This time last year, when in Rome, I did as the Romans don’t.
I took a tour: “Rome Through the Eyes of Julius Caesar”.
Caesar was no lawyer, but his story seemed resonant of that of certain lawmakers back home.
I mentioned the similarities between the politics of Ancient Rome and that of modern Australia to my tour guide, Luca, when we met at the entry to the archaeological site. I described to him the cartoons I had seen depicting Julia Gillard plunging a knife into Kevin Rudd’s back.
“I don’t know much about politics in your country.”
“I know,” I said. “That’s why I’m telling you.”
Luca shrugged, and led me down a path of great stones towards the Roman Forum.
“Very disciplined typographers, you Romans,” I said as I caught sight of a familiar typeface dotted around. “I’ve noticed everyone uses the same font all over the city. It’s even here in the ancient city. What is it? Times New Roman?”
“No, I don’t think that’s it.”
“Pity, that’s my favourite.”
“I really don’t know much about fonts.”
“Times New Roman’s nice and small,” I said. “You can cram so many words on a page compared with, say, Helvetica. That’s why I’ve always liked it as a font.”
“The Ancient Romans actually used a lot of different fonts, and languages too,” he said pausing to show me some stone slabs with Sanskrit and Greek-looking scripts.
“Yes, I’m a bit like that,” I said. “Sometimes I’ll use Arial if I have to write a friendly letter, or I’ll sprinkle bits of Latin in an unfriendly one.”
Now near the Roman Forum, we looked up at an enormous stone arch.
“This is the Arch of the Emperor Septimius Severus,” said Luca. “When he died, his two sons ruled together, but eventually one of the sons killed the other and decreed damnatio memoriae or ‘damnation of the memory’. He ordered that every single inscription that mentioned his brother must be destroyed.”
Luca pointed out that, by looking carefully near the top of the arch, one can see that some of the inscription has been removed and replaced with some updated text.
“He replaced inscriptions in this way all over the empire.”
“You mean,” I said. “That in addition to sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order, the Romans gave us not only Times New Roman, but also ‘find and replace’?”
Luca – not being one to look on the bright side of life – shook his head, and led me into the Roman Forum. Standing where Julius Caesar had stood when he was knifed, I reflected on political happenings back home.
“Et tu, Julia?” I muttered under my breath.
“Julia?” said Luca. “The daughter of Julius Ceasar. Very popular with the people she was.”
“Popular? You must be thinking of somebody else.”
We marched on to the Colosseum. Luca showed the way in, waving me ahead of the tour groups. He took me to a particularly unimpressive stone inscription.
“For me,” he said. “This inscription marks the downfall of Ancient Rome.”
“Wow, what does it say?”
“It commemorates an earthquake in 443AD.”
“Must’ve been some earthquake.”
“I don’t mean the earthquake,” he said. “Look at the ugly and irregular characters.”
“Calibri?”
“The stone itself was even recycled – from the base of an old statue. And this is the Colosseum, not some secondary place.”
It seemed to offend him.
“This recycled thing was all that the city prefect could find to carry his message. When elected officials recycle like this, rest assured, the empire is in decline.”
Et tu, Kevin?