{"id":29889,"date":"2018-01-19T07:27:26","date_gmt":"2018-01-19T12:27:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=29889"},"modified":"2018-01-19T07:27:26","modified_gmt":"2018-01-19T12:27:26","slug":"rome-a-eulogy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=29889","title":{"rendered":"Rome: A Eulogy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rome: A Eulogy<\/a><\/h3>\n
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When we find ourselves in times of trouble, we could do worse than plunge into The Academy of Western Civilization.<\/p>\n

So let me take you down on a stroll around the ultimate theo-geopolitical space: the Eternal City, a.k.a. Caput Mundi (\u201cwonder of the world\u201d).<\/p>\n

In Adonais, Shelley urged \u201cGo thou to Rome\u201d and \u201cfrom the world\u2019s bitter wind \/ seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb\u201d. What better refuge than Rome\u2019s ruins, stressing loud and clear that fragmentation and mortality are mere illusion, and reality is enduring unity outside time.<\/p>\n

Since Petrarch arrived from Avignon in 1341 to sing its praises, Rome in the Western mind has represented the ultimate threshold, the ultimate shrine. It\u2019s still easy to picture Freud at the Forum comparing the vertical sequence of Roman ruins to the layers of memory in our psyche. Or Fellini in La Dolce Vita also interpreting Roman life as a vertical sequence, cinematically playing with images from different historical eras.<\/p>\n

The mythical origins of Rome point to a resurgence of Troy vanquished by the Greeks. The foundation \u2013 and development \u2013 of Rome involves Mars as the father of Romulus and Remus, and Venus giving birth to the \u201cgens Julia\u201d of which Caesar sprang up. Greek-Latin antiquity is a formidable theo-geopolitical space. Vanquished in Troy, Mars and Venus got their revenge in Rome.<\/p>\n

An empire lasting five centuries could not but still be imprinted in the Western psyche. It\u2019s a pleasure to revisit Suetonius describing how Augustus embellished Rome for the glory of the empire. Or Lucretius, two centuries after Epicurus, presenting the world as issued from a flux of matter and composed by the congregation of every atom in the universe.<\/p>\n

Our collective psyche is familiar with what happened after the reign of Marcus Aurelius; the Germans to the west and the Parthians to the east threatened the borders of the empire.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rome: A Eulogy When we find ourselves in times of trouble, we could do worse than plunge into The Academy of Western Civilization. So let me take you down on a stroll around the ultimate theo-geopolitical space: the Eternal City, a.k.a. Caput Mundi (\u201cwonder of the world\u201d). In Adonais, Shelley urged \u201cGo thou to Rome\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[5493,4076,5923,1024,4756],"class_list":["post-29889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-survival-2","tag-counterpunch","tag-pepe-escobar","tag-roman-empire","tag-rome","tag-western-civilization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29889"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29890,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29889\/revisions\/29890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}