Rome, Italy

August 22-26, 2000

The ancient dust that rolled over Caesar’s sandals is now being kicked up by motorcycle & scooter tires and the pulse of monuments still beat as the foundations for our present society. When 500 year old buildings don’t seem so old, enter Rome and be fascinated by what stands of 2000, even 3000 year old remains of a fallen society that had it all: indoor plumbing, central heating, shopping malls, tourist traps, over 190 annual holidays and free public entertainment.

Half of my time here was spent with another best buddy from the States, Eddy, enjoying the splendor of marble relics in the, ugh, August heat. Luckily we had just missed last week’s Jubilee 2000 that brought millions of people in to party with the pope, dominate the streets and fill all the accommodation. When I arrived, they were cleaning the chariot circus track left of matted down grass and water bottles.

The coliseum has long been gone through for material to build other huge projects, but the inside remains. When the Roman Empire was on it’s way out, the games could no longer be funded. Expensive they were, it’s true. In the first 100 days about 5000 animals and 5000 humans died performing. Slaves, prisoners, and volunteers(!?) known as Gladiators started by entering the ring with, “Today we die for you,” then went on to play with the hungry lions, tigers, elephants and giraffes that nearly drove some African species to extinction. As a break, there was a comedy in which large women would be dressed with out weapons like the gladiators and a midget with catch and clobber her to death. Bets were placed on how long it would take for him to catch and kill. These were sophisticated, brutal and barbaric times.

The Christians weren’t dealt with here, however. Historians are torn as if they were dipped in tar and oil and used as human candles to light the floor where every there was a death every 10 seconds of play. Blood flowed liberally. The slaves who survived for 5-7 years (they had to play every other week, plus every annual holiday) would be set free (none are known to have made it with a 50% chance of coming out of each game) but the volunteer Gladiators that made it out became heroes, of course, some of the higher ups would have a few legs broken of the opponent for an edge.

Ruins and mystery dominate the landscape. The architecture, art, aqueduct system and civil organization were impressive even by today’s standards. A few years ago a way has been discovered to recreate the massive dome of the Pantheon using today’s technology, but they still have no idea this was done millenniums before.

The unfortunate paving over by Mussolini destroyed and covered some of this antiquity for his military parades and the modern Roman roads burry remains and stain the street side buildings with smoke. This is still an urban archaeologists dream with excavations taking place through out and discoveries left for the next civilization.