Rome Eternal City Quotes

Rome seems a comfort to those with the ambitious soul of an Artist or a Conqueror.

But if men are the makers and breakers of empires, then women are the makers and breakers of men.

He doesn't need to tend her, because she hunts her own prey. He doesn't need to shield her, because she kills her own enemies. He doesn't need to look for her, because she's always at his side.

The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve. .. Even in the Eternal City (Rome), says the silent Augusteum, one must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation.

And now the measure of my song is done: The work has reached its end; the book is mine, None shall unwrite these words: nor angry Jove, Nor war, nor fire, nor flood, Nor venomous time that eats our lives away. Then let that morning come, as come it will, When this disguise I carry shall be no more, And all the treacherous years of life undone, And yet my name shall rise to heavenly music, The deathless music of the circling stars. As long as Rome is the Eternal City These lines shall echo from the lips of men, As long as poetry speaks truth on earth, That immortality is mine to wear.

Vix watched you like a lion watches a lioness.” “And how does a lion watch a lioness?” Sabina didn’t even try to pretend nonchalance this time. “He doesn’t need to tend her, because she hunts her own prey. He doesn’t need to shield her, because she kills her own enemies. He doesn’t need to look for her, because she’s always at his side.

Even when she was just a flutter inside me, I loved her. Because she is ours.

He turns toward the voice. It is as though the darkness itself has spoken. But when he looks closer he can make her out - the very pale blonde hair first, gleaming in what little light there is, then the shimmering stuff of her dress.

Oh, Hell's gates!" Annia cried, borrowing Vix's favorite curse.

Pin all your impatience on growing up, she thought, and then you learn it gets no better when you’re grown.

Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too. —MARCUS AURELIUS

Hatred doesn't lie. Hatred doesn't tell soothing stories. You'll tell me true.' ~ Hadrian

Annia of the red braid and the ferocious scowl and the long, long limbs. Annia Galeria Faustina... "Mine," I whispered, "Mine

of the dead is retained in the memory of

It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live. —MARCUS AURELIUS

You’d think the fate of the Eternal City would depend on someone like me, a warrior with bloody hands and a bloody sword. But it will rise or fall on a woman—and maybe it always does.

Second, and contrary to what some foreigners seem to think, not every pasta dish should be doused with grated cheese: you must not sprinkle cheese on pasta with any kind of cheese; ... and most Italians would rather die than put grated cheese on pasta made with fresh tomatoes.

Now the city is at its loveliest. The crowds of summer and autumn have gone, the air has a new freshness, the light has that pale-gold quality unique to this time of year. There have been several weeks of this weather now, without a drop of rain.

A change in direction was required. The story you finished was perhaps never the one you began. Yes! He would take charge of his life anew, binding his breaking selves together. Those changes in himself that he sought, he himself would initiate and make them. No more of this miasmic, absent drift. How had he ever persuaded himself that his money-mad burg would rescue him all by itself, this Gotham in which Jokers and Penguins were running riot with no Batman (or even Robin) to frustrate their schemes, this Metropolis built of Kryptonite in which no Superman dared set foot, where wealth was mistaken for riches and the joy of possession for happiness, where people lived such polished lives that the great rough truths of raw existence had been rubbed and buffed away, and in which human souls had wandered so separately for so long that they barely remembered how to touch; this city whose fabled electricity powered the electric fences that were being erected between men and men, and men and women, too? Rome did not fall because her armies weakened but because Romans forgot what being Roman meant. Might this new Rome actually be more provincial than its provinces; might these new Romans have forgotten what and how to value, or had they never known? Were all empires so undeserving, or was this one particularly crass? Was nobody in all this bustling endeavor and material plenitude engaged, any longer, on the deep quarry-work of the mind and heart? O Dream-America, was civilization's quest to end in obesity and trivia, at Roy Rogers and Planet Hollywood, in USA Today and on E!; or in million-dollar-game-show greed or fly-on-the-wall voyeurism; or in the eternal confessional booth of Ricki and Oprah and Jerry, whose guests murdered each other after the show; or in a spurt of gross-out dumb-and-dumber comedies designed for young people who sat in darkness howling their ignorance at the silver screen; or even at the unattainable tables of Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Alain Ducasse? What of the search for the hidden keys that unlock the doors of exaltation? Who demolished the City on the Hill and put in its place a row of electric chairs, those dealers in death's democracy, where everyone, the innocent, the mentally deficient, the guilty, could come to die side by side? Who paved Paradise and put up a parking lot? Who settled for George W. Gush's boredom and Al Bore's gush? Who let Charlton Heston out of his cage and then asked why children were getting shot? What, America, of the Grail? O ye Yankee Galahads, ye Hoosier Lancelots, O Parsifals of the stockyards, what of the Table Round? He felt a flood bursting in him and did not hold back. Yes, it had seduced him, America; yes, its brilliance aroused him, and its vast potency too, and he was compromised by this seduction. What he opposed in it he must also attack in himself. It made him want what it promised and eternally withheld. Everyone was an American now, or at least Americanized: Indians, Uzbeks, Japanese, Lilliputians, all. America was the world's playing field, its rule book, umpire, and ball. Even anti-Americanism was Americanism in disguise, conceding, as it did, that America was the only game in town and the matter of America the only business at hand; and so, like everyone, Malik Solanka now walked its high corridors cap in hand, a supplicant at its feast; but that did not mean he could not look it in the eye. Arthur had fallen, Excalibur was lost and dark Mordred was king. Beside him on the throne of Camelot sat the queen, his sister, the witch Morgan le Fay.

The central point of the world is the point where stillness and movement are together. Movement is time, but stillness is eternity. Realizing how this moment of your life is actually a moment of eternity, and experiencing the eternal aspect of what you’re doing in the temporal experience—this is the mythological experience. So is the central mountain of the world Jerusalem? Rome? Benares? Lhasa? Mexico City?

Christian legend later claimed that Peter also went to Rome and there became head of the Christian community, that is, a bishop. Both Peter and Paul, according to the Catholic version, died as martyrs in the Eternal City. Paul definitely went to Rome, and may have been martyred there. But that Peter, a very devout, timid Jewish fisherman, uneducated, and knowing little or no Greek, and no Latin, would have ended in Rome is most unlikely. Thus the whole claim of later bishops of Rome (the popes) that their authority in the Church was derived from its alleged first bishop, Saint Peter, was likely wishful thinking, if not an absolute hoax, that developed in the late second century A.D.

He’s to rename Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina, did you hear?

[Italy is] A country where there is a longstanding tradition of men as stalkers and women as prey - probably willing, but prey all the same.

It would appear that the gene for organization and precision is truly missing from the Italian DNA. Some people find it charming but I, increasingly, do not.

The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury. —MARCUS AURELIUS

Sh’ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Ehad,

Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear. —MARCUS AURELIUS

If any be angry, let him remember that he is unhappy by reason of himself alone,

Suetonius, well, he’s got a mind like a gossip trap. The most rubbishy collection of rumors, omens, portents, and stories you’ve ever heard.

Oh, Hell’s gates!” Annia cried, borrowing Vix’s favorite curse.

It’s an eternal city, like Rome.

And while I agree - and who wouldn’t? - that being in Love is the optimum, I have learned that what we call love, or at least what I called love, was often only a ferocious physical attraction.

Greek culture.” A culture of soft women and womanish men, as far as I was concerned, and Antinous’s current status didn’t exactly contradict me. “The Jews have their own way of doing things, you know that.

Syria Palestina.” The passion went out of Hadrian’s voice as soon as they left the subject of his dead lover. “There is no more land named Judaea. I have redrawn the borders and renamed the entire province.

In Rome, instead, it is clear: people know that most of the time they can get away, not with murder, of course, but with many other misdemeanors. The result? Ignoring the rules has become a quasi national habit.

No. I am Empress. I learned under Plotina. I learned under her predecessor Domitia. You know what empresses are, Lucius? We are plotters. We are schemers. We are survivors.” She smiled. “And sometimes, we are killers.

We’d met as children inside the marble reaches of the Colosseum, a slave brat and a pearled doll, awkward and already fascinated with each other, and here we were more than thirty years later in a dark grove, a sleek empress and a battered guard.

Saint Paul was proud of his Roman citizenship, and his letter to various Christian communities in the empire presupposed an effective communications system that only Roman government, law, and military might allowed. "The Church's administration evolved as the imperial government's structured was modified over time. An archbishop ruled a large territory that the Romans called a province. A bishop ruled a diocese, a smaller Roman administrative unit dominated by a large city. "The capitals of the eastern and western parts of the empire -- Constantinople and Rome -- came in time to signify unusual and superior power for the bishops resident there. When the Roman state was dissolved in the Latin-speaking world around 458 A.D., the pope replaced the emperor as the political leader of the Eternal City.

What can you possibly say about Rome? That it's eternal? That all roads lead to it? That it wasn't built in a day? That when there you should do as the locals do? Please. For millennia, Rome has embodied and repelled every cliché, description, and act of comprehension or explanation applied to it. As a city, it has been built and destroyed and rebuilt by - and has celebrated and signified and outlasted - caesars and barbarians and popes and Fascists and prophets and artists and pilgrims and schemers and migrants and lovers and fools.

Consistency was never a strong suit in Rome. The city is at turns austere and extravagant, luxurious and shabby, regal and bohemian, deadly serious and surprisingly playful. Eternal and fleeting. When you’ve lived as many lives as Rome has, you’re allowed to be malleable.

with steady grace and a serious expression. He did everything like that, Annia thought, whether it was his lessons, a game of trigon, or an absurd religious ritual. “I want to do things well,” he’d explained to her. “Even if I don’t win.” Annia hadn’t seen the point of doing something well if you weren’t going to win, but maybe Marcus was right after all.

For historical reasons – centuries spent as the subjects of warring city-states with the rule of law often taking a back seat to power politics and family loyalties – many Italians, especially those from points south, have little respect for the law and, seemingly, little understanding of its purpose, which is that of setting the boundaries for civil cohabitation.

In Italy, most laws are honored more in the breach than the observance. “Fatta la legge, trovato l’inganno”, goes one saying that means, “pass a law and we’ll find a way to get around it”. You don’t have to spend much time in Rome to realize that stop signs, and even red lights, are often disregarded, as are those reading “no parking or standing”, and even “one way”.

On the wall in Britannia, you told me he could be a great man. I didn’t believe you. And I’ll still say it—he’s not a good man, not by any means. Not like Trajan. But when he’s on a tear like this and out to change the world . . .” “You can’t look away,” Sabina finished. “Because, as bad as he can be, you want to stick around and watch, just see what he’ll do next. Don’t you?

Absenteeism runs rife, with too many unethical doctors willing to supply fake illness certificates. "My dentist was flummoxed when he was asked by a Finanza major to provide his wife with a (false) certificate claiming he’d been performing oral surgery on her on a day she had skipped work. But he did it. “What else could I do? I mean, I might need the guy for a favor sometime.

The failure of Hellenism has been, largely, a matter of organization. Rome never tried to impose any sort of worship upon the countries it conquered and civilized; in fact, quite the contrary, Rome was eclectic. All religions were given an equal opportunity and even Isis—after some resistance—was worshipped at Rome. As a result we have a hundred important gods and a dozen mysteries. Certain rites are—or were—supported by the state because they involved the genius of Rome. But no attempt was ever made to coordinate the worship of Zeus on the Capitol with, let us say, the Vestals who kept the sacred fire in the old forum. As time passed our rites became, and one must admit it bluntly, merely form, a reassuring reminder of the great age of the city, a token gesture to the old gods who were thought to have founded and guided Rome from a village by the Tiber to world empire. Yet from the beginning, there were always those who mocked. A senator of the old Republic once asked an auger how he was able to get through a ceremony of divination without laughing. I am not so light-minded, though I concede that many of our rites have lost their meaning over the centuries; witness those temples at Rome where certain verses learned by rote are chanted year in and year out, yet no one, including the priests, knows what they mean, for they are in the early language of the Etruscans, long since forgotten. As the religious forms of the state became more and more rigid and perfunctory, the people were drawn to the mystery cults, many of them Asiatic in origin. At Eleusis or in the various caves of Mithras, they were able to get a vision of what this life can be, as well as a foretaste of the one that follows. There are, then, three sorts of religious experiences. The ancient rites, which are essentially propitiatory. The mysteries, which purge the soul and allow us to glimpse eternity. And philosophy, which attempts to define not only the material world but to suggest practical ways to the good life, as well as attempting to synthesize (as Iamblichos does so beautifully) all true religion in a single comprehensive system.

It is late afternoon and the daily, or nightly, game of cat and mouse between Rome’s vigili urbani, or traffic police, and the unlicensed street peddlers who set up their portable tables and lamps in Piazza Sant’Egidio where I live, or nearby, is about to start. And, as usual, the mice will win. Not because they are smarter but simply because they care more about breaking the law than the authorities care about enforcing it.

Marcus Aurelius had a marvellous sense of who, and where, he was: As the Emperor Antoninus, Rome is my city and my country; but as a man, I am a citizen of the world . . . Asia and Europe are mere corners of the globe, the Great Ocean a mere drop of water, Mount Athos is a grain of sand in the universe. The present instant of time is only a point compared to eternity. All things here are diminutive, subject to change and decay; yet all things proceed from . . . the one Intelligent Cause.

And there are those who prefer cappuccino, which in turn can be served in several varieties... . Some want it scuro, with less milk, some want it chiaro, with note milk, and some prefer it workout foam, senna schiuma, and there is generally a shaker of cocoa powder somewhere available for those eager for a bit of chocolate. Caffelatte, a hot drink we Americans mysteriously have dubbed a “latte” (which in Italian simply means “milk”), comes in only one variety and is a morning drink, as is a cappuccino.

The one continuous thing through Rome’s history, from the Etruscans to Pliny to Caravaggio to Pope John Paul to Henry and Owen, is the light: the light at dawn, at sunset. The light tiptoes across everything, exposing it anew, whispering, Here is this! Here is this! Ecco Roma! Bursting out of the sun, streaking through space, skirting Venus, just over eight minutes old, but eternal, too, infinite—here comes the light, nameless and intangible, streaming 93 million unobstructed miles through the implacable black vacuum to break itself against a wall, a cornice, a column. It drenches, it crenellates, it textures. It throws the city into relief.

Preferring confusion to order is not limited to waiting lines but spills over into other sectors of life, at least in Rome and other more southern regions of the country. One of these is driving, an area where stereotypes about Italians, or at least about Romans, tend to be confirmed. Gridlock, here caused by a willful invasion of the intersection, is a daily occurrence. Red lights and stop signs often are viewed as optional. Using la freccia (directional lights) to signal an intention to turn right or left is infrequent, to say the least, or else left to the last minute, that is when the driver has already begun his turn, frequently from the farthest lane on the opposite side of the roadway.

I didn’t say it out loud because I knew he’d mock me—but I was thinking of writing my memoirs, too. The life of Vercingetorix the Red: soldier, and gladiator, and general who had traveled the length and breadth of the Empire, served three emperors, loved one empress and fathered another. Hadrian would preserve my son in his memoirs, god and beloved—but what of the others who had crossed Hadrian’s path and mine over the course of our long and complicated lives? What about Titus, friend and future Caesar? Young Marcus, Imperial heir and future son-in-law? And all those women, the women in blue: sinuous lapis-eyed Sabina, bitter-edged Mirah in her blue scarf, merry sapphire-decked Faustina, and fleet-footed Annia running in a bloodstained blue tunic to save the Empire? If Hadrian will not tell their story, I suppose it will be up to me.

But to kill men leads to nothing but killing more men. For one principle to triumph, another principle must be overthrown. The city of light of which Spartacus dreamed could only have been built on the ruins of eternal Rome, of its institutions and of its gods. Spartacus’ army marches to lay siege to a Rome paralyzed with fear at the prospect of having to pay for its crimes. At the decisive moment, however, within sight of the sacred walls, the army halts and wavers, as if it were retreating before the principles, the institutions, the city of the gods. When these had been destroyed, what could be put in their place except the brutal desire for justice, the wounded and exacerbated love that until this moment had kept these wretches on their feet.2 In any case, the army retreated without having fought, and then made the curious move of deciding to return to the place where the slave rebellion originated, to retrace the long road of its victories and to return to Sicily. It was as though these outcasts, forever alone and helpless before the great tasks that awaited them and too daunted to assail the heavens, returned to what was purest and most heartening in their history, to the land of their first awakening, where it was easy and right to die. Then began their defeat and martyrdom. Before the last battle, Spartacus crucified a Roman citizen to show his men the fate that was in store for them. During the battle, Spartacus himself tried with frenzied determination, the symbolism of which is obvious, to reach Crassus, who was commanding the Roman legions. He wanted to perish, but in single combat with the man who symbolized, at that moment, every Roman master; it was his dearest wish to die, but in absolute equality. He did not reach Crassus: principles wage war at a distance and the Roman general kept himself apart. Spartacus died, as he wished, but at the hands of mercenaries, slaves like himself, who killed their own freedom with his. In revenge for the one crucified citizen, Crassus crucified thousands of slaves. The six thousand crosses which, after such a just rebellion, staked out the road from Capua to Rome demonstrated to the servile crowd that there is no equality in the world of power and that the masters calculate, at a usurious rate, the price of their own blood.

The Heavenly City outshines Rome,” Augustine wrote. “There, instead of victory, is truth; instead of high rank, holiness; instead of life, eternity.

[Italy is] A country where pleasure principle dominates.

... but when a woman is in love, she can glorify any man's existence.

Italian men like them [Eastern European women immigrants], several of the latter have told me, because they are more feminine and not 'feminists'.

The mainstay of Italian coffee lore, la tazzina del caffe, or an espresso, as served by one’s local bar and during the day consumed - generally - standing up, is another one of those things about which Italians have very strong feelings. The purists want is very dense, ristrettissimo, which is the way they serve it in Naples...

By the way, although nowadays your average waiter will no longer flinch when an American or a German asks for a cappuccino after or even with dinner (he knows what side his bread is buttered on, be advised that he thinks it’s pretty disgusting). No Italian would ever drink cappuccino with, or immediately after, a meal and finds the idea repulsive as, at this juncture, I confess, do I.

When you meet someone at a time when you are still basically unfamiliar with the country he or she finds from, you are unable to make all those subtle distinctions you unconsciously rely on at home - accent, pronunciation, mode of dress, physical bearing - to give you what is often vital information about a new acquaintance.

... when you can’t read - or hear - the signs that tell you about a Person’s educational level or background, your attraction becomes above all physical. The result? It can be only too easy to get sexually involved with - and possibly married to - someone who when it fines to long-term relationships turns out to be totally unsuitable.

Even when I first visited Italy as a studentessa back in the sixties, our orientation program aboard SS Cristoforo Colombo had included a lesson explaining that whereas in the US a long period of time could elapse between a first kiss and a full sexual encounter, in Italy kisses were considered a nest-immediate prelude to rapport I sessuali.

...here, just as everywhere else, many men are far from skilled Latin lovers that legend would have them. ... In some ways, of course, Italian men are different and in my opinion got - and deserve - their reputation because of their extreme warmth, actively affectionate nature and sentimental romanticism, not necessarily because of their sexual bravura. ... They also appear to be less “generous” than men from some other countries. ... Italian men love being on the receiving end of oral sex but generally shy away from giving it. “Oh, there are a few older guys who like it,” says one male friend, “but most men think it’s kind of icky.

could it be that they [Italian men] care more about romance than sex, especially when they are on the receiving end? ... ...I was on the lookout for some good sex, an attitude that led colleagues with whom I then shared an office, Federico and Gerardo, to say that I was “the only maschio in the room”. Both claimed that they only care about sex and want it when they are in love.

.. Italian journalists (like members of the Italian parliament) are among the best paid in the world. ... By law, all journalists get not only the extra 13th month bonus in December, but a 14th month paycheck in June. When you start out, you nevertheless get 26 vacation days a year...plus five days of personal leave. After five years, your annual vacation days increase to 39 plus five days, and after 15 years to 35 days (plus five). Abs if you work for a lifetime, which means 35 years of social security contributions to INPG, you’ll end up with a pension that is pretty close to your final year’s salary.

But they {journalists} are still viewed as a rather privileged category. True, they no longer can ride buses free or go to the movies for free as was the case in Mussolini’s day. But they can still get into most museums or exhibitions without paying. If you’re a smooth operator you can get complimentary tickets for shows or the opera. Until recently, you could get a 30% discount on all domestic flights (now it’s 15%). And if you have trouble with any of your utilities,the utility company’s press office will be glad to give you a have in working things out. In addition, since many Italian journalists have a different sense of what constitutes a conflict of interest from what we do in the United States, they often accept any manner of gifts or paid vacations from companies they regularly cover.

In Italian papers, rumor often takes the place of fact. Unconfirmed and overblown stories are often printed as fact - one trick is the frequent use of the conditional verb tense which translates into English as “is said to”...

A corrections box such as which appears in many top US or British papers to rectify misspellings, mistaken dates, faulty identifications and so forth, is generally unheard of here... Once I pointed out to Messagero night editor that the first edition he was putting out had misspelled the name of town where the US president was holding a summit. “Oh, no one will notice,” he shrugged rather than change it.

Sometimes, in fact - and I’ve heard others say the sane thing - I have to read a story about developments in Italy in the foreign press to get a good, quick overall view of what is going on. And this is particularly true if you’ve been away and missed the first few days of coverage; Italian news stories rarely give you any background.

...until recently Italian institutions were totally unresponsive to consumer needs and concerns, something most people knew, or sensed. Hence their passivity. Nowadays, fewer things seem to be guasti than in the past, but a lot of things that are supposed to work, don’t.

...the seemingly widespread conviction of many ordinary Italians that polite behavior such as standing in line is either a Nazi characteristic or a British folly, one that in any event has no real application to this country. Indeed, although things are now gradually changing, left to themselves many Italians appear constitutionally unable to stand in line. “Where do you think you are, in Bulgaria?” a well-dressed man once snarled at me when I protested that he had pushed ahead of me on the cashier’s line at a downtown café.

I notice that nowadays few drivers in Rome automatically stop for you unless you have the courage to stride forward, arm outstretched, palm up in a dorky “stop-right-now” gesture. Another Roman habit that takes getting used to is that in many areas of town, such as Trastevere where I live, people seem to prefer walking in the street even when sidewalks, however narrow, exist. They seem convinced they are invincible and often don’t even look before crossing the street.

My friend Mimmo, who owns three men’s shops in Rome but who comes from Naples where his father was in the same business, says that nowadays, after two days in Naples, he can’t wait to leave again. “Life in Rome is not easy, but at least there are some certainties. In Naples, forget it. The only thing that counts there is prepotenza,” roughly, bullying or arrogance.

The fact that the policemen didn’t know their stuff didn’t really surprise me. Not long before, I had asked three different Rome traffic policemen, or vigili, how old a child had to be before being able to ride in the front passenger seat of a car and had gotten three totally different answers. Not so hard to understand, I guess for two reasons. First, if you get your job through pull and not merit then you don’t really need to get good grades on a qualifying exam and, second, if Parliament changes the law every few years it is understandably difficult to keep up.

Until the beginning of 2003, Italians smoked everywhere and considered it quite normal; they lit up inside stores, including those which sell fabric or paper goods, in the airport, ignoring repeated loudspeaker announcements that no smoking was allowed, at the greengrocers where cigarette ash dangled perilously over the zucchini and the cherry tomatoes, and even in hospitals, although from time to time crack Italian Carabinieri units called the NAS, set up to enforce health standards, would appear, unannounced, and hand out hefty fines to all the doctors and nurses they found in flagrante. Once I even had blood taken by two white-coated doctors who took my vital fluid with cigarettes dangling from their lips, an open window their only concession to my passive smoke concerns.

Indeed, don’t be surprised to find yourself in a taxi in which the right-side window doesn’t work or is missing its wind-down handle. The driver has done this deliberately to keep himself from getting a draft on his neck that will give him problems al cervicale, the cervical spine. He is also likely to eschew air conditioning on the grounds that it will give him pneumonia.

According to a study done in 2011 by the welfare department of the CISL trade union, in the three-year period from 2006 to 2008 it could take as long as 540 days to have a mammogram scheduled (Puglia), 90 days to get a bone-density scan done (Veneto) and 74 days to see a geriatrics specialist in the generally well-organized Tuscany region. I myself know someone who had to wait seven months to get a heart bypass, and one of my next-door neighbors here in Rome waited almost a year for a hip replacement. Of course, this is not unusual for a country with national health; all the Brits I know decry their own system violently and even in Sweden, once a model for such things, there is considerable disorganization. The fact remains that the Italian national health system is often more virtual than real, forcing people who can afford it to look for an alternative solution.

And there may be some connection, too, with the Roman Catholic Church’s somewhat flexible attitude towards sin and thus, in general, towards wrongdoing. Otherwise, how to explain that 137 years after Italy became a modern nation-state, so many people still choose simply to ignore laws they don’t like. Maybe other nationalities would be the same if in their countries, too, law enforcement were considered an optional, even by the people charged with that task.

In a crypt beneath the ground-floor level of the church are the tombs of Saints James and Philip, two of the apostles going back to the life of Jesus. Deeper still, if we were allowed to dig beneath the crypt, we would soon come upon remains of ancient Imperial Rome, beneath that, Republican Rome, and finally, perhaps some of Bronze Age Rome. This makes the church a metaphor for the entire Eternal City: a place of layer upon layer of history, of accumulations of countless cultures, of confrontations between the sacred and the profane, the holy and the pagan—and of multiple hidden secrets. To understand Rome is to recognize that it is a city swarming with secrets—more than three millennia of mysteries. And nowhere in Rome are there more secrets than in the Vatican.

St. Andrew of the Woods, Rome, Italy (1842) The next apparition took place in 1842 and was directly related to the first. Alphonse Tobie Ratisbonne was a twenty-eight-year-old Jewish man in the prime of his life who had just gotten engaged to marry. He was a lawyer from a wealthy family and was charming, good looking, and good humored. Prior to his wedding, he decided to spend the winter in Malta. At all costs, however, he wanted to avoid Rome because he hated Catholicism; the conversion and ordination of his brother Theodore had only fanned the flames of his already intense hatred of the Faith. But somehow, because of a delay with boats out of Naples and his own restlessness, Ratisbonne found himself in the Eternal City. With a few days to spend before his boat left for Malta, Ratisbonne caught up with some friends, including Baron Theodore de Bussières, who gave Ratisbonne a Miraculous Medal as a challenge to Ratisbonne’s fierce anti-Catholicism. The baron argued, “If it is just superstition, then it won’t harm you in the least to wear this or to read the memorare prayer.” Then on January 20, 1842, while waiting for the baron in the church of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte (“St. Andrew of the Woods”), Ratisbonne saw a vision of the Blessed Virgin. The brief vision of blinding beauty didn’t include an exchange of words, but by the end of it, Ratisbonne said he knew “all the secrets of divine pity.”3 He immediately converted to Catholicism, joined the priesthood, and moved to Israel with a ministry to convert the Jews. Ratisbonne’s conversion was so significant that even the pope heard of it and wanted to learn more about this “miraculous medal” and the nun who had it cast. The medal’s popularity swelled and Sister Catherine’s waned as she remained just another cloistered nun among many.

palus,

The most important thing about India, the thing to be gone into and understood and not seen from the outside, was the people. It was as though, in these small, crowded spaces, no one really felt at home. Everyone felt that the other man, the other group, was laughing; everyone lived with the feeling of siege. The emptiness of the yard was an aspect of its cleanliness. The emptiness of the space was live luxury. Gandhianism was almost a mass hysteria in India, but of a healthy kind. It was the good old values, but packaged in a modern-looking way, very mass-based. As in old Rome, so in modern Bangalore: the more important the man, the greater the crowd at his door. Where there is no want, there is no god. The very idea of the latrine was a non-brahmin idea: to enter such a polluted place was itself pollution. No old-time brahmin would have even contemplated the idea. Good brahmins, traditional brahmins, used open-air sites, a fresh one each time. In the palace where the brahmin had served there had been splendor and extravagance beyond human need, almost as though in the Hindu scheme one of the functions of great wealth was to remind men of the vanity of the senses. In Christian thinking the eternal opposites are the forces of good and evil. In Hindu or brahmin thought the opposites are worldliness and the life of the spirit. One can retreat from one to the other. When the world fails one, one can sink into the spirit, the idea of the world as the play of illusion. Bad architecture in a poor tropical city is more than an aesthetic matter. It spoils people's day to day lives; it wears down their nerves; it generates rages that can flow into many different channels. That station lets you into the very worst of the Bengali small-town atmosphere - ugly, noisy, crowded, full of the kind of deprivation I see in the style of urbanization in our country, the deprivation of mind, of basic needs. I've been practicing yoga for about 15 years now and it's helped me tremendously to arrive at this mental state in which I could take an enormous amount of chaos and confusion around me, for a while, without losing my own peace of mind. Formally, I'm an atheist, but I've reached a state where I separate spirituality from theism and religion. To me the Upanishads represent man's effort to understand the universe and himself at the very highest level of spirituality.

It is said that, in his enthusiasm for Rome, Thorwaldsin dated his birth from the hour he entered the Eternal City.

Chapter Six: Mistress of Red From underneath from hellish bowels, She lives the torment she shrieks and howls. A damned flame of volcanic intent, Seeks a city where her hatred may vent. Underneath the bow of vaulted earth, This spirit breaks from infernoed perch. Circles the span of inward woe, From beneath the caverns does she go. She seeks the city she may destroy, To lie in ruins for her ploy. From lofty plume of sordid ash, She delights to see her cuts and gash. Vulcania Draconis, spirit of bitter ’ire, Rings the earth with her dredful fires. Horrendous demon from Vulcan’s forge, Lays waste to the earth, her inhabitants engorged. Mighty Pompeii knew her ways, Scoffed at her threats and would not pay. In vindiction’s rage hissed she their doom, Cast them alive within their tombs. And Krakatoa and Mycenae, They would not yield, she laid them waste. An extortioness, royal supreme, To conquer or destroy, her consummate dream. How this evil one sets her pace, Rings sweet earth in her death’s nec-lace. Far from below she blasts her smoke, To cover their eyes until they choke. At her command cities fall and swell, Earthquake, tidal wave, gives masses to hell. This spirit from the blackest pit, Broods deep on those she kiss. She comes to seek those to enslave, To fuel her bowels, her booty in trade. The pride and ruination of nations and men, Seeks souls and bodies to ambition her ends. Now this licking creature of red-hot glow, Sends her heat to make fumerals. Damns the many and damns the one, As empires burn when her rage is done. A vengeful spirit, Draconis is, Smiles so pleasant as victims drop in. Opens her shotted eyes in mirth, To hear the screams of their heated death lurch. This diabolic holds much potent sway, Seeks for victims as ground gives way. She holds the riddle to the land, And holds it she must for her time is at hand. Had learned she now that Kari had come, That timeless conflict again begun. “Never did I see one I could not coerce, But now a convolcation of power, a tour de force.” Suppressed regret ruminated throughout, Yet shreds of fear left no doubt. “I will finish what was started here in mmy land, Beyond records treatise once we did stand. Past all memories, hmm, even so, Before myth began and Rome’s trumpets blowed. I will shatter her like earthenware because I mmust, She tasks mme this creature, mmy hate it is just. Wounded mme she did, her preysence calls, If nothing else, ha I will hurt her if I faullt.” On Vulcania Draconis, Kari's Diabolical Enemy Cold Steel Eternity Vol. ii

Now, it is precisely in this sense that Rome calls Mary the "Tabernacle of God," or of the "Holy Ghost." Thus speaks the author of a Popish work devoted to the exaltation of the Virgin, in which all the peculiar titles and prerogatives of Christ are given to Mary: "Behold the tabernacle of God, the mansion of God, the habitation, the city of God is with men, and in men and for men, for their salvation, and exaltation, and eternal glorification.... Is it most clear that this is true of the holy church? and in like manner also equally true of the most holy sacrament of the Lord's body? Is it (true) of every one of us in as far as we are truly Christians? Undoubtedly; but we have to contemplate this mystery (as existing) in a peculiar manner in the most holy Mother of our Lord.

The whole beauty of humanity, after all, lies in the attempt.

Rome: Did You Know This? Rome is often called the Eternal City. The spirits of ancient civilizations live on in monuments and ruins that are located throughout the city. Yet Rome today is also a vibrant, modern city. Once the capital of a huge empire, Rome has been the capital of Italy since 1871. Rome is located in the central part of the Italian boot along the Tiber River. The city was once defined by the Seven Hills of Rome. Today, these hills are in the center of a sprawling city, which is home to more than 2.5 million people. Palatine Hill is rich in ancient ruins and medieval mansions. Another of the Seven Hills, Capitoline, was the site of the Roman government in ancient times, as it is today. Michelangelo designed many structures on the Capitoline. In a valley among the Seven Hills lies the Forum, the center of ancient Rome, an area surrounded by temples and palaces. Rome also thrived during the Renaissance, when cities all over Italy competed to have the greatest art and architecture. Many of the city’s great churches and fountains were built during the Renaissance.

Rome was built on seven hills in the wide plain of the Tiber River, about 16 miles from the sea. It was the center of the ancient Roman Empire, and many magnificent Roman remains survive today, including the Forum, the Colosseum and the Catacombs. The city is the seat of the Italian government and a major industrial center. Rome’s long history has earned it the name “The Eternal City.

Rome This afternoon I learned that Rome is called the “eternal city.” It’s also the largest city in Italy. Its population is about 4 million. We hired a guide to show us Rome’s “modern” attractions. We started at the Spanish Steps. It was here, in the 1700s, that the most beautiful men and women in Italy waited, hoping to be chosen as artists’ models. The steps link the butterfly-shaped Piazza di Spagna with Trinità dei Monti, a French church. The most famous fountain in Rome is the Trevi Fountain, with its statue of Neptune. Our guide told us to face away from the fountain and throw a coin into the water. This means we will return to Rome some day. If you throw a second coin over your shoulder, you can make a wish. I tossed two coins over my shoulder.

History never lies. Books that record it can relate what they understand: truths, lies, half-truths equivalent to lies, speculation, eulogies, historic acts that never happened. Glorious acts last because someone was paid to extol them. There’s no better example than Rome, the Eternal City, the glory of God on eart, where he chose to dwell, without doubt.

This sacred building was the first great Christian church ever built, its construction taking place even before the echo of the momentous edict of .-uu. 313 had faded.