though, was the Gallery of Maps, an epic long hall with maps of each part of Italy painted along each wall, with a cool little touch: historical events, such as Hannibal invading Italy with his elephants, are painted into the spots where they happened:

I loved Rome, perhaps more for what it was than what it is. But that's ok. I've walked in the footsteps of Cicero and Caesar. And I still find that remarkable just to write about.