(I apologize mightily for the delay of this post.)
Our last full day in Rome, Beth and I planned to visit the large complex of ancient Roman structures near the Colosseum which includes Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum. Having spent a good part of the last week looking at Christian things, like churches and paintings of Jesus, it was looking to be a nice change to see something thoroughly pagan. Like the Vatican, there are enough of these old ancient ruins to occupy an entire day, and we intended to make use of it.
Approaching from the north, we passed by a more modern structure which butts against the Roman Forum, the monument to Vittorio Emanuele II. This building is notable because it’s visible from almost everywhere in Rome – its gargantuan, and it’s supposedly nothing more than a monument to the first king of Italy and to the reunification of the Italian kingdom. Completed in 1935, just eleven years before Italy kicked out its monarchy, the monument stands 70 meters high, and features a bronze equestrian statue of the first king (whose remains I mentioned interred at the Pantheon) that weighs something like 50 tons. The monument consists of an enormous stairway which rises to a platform where two soldier stand day and night guarding the tomb of an Unknown Soldier (circa WWI). Two more stairways sweep around from either side of this platform, skirting around the edges of the pedestal which carries King Emanuele’s enormous bronze visage. They rise to a sort of porch, almost a hundred meters wide, with 15 meter-high columns lining the front. On either side there are rectangular projections, also presenting enormous Corinthian columns to the observer. As expected, cornices and columns and the pedestal are all ornamented with carvings, and are all composed of brilliant white marble. The projections from either side of the high porch are topped with bronze statues of winged women riding four-horse chariots. A number of other sculpted humanoid figures adorn anywhere there is a flat surface to put a statue on. The structure is enormous, its impressive, and its almost obscenely majestic.
I can’t help but think that something like this would never fly in the United States – we make monuments to our nation’s greats, and they get statues of themselves sitting in giant stone chairs, statues of themselves standing under domes, or giant unadorned obelisks. I wouldn’t call our monuments majestic – elegant perhaps, which the monument to Vittorio Emanuele II is not, but not majestic. Somehow I think it’s gotten worked into the American tradition that respect is borne through with simplicity and quiet – the gold and sculpted colonnades, the exaggerated scale, the rising choirs, all of that is too European, too pompous. Perhaps it has something to do with George Washington, who set so many precedents during his time as our first President – during his lifetime, he would allow no statue to be made of him that was larger than he actually was, feeling that the only effect of making larger-than-life statues was to belittle the observer. Perhaps we feel the large ornate monuments are vulgar for this reason – we don’t want to elevate the honored above the status of citizen. Of course, then this happened.
Across the street from the monument to Emanuele is Trajan’s Forum, a large rectangular pit dug down below street level containing many fractured columns and other bits of marble facade, once adorning a complex of buildings constructed some nineteen centuries ago. The forum is in ruins now – only these fragments remain, as well as some of the brickwork of the outer walls and floor. To the north end of the forum, however, stands Trajan’s column, an enormous marble column standing some 38 meters high, including an 8 meter pedestal. The columns is adorned with a helical bas relief running from the bottom to the top of the column, showing details of Trajan’s military victory in Dacia at the start of the second century. Also across the Forum is visible a series of structures named Trajan’s Market, a semicircular arrangement which is actually a combination of medieval structures assembled atop ancient Roman buildings. The bottommost floors, which project furthest into the forum and form the semicircle with series of arches, date to about the same time as the forum and column, the first quarter of the second century, while upper floors include these medieval expansions. The complex was once used as a marketplace on the forum floor, with upper floors also acting as offices and administration.
Across the street and behind the king’s enormous monument is the entrance to the Roman Forum. The Roman forum was once the central square of the ancient city, and was the meeting place for both government and worship. The remains of a number of old temples stand here, as well as an old meeting place for the Senate and the old city treasury, which would have also been the treasury for the entire Empire. The forum complex has a number of tour groups running through it all times, and many of them are in English. While it costs money to join these tour groups, it costs nothing at all to surreptitiously eavesdrop on them while they stop in front of the same structure you do. Beth and I chose this second option, and ended up with a fairly good free tour of the area, supplemented by the numerous placards and signs erected giving background information about all the various objects present there.
We entered near the north of the forum, and descended a ramp to the former ground level of the city. All of these ancient ruins are set well below the present road level, and have had to be excavated in order to be studied and displayed to the public. Over the centuries, Rome (and many other cities, for that matter) have burned or been sacked numerous times. Whenever that happened, if the old structures were not deemed salvagable or important enough, the ashes and debris from the old city was simply trampled down and a new set of buildings was laid down over them. The result was that the ground level of these cities rose many meters over the years, so that now the entire Roman Forum, the city center of Rome, now lies inside a vast open pit.
Much of that pit is incomprehensible to me. There piles of marble and travertine fragments, clearly once the corners of buildings, segments of columns, or pieces of inscriptions. Now they bear no place, and sit in grass, growing around them. Many of the old buildings have been torn down completely, leaving only the brick bases of walls or foundations. At times part of a facade is visible in marble, and may bear a bit of carved ornamentation or a few fragments of Roman script (amazingly still recognizable Latin, partly comprehensible by somebody familiar with the Romantic roots of English). The buildings in this section of the forum appear tightly grouped, and without knowing how they were designed otherwise or what they were, it looks as though this would have been a crammed and awkward part of town. Random collections of a few stairs lead down into rectangular depressions or up onto raised foundations. A single narrow pillar stands beside a brick wall. It’s all actually quite frustrating because I’m sure it would be very orderly and sensible if only I could see these structures complete, but the bricks and stone of these buildings are now missing, probably taken away by subsequent builders in search of material.
Deeper in the forum there are more complete structures, or at least structures with some clear explanation, even if very little of the original construction remains. There are several temples, for instance, and in some cases only the high foundation and a few pillars remain. The foundations should be explained – the ancient Romans built temples as column supported structures set upon very high foundations or platforms. Usually the front of the building was marked by a single steep staircase running to the top of the platform, and under certain traditions this staircase might have only been traversed by the priests. From the ruins, it’s apparent that many of these platforms also contained basement levels, and walls and sides have fallen away, revealing internal chambers and archways.
The temple of Saturn is among the most prominent still standing, as the base is quite large and a full row of columns still stands. This temple, dedicated to the agricultural god Saturn, was constructed about 2500 years ago, and is one of the oldest structures in the forum. For some times this temple, in addition to being an important site of worship, also housed the Republic’s treasury and state archives. Shortly after the start of the Empire, the treasury was moved to a different location, and a new building, the Tabularium, was constructed next to the Temple of Saturn to act as a new archives. The Temple remained standing as a religious building for centuries, but has succumbed to the ages, and now very little remains, though the general shape and size of the building are inferable from the remaining portico columns, pediment, and foundation. Some of the lower floors of the Tabularium still stand – indeed, they must, for the present-day Roman city hall, constructed during the middle ages, is built upon the ancient archives and incorporates it into its structural support.
Standing just before the Temple of Saturn is the Arch of Septimius Severus. The notion of a triumphal arch originates in Roman Imperial tradition, and there are a few of notable ones in or near the forum. When an emperor had victory in some particularly important or glorious battle somewhere, it was customary for somebody else to commemorate that victory with some kind of monument. Sometimes this was a column, as with Trajan’s column. Septimius Severus led battles against the Parthians at the end of the second century, and his sons commissioned the construction of this arch, which was somewhat self-serving as they too commanded in the field during those victories and also featured prominently on the arch. The structure is as one might expect a triumphal arch to appear – that is to say that the more famous arches in Paris are fairly true to the original Roman designs of a rectangular building with three archways, one large central one with a coffered ceiling, and two shorter, narrower archways to either side. The arch is made of travertine and marble, and carved ornately with depictions of Parthians being slaughtered by a godlike Septimius and his equally godlike sons. Inscriptions appear as well, commemorating the victories and informing anyone who can read Latin how glorious Septimius was.
Just beside the Arch of Septimius Severus is the Curia Julia a large rectangular building made of brown bricks that is complete – four walls and a ceiling, as well as doors and windows (not original windows, I’m sure). Curias were specified meeting places for the Senate, and a number of them were built where the Curia Julia now stands, but this incarnation has been in place since the beginning of the fourth century. The Curia Julia is in remarkably good condition, largely because it was converted to a church in the seventh century and maintained in that capacity for many centuries. For its floor dimensions, the ceiling of the Curia Julia is very high, which may account for its choice as a church conversion. I was also astounded by how small the floor of this structure is – only about 25 by 16 meters, which hardly seems large enough to house an entire Senate body, though I can’t say how big the Senate actually was in ancient Rome. Much of that floor is covered in a very old mosaic dating to the building’s construction, composed of rosettes and other geometric patterns in a variety of colors. This contrasts with the rest of the building, which today appears rather starkly made of brick and concrete, though the facade of the building was adorned with both marble and – get this – concrete treated to look like marble. The Romans invented faux marble at least seventeen hundred years ago.
The notion of great leaders taking on godlike qualities didn’t always exist in Roman tradition. However, in the forum, we can see its beginning. Julius Caesar, often erroneously considered an emperor of Rome, but who was in fact only dictator as appointed by the Senate, was well-loved by the people of Rome. After his assassination by a discontented group of Senators in the Roman forum on March 15, 44 BC, a civil war broke out over the new power vacuum. Two years later, with many new faces in power and in the Senate, many of whom had been supporters of Caesar, Julius Caesar was deified by the Senate. This worked because of Julius Caesar’s popularity, and bought some favor from the people for many of the new leaders in the Senate and other Republic offices.
The same year he was deified, Caesar’s adopted son, future first emperor Augustus began the construction of a temple in the center of the Roman forum to honor the newly deified citizen. The Temple is built on the site of Caesar’s cremation a few days after his assassination, where Marcus Antonius gave a stirring eulogy to a mourning crowd of Roman citizens (though not the one Shakespeare wrote, of course). Today little remains of the temple, which is not built upon any sort of high platform, but is set on the street level where any citizen may enter and pay respect, and has walls made of brick, though marble certainly formed a facade at one time. The altar to Caesar is now little more than a pile of dust, but it is covered over with a ceiling to protect it from the elements, and still today, two millennia after his death, people place flowers on the altar in the Temple of Julius Caesar.
After Julius Caesar, it became common practice for great Roman leaders, especially emperors, to be posthumously deified and honored with temples. In a few cases, emperors demanded deification while they yet lived – this tended to make them unpopular with certain folks, for reasons that should probably be obvious.
It’s unclear to me how literally the deification of the emperors is supposed to be taken, and how serious people were about worshiping them in the same way they worshiped, say, Jupiter, Venus, or Diana. In some ways it feel like deification was simply a means of conferring honor on the respected dead, and worship a way to communicate with these great, and perhaps powerful souls in a similar fashion to the way saints are honored in modern Catholicism. A temple very near to the Temple of Caesar is the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, of which only the raised foundation, wide front stairway, and front portico columns remain (however, sometime between the seventh and eleventh centuries, the church of San Lorenzo in Miranda was constructed upon the old temple’s platform foundation, and stands behind the columns to this day). This temple was constructed in 141 AD by Emperor Antoninus Pius as a dedication to his recently deceased wife, who was deified by his order. This gesture doesn’t seem strictly religious to me, but feels more like the construction of a monument to the dead, with the deification, as I say, merely a means to bestow honor and respect beyond what would normally be possible. Antoninus’ successor, Marcus Aurelius rededicated the temple to Antoninus and his wife jointly after Antoninus’ death, and this also seems more of an honorific dedication than a gesture of genuine religious significance. Certainly some people did not seem to take it too seriously – on his death bed, Emperor Vespasian was heard to say rather jokingly, “I fear I am becoming a god.”
Separated from the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina by a couple of ruined buildings, with only wall bases remaining, is the remnant of the Temple of Vesta, just in front of the House of the Vestal Virgins. The Temple of Vesta differs markedly from most other Roman temples in its architecture. Rather than a colossal rectangular building with a columned portico, the Temple of Vesta was a circular structure some 15 meters across, with a series of columns around the perimeter. Inside this outer ring of columns there was a complete wall with an additional circle of embedded columns for structural support, and the building likely was capped by a concrete dome. Little remains of the temple today, with only the circular foundation, a section of wall, and a few of the outer marble pillars still standing, and those were all reconstructed from ruined fragments during the Mussolini regime.
Vesta was a goddess of the hearth and home, and featured prominently in every day Roman life despite her relative obscurity in the traditional mythologies. Much of her worship took place at home for most Romans, as each hearth fire was essentially able to function as an altar for her. She was honored at the temple with larger sacrifices than could be made practically at home, and a holy fire was kept burning in the temple day and night, as both an altarpiece and as a place to make burnt offerings. The temple fire also served as a community fire – anyone could use it to start a torch to take home. That fire necessitated the nearby House of Vestal Virgins.
The Temple of Vesta was among the only temples to boast a full-time clerical staff, composed entirely of women who were selected from the aristocracy to tend the flame and ensure that it never went out, and was renewed annually on March 1. Upon selection, these women swore an oath of celibacy for forty years (essentially their entire lives – people didn’t live very long) and lived together at the House, where they more or less took care of themselves and the flame. Though they were women, the Vestal virgins were nevertheless clergy, and commanded a significant amount of respect and privilege with their positions, including the ability to vote, own property and keep and oversee important documents like wills and treaties. Furthermore, the House was less of a house, and more of a three-floor palace with armed guards. All that remains of it now is the outline of the building’s walls, and some of the rooms of the first floor. The central hall of the House is also visible, now covered over with grass. It still has the rectangular depressions in it where the baths were, and some marble sculptures also survive around the perimeter of that room.
The largest building in the forum was the Basilica of Maxentius, an enormous barrel-vaulted structure with three aisles terminating at its northern end with an apse. The design was similar to that of more modern Christian basilicas, though without the transept that gives churches their typical cross floorplan. The Basilica of Maxentius, constructed during the early third century, was of course not a Christian church, and in fact, was not a religious building at all. With its enormous internal spaces, it was an excellent meeting hall for council meetings or court proceedings. It consisted of three vaults supported on huge columns, all set atop what looks to be a concrete foundation. The two front vaults have fallen away and of them essentially nothing remains. However, the apse at the back still remains, built of brick and concrete, with coffered arches to reduce the weight of the ceiling. The remaining section of the Basilica is large enough and in good enough condition that it’s still occasionally used for special events in modern times – wrestling events were held under the apse during the 1960 Olympic games, and when we were there, Beth and I saw what looked like an enormous projection screen set up in the central nave, with the foundation filled with neat rows of metal folding chairs – we don’t know what it was all about, but it was obviously going to be used for something very soon.
Near the Basilica of Maxentius and to the southwest of it in the Arch of Titus, a very attractive triumphal arch made of white marble. This arch was erected by Emperor Domitian in 81 AD after the death of his brother, Emperor Titus. The arch commemorates the sack of Jerusalem by Titus in 70, which essentially ended the ongoing revolt in Palestine. After a difficult siege of the city, Titus’ armies destroyed the Temple of Solomon and plundered the city’s riches, carrying them back to Rome as spoils. This is indicated clearly in marble bas reliefs on the inner walls of the Arch’s single archway, which show Roman soldiers carrying back huge chests and the Jewish candelabras. They also show Titus triumphant and godlike with his entourage.
From the Arch of Titus one may walk south, and pass up either a ramped road, or stairs up the side of a ruined building (whose purpose I cannot now remember) to reach Palatine Hill. Palatine Hill was historically the site of aristocratic homes, and archaeological evidence there suggests that there were settlements on the hill which even predate the traditional founding of Rome in the mid eighth century BC. Throughout the kingdom and Republic periods, aristocratic families built palaces here, for which the hill became known and named. During the Empire, the Imperial palaces and some administrative buildings occupied the hill, and its these ruins that are most prominent today.
Nearest to the forum on the hill, there is a garden area, rich with growth, and I’m not certain when it actually dates from – somebody’s obviously taking care of it now. From the garden, it’s possible to get a very good view of the entire forum as well as much of the surrounding city. Further south on the hill are the ruins of the Flavian Palace and the Domus Augustus, two Imperial palaces, constructed only a few decades apart that would form together a massive palace complex for future emperors. The Domus Augustus was constructed during the reign of the first emperor on the south side of the hill, and enormous brick retaining walls with large arches for support are visible built into the steep hillside. From atop those walls, one can get a great view to the south, where the Circus Maximus is visible, a large pit dug down and flattened with a rising platform in the middle, like a raised median. The Circus was used for chariot races, and was once lined all around with seating for thousands of spectators, as well as stables and other support structures. The raised platform in the middle was adorned with columns and (of course) obelisks.
A significant amount of the Domus Augustus survive today, with much of the outer walls still intact and several interior rooms well defines. The main hall is quite evident, though most of the columns that stood there are gone and leave only their bases. The floor has also been completely overtaken by grass. However, a lot can be learned from what remains – specifically that even an emperor’s palace was built mostly of brick and concrete. Marble once adorned much of these structures however, and that was harvested centuries later for the construction of churches elsewhere in Rome. Just north of the Domus Augustus are the remains, very stark, of a Temple to Apollo which Augustus had constructed next to his home for personal worship of who was, I can only guess, his favorite god. While much remains of the Domus Augustus, it used to have at least one more floor, and was rather lavishly ornamented. Today only the brown brick remains.
Much less remains of the Flavian Palace, built next to the Domus Augustus and connected to it. Reports are that at the time of its construction under Domitian, the Flavian Palace was extravagant to the point of being ludicrous. Domitian himself was a rather antisocial person, and considered something of a tyrant by the Senate and other aristocracy (though actually fairly well liked by the common people). He ordered his palace to be the most enormous and lavish palace yet built, and also reportedly told his architects that one thing he did not want to see in his palace was people. His architects designed the palace with multiple trapdoors and tunnels to allow servants to come and go without ever being seen by the emperor. All the walls of the palace were covered with a rather novel marble veneer, which was made in segments and attached with metal hooks, some of which are still visible where the walls still stand. The marble, like that on others of these ancient buildings, was scavenged long ago for the construction of Christian churches. Much of the marble from the Flavian palace apparently now resides in St. Peter’s Basilica. It’s unfortunate to see only the low remains of the bottommost walls, defining some of the outlines of the large palatial compound and some of the rooms, and think that until fairly recently, this entire palace still stood, preserved reasonably intact. It was only during the middle ages that the palace was finally destroyed for its materials.
Domitian also expanded the palace complex on the other side of the Domus Augustus with the addition of a Stadium, now visible as a long pit, supported by large brick retaining walls, with rows of columns running down either side of the long axis and terminating at the south end with a high curved wall. It appears as though the building may have once held a roof over it, which is astounding because the area is very large – nearly 50 meters wide, and well over a hundred meters long. The Stadium is shaped much like the Circus Maximus, but is far too small to have served for horse races. Instead, Domitian used the Stadium to watch other athletic events, like foot races and perhaps wrestling. Before they had Pay-Per-View, you just had to build your own stadium.
After eating lunch across the Tiber at a deli which charged for our sandwiches by weight, we returned to the area near the forum and Palatine Hill to visit the Colosseum. The Colosseum began construction under the reign of Emperor Vespasian, the first of the Flavian Dynasty, and completed in 80 AD by his son Emperor Titus. It’s an elliptical amphitheater with major and minor axes measuring 189 and 156 meters, and its outer walls rise 48 meters straight up from the pavement. When it was active, it could hold over fifty thousand spectators to watch gladiatorial combat, plays, public executions, and mock hunts of wild animals. The Colosseum is one of the better preserved buildings from Rome’s ancient past, standing nearly complete apart from the southern section of the outermost walls and seating, which collapsed during an earthquake some centuries ago. It’s main structure is built primarily of travertine, with additional brick components on the interior nonessential to the support of the building, like seating supports, stairways and the like. The outer wall of the Colosseum, of which a significant portion still remains, presented a facade of white carved travertine, and was adorned with three layers of columns which went the entire perimeter of the theater. The facade is quite impressive, and much of the carving is in remarkable condition considering the age of the structure and its exposure to the elements (and repeated sacking of the city by invaders).
The site of the Colosseum was once an artificial like, built there by the tyrannical Emperor Nero who is suspected of having started a fire in Rome to burn down the buildings occupying that place specifically so he could use the area for his own amusement. Vespasian had the lake filled in, and demolished much of the other structures built by Nero for himself, intending to return the space to the public as a means of garnering citizen support. His decision to replace the private lake with a public amphitheater, the largest and most extravagant of its kind in the world, was an extremely popular one and helped guarantee Vespasian’s status as a loved and emulated emperor. Completed shortly after Vespasian’s death, it was Emperor Titus who hosted the inaugural games, which lasted for a hundred days continuously. Titus’ younger brother, Emperor Domitian, continued modifications to the Colosseum, and is responsible for the hypogeum of the Colosseum, which is a series of underground chambers and tunnel beneath a new wooden floor of the arena, used for storing and moving animals, slaves, and gladiators, which could all be lifted to the arena floor through trapdoors. Today, that wooden floor is rotted away, and the chambers of the hypogeum are visible.
The architecture of the Colosseum is quite complicated, and also surprisingly modern. The innards of the building are a complex series of arches on arches supporting multiple levels accessible by wide stairways. Each floor has an outer arcade running around the building’s perimeter with multiple passageways in towards the seating. The arrangement is extremely reminiscent of modern stadiums, and I can’t help but think that they must all be modeled after this one. On an upper floor, one passes through an archway and stands on an inner arcade, also running around the whole inner perimeter, with the arena floor visible in the middle. Seating rises up on brick-supported bleachers, which are built in segments with stairways on either side. This is, of course, exactly how most modern stadiums work. Furthermore, the passageways and sections of seating were all numbered, as were the individual seats – a person’s ticket would indicate to them what level, which passageway to go through, what section to sit in, and what seat was theirs. On the lower level nearest the arena, there was even box seating reserved for Senators. The Colosseum also boasted a partial retractable roof, in the form of a series of cloth canopies extending from the top of the outer wall in towards the arena and operated by sailors.
What Beth and I did not realize about the Colosseum which I think most people probably don’t know is that there is a sort of museum on the second floor, in the outer arcade. I’m not sure if the exhibit they had there was temporary or permanent, but there when we were there we saw an exhibit about the Flavian dynasty of Emperors, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian, who are responsible for the Colosseum’s existence. There was also a significant amount of interesting background about the building, as well as several fragments of travertine showing different parts of the facade, the pieces having been recovered from the debris following the earthquake which ravage the southern walls. Particularly interesting were pieces of stone showing where Romans had actually carved ancient graffiti into the walls of the Colosseum. These were depictions of battles, and names of favored gladiators or hunters carved by fans of the games. They were always simple line drawings, carved with a sewing needle perhaps, or a knife, but they were fascinating because they provided a means to understand some of how an average Roman thought – that is, pretty similarly to how modern people think, haphazardly carving whatever they feel like into walls and poles. At least the ancient Romans had the sense to carve pictures instead of something asinine like “Roy was here”. Though, no doubt, the equivalent was probably carved, just not displayed in the museum.
It was on the way back from the Colosseum (which we were kicked out of because it was getting late and the place was closing) that I got to thinking about the relationship these modern Romans have with their history, with the ancient structures in the middle of their city. And I realized that Americans don’t understand what history is. We don’t understand tradition, we don’t understand heritage. We think we do. We think we have history. But we don’t – what we have are stories of the recent past, and a set of customs that we self-consciously hand from one generation to the next. We don’t have history or heritage – we are seeking it.
What the Romans have is something I don’t understand myself, even though I know they have it. They have continuity with their past – history is not stories to them, it’s just what and who they are. We can talk about myths of Roman gods and to us they are stories, and though nobody believes them anymore, the old mythology isn’t just mythology to the Romans – to all Italians! – it’s a very real part of their heritage that defines them culturally. Mars, Diana, Saturn are all real to these people, not in a religious sense, but in a way that I’m not really capable of explaining. They’re still important, they’re still relevant. People still honor Caesar, people still have shrines to Diana, and buildings still say SPQR. They don’t have to try to connect with their past like Americans do – they live in and among their past all the time. It’s not just the Italians – the French as well have this connection to their nation, to their people, to their history that Americans lack entirely. It’s the reason that a Frenchman can come to America, live here a while, get citizenship, and become American in every sense of the word that matters, but I could never become French.
In America we have to visit old things, and see history displayed before us as an act or an exhibit. It’s a spectacle, even our own past, our own supposed heritage. We go and see historic Jamestown, or watch a Civil War reenactment. Anything like that in Europe I think would only be attractive to foreign tourists – they don’t have to try. They don’t have to visit anything. People go to mass in Notre Dame. People go to mass in the Pantheon, for crying out loud. They walk down streets that have existed for two thousand years. They attend festivals that have been repeated annually for centuries. It’s just what they are and who they are. I don’t think Americans understand that, and I’m not sure we can. We don’t have history – we have stories. We don’t have tradition – we have artificial surrogates of tradition, rituals that have been created in recent memory with the express purpose of becoming tradition. And that’s the kicker – we try. They don’t.
I’m going to withhold judgment on whether history and heritage good or bad things to have. It makes us flexible and open not to have it. But I think, nevertheless, we crave it – why else would we try so hard? It’s probably neither good nor bad, just a difference. A misunderstanding. I don’t know, really. But it gave me pause to think that evening, our last in Rome.
At times, however, I am not completely prepared for just how bad some movies can be. I recently learned that the 2002 film The Adventures of Pluto Nash, starring Eddie Murphy, produced by Castle Rock Entertainment and distributed by Warner Bros., netted the greatest financial loss of any film in history, in absolute terms. With a budget of about $120 million, The Adventures of Pluto Nash pulled in only $7 million, thus netting a loss of about $113 million! Clearly, this is not some unknown film by small-time companies with break-in actors – Eddie Murphy is a universally recognized comedian, Castle Rock Entertainment is a major television and movie production house, and Warner Bros. is, well, Warner Bros. And of course, it’s these big names that gave this movie the opportunity to be what it is – the greatest flop in history. Without big names, such a prodigious amount of money could never have been spent on such an ignoble venture. So of course, being the greatest movie flop in history, it drew me close, and seduced me with the promise of a real cinematic stinker.
