all roads lead to Rome

During my visit to Florence I was captivated by the Renaissance, especially the art that was produced during this period.  My visit to Rome has, however, opened my ignorant eyes to a people of extraordinary gifts and talents.  The Romans.  From the legend of Romulus and Remus; abandoned, raised by a wolf the brothers fought each other and Romulus, the victor, founded his Rome.  After all I have seen I have to wonder who was this people who had the ability to conquer most of the world known to them, but also engineer and built extraordinary things.

And yes, extraordinary their creations were.  In Rimini I stood before a bridge that in 2000 years had never needed any repairs and I walked through The Colosseum that is the archetype for the world’s sports stadiums since AD 80.  According to my Eyewitness Travel, that is; but for the record I made the same remark during my visit.

This blog is not a summary of my research on the Roman Empire – for that I will have to write a thesis.  But rather to rethink things that struck me. The first of which is that you can never get away from the Romans.  I bought a National Geographic (Feb 2013) in which the main article is about Libya, precisely an Unseen Libya-reclaiming its forgotten past.  And what do you know: “Among the world’s largest, best preserved ancient Roman cities, Leptis Magna, flourished under the rule of Septimius Severus, who was born here.”  This was coincidence enough, reading about a city that rivalled Rome as an urban centre but my next read, a fictional novel from Bernard Cornwell was just too much: “But these Roman buildings were all joined together and made of stone and strange narrow bricks…; At the centre of the town, where the four streets met in a wide open square, there stood a vast and wondrous building…surely no one living could make such a thing; so high, so white and so sharply cornered.  Pillars held the roof high, and all along the triangular space between the roofs peak and the pillars’ tops were fantastic pictures carved in white stone.’  I have to explain that my book is about Arthur and his round table of knights.  Even in Harry Potter the Roman Emperor, Septimius Severus found his way as the double agent Professor Snape.

I wonder what the Romans would think if they saw us now.  And I cannot help but wonder where the genius has gone that founded and supported that empire.  Maybe we saw it during the renaissance when Leonardo da Vince and Michelangelo designed and engineered.  But where is it today? Or is it used to make iPhones?  Haha, I really do not want to offend any modern day hero but sometimes I wonder if we spend too much on entertainment?

Nope, I believe modern geniuses are truly doing great things.  Someone once said: God created earth; everything else was created by man.  So maybe in a few 100 years people will look back to our time and think; wow, now this was something.  Because the Romans, they were truly something.