Rome

522 Pages·1991·13.24 MB·English

ROMA, AND THOREAU’S “NEW ROME IN THE WEST”
And yet — in fact you need only draw a single thread
at any point you choose out of the fabric of life
and the run will make a pathway across the whole,
and down that wider pathway each of the other threads
will become successively visible, one by one.
— Heimito von Doderer, DIE DÂIMONEN
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION,
THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Roma and the “new Rome in the West”
HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROME ROMA
“WALKING”: The West of which I speak is but another name for the
Wild; and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness
is the preservation of the world. Every tree sends its fibres
forth in search of the Wild. The cities import it at any price.
Men plow and sail for it. From the forest and wilderness come the
tonics and barks which brace mankind. Our ancestors were savages.
The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf is not a
meaningless fable. The founders of every state which has risen to
eminence, have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar
wild source. It is because the children of the empire were not
suckled by the wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the
children of the northern forests who were.
I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in
which the corn grows. We require an infusion of hemlock spruce or
arbor-vitae in our tea. There is a difference between eating and
drinking for strength and from mere gluttony. The Hottentots
eagerly devour the marrow of the Koodoo and other antelopes raw,
as a matter of course. Some of our northern Indians eat raw the
marrow of the Arctic reindeer, as well as various other parts,
including the summits of the antlers as long as they are soft.
And herein perchance they have stolen a march on the cooks of
Paris. They get what usually goes to feed the fire. This is
probably better than stall-fed beef and slaughter-house pork to
make a man of. Give me a Wildness whose glance no civilization
can endure, — as if we lived on the marrow of koodoos devoured
raw.
ROMULUS AND REMUS
HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROMA ROME
WALDEN: I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to PEOPLE OF
have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools;
WALDEN
for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they
had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they
might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to
labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat
their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of
dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they
are born? They have got to live a man’s life, pushing all these
things before them, and get on as well as they can. How many a
poor immortal soul have I met well nigh crushed and smothered
under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it
a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never
cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture
and wood-lot! The portionless, who struggle with no such
unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough
to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.
ROMULUS AND REMUS
HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROME ROMA
1,300 BCE
Pottery shards found in strata on the Capitoline Hill in Rome make it clear that the continuous
occupation of the site goes back at least to the Bronze Age. (There is also a cemetery below the hill, but it
merely dates back to the Iron Age.)
NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Roma and the “new Rome in the West”
HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROMA ROME
790 BCE
Small villages of primitive thatched huts began to appear on the Palatine and neighboring hills overlooking
the Roman countryside. The founding of Rome was still some two generations of human life in the future —
and already the latest big burp of the Vesuvius volcano was almost an entire millennium into the forgotten past.
During this century Pompeii and Herculaneum and nearby towns populated by Oscan-speaking descendants
of the Neolithic inhabitants of Campania would be coming within the sphere of influence of Greeks who were
settling across the bay.
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Roma and the “new Rome in the West”
HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROME ROMA
753 BCE
April 21: The founding of Rome (which is to say, this is the year which would later be regarded as Year 1 in the 10-
month solar calendar of Rome, known as AUC or Anno Urbis Conditae — the explanation was that in this year
Romulus the son of Mars, brother of Remus, had founded the city — and April 21st was the perhaps arbitrary
date that would at some point be selected, purportedly the 18th birthday of wolf-suckled eponymous founding
daddy Romulus, on which this would be celebrated).
1
From this year until 510 BCE, the Laws of the Seven Kings of Rome.
READ THE FULL TEXT
In central Italy were the Italic peoples, embracing Latins, Umbrians and Oscans (Samnites), and Etruscans.
To the south of them were Lucanians, Bruttii, Siculi, and Greeks. To the north of them were Ligurians, Gauls,
and Venetians.
1. The average reign length of these seven legendary kings, 34 years, is surely ahistorical. Even the British monarchy has achieved
an average reign length of but 21 years and there aren’t any historical records of a track record better than that. Historians therefore
guesstimate this “kings” period of Roman history as about 625 to 500 BCE, for an average reign length of a more realistic 18 years.
HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROMA ROME
“WALKING”: The West of which I speak is but another name for the
Wild; and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness
is the preservation of the world. Every tree sends its fibres
forth in search of the Wild. The cities import it at any price.
Men plow and sail for it. From the forest and wilderness come the
tonics and barks which brace mankind. Our ancestors were savages.
The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf is not a
meaningless fable. The founders of every state which has risen to
eminence, have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar
wild source. It is because the children of the empire were not
suckled by the wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the
children of the northern forests who were.
I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in
which the corn grows. We require an infusion of hemlock spruce or
arbor-vitae in our tea. There is a difference between eating and
drinking for strength and from mere gluttony. The Hottentots
eagerly devour the marrow of the Koodoo and other antelopes raw,
as a matter of course. Some of our northern Indians eat raw the
marrow of the Arctic reindeer, as well as various other parts,
including the summits of the antlers as long as they are soft.
And herein perchance they have stolen a march on the cooks of
Paris. They get what usually goes to feed the fire. This is
probably better than stall-fed beef and slaughter-house pork to
make a man of. Give me a Wildness whose glance no civilization
can endure, — as if we lived on the marrow of koodoos devoured
raw.
ROMULUS AND REMUS
HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROME ROMA
WALDEN: I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to PEOPLE OF
have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools;
WALDEN
for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they
had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they
might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to
labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat
their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of
dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they
are born? They have got to live a man’s life, pushing all these
things before them, and get on as well as they can. How many a
poor immortal soul have I met well nigh crushed and smothered
under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it
a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never
cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture
and wood-lot! The portionless, who struggle with no such
unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough
to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.
ROMULUS AND REMUS
NEVER READ AHEAD! TO APPRECIATE APRIL 21ST, 753 BCE AT ALL
ONE MUST APPRECIATE IT AS A TODAY (THE FOLLOWING DAY,
TOMORROW, IS BUT A PORTION OF THE UNREALIZED FUTURE AND IFFY
AT BEST).
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Roma and the “new Rome in the West”
HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROMA ROME
750 BCE
Settlement in the Sudan of the Kushites, who would develop a sophisticated civilization, with pyramids and
palaces, major ironworks at Meroe, use of elephants, and trade with cultures as far away as Rome and India
— until their royalty would lose power with the death of their last king in 320CE.
THE TASK OF THE HISTORIAN IS TO CREATE HINDSIGHT WHILE
INTERCEPTING ANY ILLUSION OF FORESIGHT. NOTHING A HUMAN CAN
SEE IS EVER TO BE SEEN THROUGH THE EYE OF GOD.
The men of Rome made the women of the Sabines an offer they couldn’t refuse.
HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROME ROMA
747 BCE
The Sabines captured Rome. The two cultures would merge.
NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Roma and the “new Rome in the West”