Rome: Ruins

It is perhaps impossible to walk through Italy without thinking about the life cycle of empires. You see the relics of the Etruscans, the pagan Romans, the Christian Romans, the medievals, the Renaissance merchant-aristocrat families, and so on; and as you tour these places you hear the sounds of another empire--American pop music. My tours have, additionally, been accompanied by news of imminent global financial collapse, shocks throughout the empire that is currently dominant.

If there's one thing to learn from Rome, it is that the memorial and the private residence crumble equally--that you can't really choose what future generations find out about you. Maybe it's stated most fittingly by the inscription that accompanies the skeletons in the Capuchins' crypt:

QUELLO CHE VOI SIETE NOI ERAVAMO,
QUELLO CHE NOI SIAMO VOI SARETE.
(What you are we were, what we are you will be.)

Ironically enough, while I was inside the Colosseum, a foot race was taking place around its perimeter. I was surprised to learn that part of its considerable surface damage was due to later generations, who treated the building as a marble quarry and apparently thought nothing of carting off pieces of it. We don't have control over that sort of thing either, I guess.




Then, Constantine's Arch, the ruins of the Forum, the Palatine Hill, the Capitoline Hill, the temple of the Vestal Virgins, the temple of Apollo, and so forth. It can be difficult here to know what you're looking at; in some cases I couldn't tell then; in some cases I've forgotten.




I do know this was once the Temple of Saturn.


And this was Augustus's house (14 BR, COL VW, MUST SEE!).


In the evening, when I came back for the nighttime view of the Campidoglio, the arch of Septimus Severus was just visible against the darkness, with the broken columns and walls behind it like ghosts.