To English-Speaking Readers

Circus Maximus, Rome. As you can see all stones seem gone. The immense structure – like other Roman monuments – served as a quarry for the construction of churches and palaces although parts of it are still underground. Click for attribution and to enlarge

I hope to soon resume my posts in English.

In the meanwhile English-speaking readers may have noticed that a portion of their comments has been translated together with the posts rendered in Italian and being recently published here.

I thought Italian readers could be interested in the discussions occurred in this blog.

Ciao.

Circus Maximus at the times of the Roman Empire. Wikimedia

Merry Christmas! Great German Music With the Humour of Mr Bean. Enjoy

The British comedian, actor and writer Rowan Atkinson. Click for credits and to enlarge. GNU Free Documentation License

I once wrote that good food will not be missing in our discussions, together with good music and plenty of delicious wine.

Ok, wine, I have in my hand, a good Primitivo di Puglia.
Good pasta, I’ve just had, Spaghetti al pomodoro con pecorino.

And music?

Watch and listen to THIS.

[Felt like paying a little tribute to the German culture and to the British humour - delightful but irreverent sketch, Paul notes below in his comment. Pretty nice contrast the Germans and the British, I'd add, so many little neuroses dividing this petty though adorable Europe...

... too much wine ...]

Ψ

**Merry Christmas to ALL of you, dear readers!**

100 Posts. I’ll Celebrate My Own Way. 1

Some time ago my friend Mario, who never writes comments but reads friends’ blogs, called me saying:

“Is this coffee talk going anywhere?”

He referred to my posts and to the dialogues with my readers. We make fun of each other since we were 14, so it is all right. But since my blog has reached a bit more than 100 writings (105,) a little celebration is appropriate together with a sort of assessment of whether this is really just coffee writing. I have then thought to answer him officially in this way.

I’ll write a few blog or site maps [update: see the 1rst] containing reasoned summaries of the ideas expressed in the Man of Roma’s blog, with links to the corresponding posts, notes and conversations.

These posts will not be written in tight succession – it would be too heavy – and will be to the benefit of those interested in finding their bearings in our “coffee musings” – an interesting American blog is called Café Philos, a nice name it’d be vile to steal.

Not that Mario needs any answer. He already had many on the phone, with four-letter words. Our classroom style btw, a bit unleashed to tell the truth.

We were all males, the only unhappy exception in our school due to the headmaster’s unfathomable genius, so we lacked that element of moderation, gentleness – the woman -  that makes boys a little bit more civilised (and careful.)

I remember the last time (one year ago) we had a classroom celebration at a restaurant. Imagine ten well-dressed professional-looking 60-year-old men sitting at an elegant restaurant table in down town Rome and turning gradually into 10 unleashed kids once food and especially wine had started to work on us.

The waitress who was serving our table had to blush a few times. She of course was one of the targets of our joyful (and childish) attention. A couple of us especially are socially unacceptable – Marken Albus, for example – whenever they find their old buddies back. I confess I sometimes felt terribly embarrassed. But I’m being a bit hypocritical. I had huge fun and, who knows, the waitress a bit too perhaps, since she was blushing though smiling at us and I think she kept coming to our table more often than necessary.

The show was actually unusual. I doesn’t happen all the time to see ten apparently serious 60-year-old men turn into absolute morons and behave like kids.

When we are together we are bad, very bad. Fortunately it doesn’t happen very often.

(to be continued)

This Blog’s First Birthday

Today is my blog’s first birthday. A year exactly has elapsed since I started this new experience. I am awful at celebrations, but I’ll say one year has passed quickly enough, though sometimes my blogging hasn’t been the easiest to me because of this language, which is not my own, and because of my topics, complicated at times even to the writer (can you imagine to my average reader).

On the whole though a beautiful experience. I had the great pleasure to write, joke, talk or seriously discuss with people so various, which was one of my aims.

I know that in the post Are we going anywhere? I had promised a thorough evalutation of my first blogging year, but now I don’t feel like it. Is it so important? In any case, and since that post (April 15 2008: 35,000 hits, 47 posts, 395 comments), my blog’s traffic has doubled (September 9 2008: 74,000 hits, 70 posts, 741 comments) despite an access slowdown during July and August 2008.

People have stumbled upon my blog searching for these things (sorted by num. of views):

India, Anna Magnani, jungle, Roman sex, Dionysos, Stonehenge, Bob Dylan, buttocks, Indian people, Roman woman etc. etc.

Other popular search terms have been (unsorted):

old books, trojan horse, res3ia, young Roman boy, espresso, pompei fresco erotic, Roman limes, Prozac, ancient erotic art, Porsche 996 Carrera, Aishwarya Rai, marble Roman ass, love words etc. etc.

Some terms I am not so proud of, not because sex is to me something to be ashamed of, no, not at all. It’s only because it is too easy to get hits through it. My first Sex and the City of Rome post produced wholly more than 9000 hits! I also confess here aloud my vile sin of playing a bit with tags in order to attract readers.

Other terms used in search engines puzzle me instead: I can understand ‘buttock’, but why is ‘jungle’ so popular? Plus I didn’t know that our Roman actress Anna Magnani was so well-liked around the world (admire all her strength, passion and dignity in the picture below).

I dropped the Italian pages, lacking the time and being more intrigued by an international audience. The tone of my writing has at times become serious and complex, I know. Well, I’m sure my flippant side will pop up again, now and then.

A little bit I think I have achieved as regards my research on Roman-ness even though deep inside I feel that I have ‘tasted only the outer crust’ of it. We are going to see.

Charming discoveries have been the Indians, people from North America of Italian origin, one Chinese woman, Americans and Britons living in Italy and in Europe and other people I cannot list here.

I thank whoever has read anything I have written and above all I thank all my dear commentators, with their ideas, jokes, support and warmth.

I finally hope this blog has been useful to someone, even just one single person. It would be the most important thing of all.

Are We Going Anywhere?

My time has been limited in the last days so I could not prepare the post I had in mind.

What I can say is that this blog is going better than I thought.

Despite the fact that – as I said – “our topics are too heavy for the common reader while too unsophisticated for the happy few” the number of hits has been greater than expected.

We have published 47 posts and received 395 comments (some of which very long) which means some discussion has arisen from the themes presented. The discussion has been international, which greatly pleases us: Indian, American, British, Chinese, Swedish, Italian readers have commented. It is our intention to dedicate a future post to readers’ feedback and ideas.

This is only a brief moment of pause and not a thorough overview of our activity, which might occur after 12 months of blogging have elapsed.

I have to say that it is a bit fatiguing to write in a foreign language but since some people from America and the UK have praised my way of writing, this means my English is decent enough and that I make myself understood.

ψ

The main point though being another one.

In a previous post I had said that this blog is ‘a man-in-the-street-of-Rome research on Roman-ness’.

Now I am asking myself: is this research going anywhere?

I do not know yet. I do not really know. I feel I am getting somewhere though I still don’t know where

See you soon.

Man of Roma

Man of Roma

I am a man of Rome, Italy. Some of my ancestors, many centuries ago, were already citizens of Rome. So I guess I am a real Roman, or sort of, since some barbaric blood must unquestionably flow in my veins, probably Germanic and Gallic from the Alpine region.

My mother tongue is Italian, not very different from the Latin spoken by the common people at the times of the late Roman Empire. The reason I am attempting to communicate in this nordic language – which I do not totally master and which, though a bit chilly to my heart, I find not entirely deprived of charm – is that variety excites me like a drug and I am tired of talking to my fellow people mainly, this lingua franca, English, allowing me hopefully a wider exchange of ideas.

Why this blog

One reason for this blog, I have said, is wider communication. But what can a Roman of today say to the world? Such a big statement if there weren’t the Web to make it not totally vain.

I have always thought that it is a great privilege to be born and be raised here, such a special place, to the extent that something must have penetrated, something peculiar and worthy of being transmitted, in order to be able, in our turn, to receive.

I hope on comments from Western and non-Western people, since Rome and the Romans have a mediation nature that comes from the Mediterranean.

Rome in some way is more Mediterranean than European. However, as she was already universal during the ancient Roman days, she continues to be universal as a religious centre, like Mecca or Jerusalem, which makes her something far beyond Europe (*).

Religion will not be a central topic here though, since I greatly respect all faiths but I do not personally have any being an agnostic. I like to think I am similar to those Romans of the past who counted mostly on human knowledge and on reason (for example the followers of Greek Epicure.)

Three Reasons for Uniqueness

Ages have passed since this great city was the capital of the known world, this role now being played by New York, or London perhaps.

Rome is though unique in the first place because “among all the greatest cities of the ancient world – Nineveh, Babylon, Alexandria, Tyre, Athens, Carthage, Antiochia – she is the only one that has continued to exist without any interruption, never reduced to a semi-abandoned village but rather finding herself often in the middle of world events and, equally often, paying for that a price (**).”

Secondly, and even more importantly, Rome is the city of the soul (as Byron and Victor Hugo put it,) of our authentic Western soul, since Europe and the West were shaped here and these roots are sacred – to me surely, and I think and hope to most of us.

These roots we have to rediscover in order to better open up to others in a new spirit of humanitas and conciliation (two chief components of the everlasting Roman mind). We all here in the West must encourage a totally new different attitude which can enable us to better face both our present crisis of values and the radical changes ahead which might cause our swift decline.

Lastly Rome, the eternal city, is unique because she is also one of the most beautiful cities in the world, if not the most beautiful. Beyond its imperial testimonies, even small piazzas and alleys radiate a sacred aura which comes from the millennia and to which the multitudes of the world, in an ever increasing number, come to pay their tribute.

The capital of our beloved and civilised French cousins, Lutetia Parisiorum (it’s how the Romans called Paris, after the Parisii, a tribe of the Gallic Senones,) was not but a village up to the year 1000 AD. “1700 years younger than Rome: it shows, one can feel it (***).”

Fragments Sent in a Bottle

Scattered fragments of this special identity inserted in a bottle and sent across the WWW: this shall be the activity of our blog.

The conveyor of the message is not so important in relation to the greatness of the source and to one ingredient this conveyor might, willingly or unwillingly, possess: he perhaps being like a living fossil from a distant past which is dead though – astoundingly enough – alive yet in so many Italians.

Let us admit it. In some central and especially southern areas of this country, minds and habits survive that puzzle lots of foreigners, historical remnants whose disadvantages towards modernity seem evident. Are they only disadvantages?

All Things Considered

This and other things will be discussed here by an almost 60 years old Roman whose knowledge can be located at a medium level, with interfaces towards the upper and the lower layers.

He will try his best to transmit something useful to others having been an ancient-history & literature educator for 16 years, then converted to computer networking engineering and training for the last 14 years. He hopes this blog will allow him to brush up humanities back, which is daunting at his age, not to mention the crazy idea of blogging in a foreign language.

If not profundity of knowledge, he might though have an advantage (still to be proved) over many foreign commentators even if born in one of the many provinces of the ancient Roman Empire.

The plus of being a witness from right there. The advantage of being a Man of Roma.

Italian version