It was a sweltering day already as I climbed out from Madrid. The computer called for 3 hours 34 minutes of flying time so I would be in Naples well before lunch. These three hour hops were a nice change from those longer flights. Three hours was enough time to get tired but not enough to knock you out. The first part of the flight was across the dry lands of eastern Spain. I saw the Mediterranean ahead, the pale blue of that great inland sea: the mother of western civilization.
Leaving Iberia, I headed east across the Mediterranean towards the boot that is Italy. I couldn’t help but think of the ancient terms for the places having just spent so much time immersed in that history. Naples had been the furthest northern city of what had been Magna Graecia, Greater Greece. Most of southern Italy had been colonized by the Greeks hundreds of years before the rise of Rome to power. But those recently barbaric Romans conquered the Greeks of Italy by losing two major battles to the Greek general, Pyrrhus giving us the term Pyrrhic victory, to lose by winning or win by losing depending on which side you are on. Those Romans were something. Flavius, the Roman General beat Hannibal by never fighting. Hannibal tried for two years to get Scipio into a decisive battle but Flavius always retreated into an impregnable defensive position until the Carthaginians, exhausted by the seemingly endless war, recalled Hannibal home to Carthage.
That is how the Vietnamese beat the US. They never won a battle, but kept on fighting until we gave up. And don’t tell me Tet. Militarily, the North got their asses handed to them during Tet. It’s why they never tried another Tet; they couldn’t afford another ass whipping like they got. But the American media presented the story as if the Americans got their butts whipped. Sure we took casualties, but the NVA had the guts of their army decimated. The military learned a lesson; in a modern war the media needs to be managed just as much as the battlefield. The media was manipulated in Iraq to serve the purposes of the military during the war. It was only afterwards that all the information, good and bad, was released.
Most Americans don’t know it but the US was probably within two weeks of winning in Vietnam. Statements made by former leaders of North Vietnam have changed how we should understand what happened in Vietnam. Linebacker II, the intense bombing campaign of the North by B-52s, had brought the North leaders to the point of agreeing to a partition and cessation of hostilities. The Russians kept them from surrendering while they stirred up student protests and used the leftist meia to stir up the people against the war. With the liberal newspapers in the US shouting the Soviet line for peace, part of the lesson the military learned about manipulating the media, the North Vietnamese desperately ‘agreed’ to a negotiated end to the war while publicly saying the bombing had nothing to do with the decision. Once we quit bombing, the North went back to killing Americans until we quit. Had we kept up the bombing for two more weeks, the war would have been over instead of lasting for years after. And if you don’t think B-52s could have that effect, ask the Iraqi Army what it’s like to be bombed continuously by them. B-52s broke the will of whole divisions of the Iraqi army to fight. One Iraqi unit quit without a single casualty after watching the unit next to them get slaughtered by the B-52s.
I kept thinking about the Roman Empire and how it had ruled for so long, and yet, it too fell. Why had it lasted for five centuries as a Republic before having the power of the people usurped by an Emperor? As an American, I felt it incumbent to ponder those questions. My own country, so consciously modeled by its founders after the Roman Republic, seemed to be following the arc of the Republic. With the fall of Russia as a superpower, some were declaring a Pax Americana. I rather doubted that the Chinese would think so, but still…
The Greeks thought that the history of a Polis was a cycle. First there was Monarchy, rule by one strong man. As the power and wealth of a Polis grew, those who were also powerful and wealthy demanded a share of the rule and the next stage was Oligarchy, rule by the rich few. These few might govern well, if they believed that they had a duty to the Polis, or they may govern badly if their only interest was their own.
As wealth and education spread to a wider and wider class of people, the public began to realize their value to the state and demand a share of rule. This stage was Democracy, rule by the people. But few people are actually up to the demands of rule, and are not as discriminating as the best few. They are easily led by demagogues, which is where America is now just look at the caliber of politicians Americans elect today, which leads to mob rule and the breakdown of the system. A new strongman steps in and the Polis is back at the top, or bottom if you prefer, of the cycle.
How did Rome escape this cycle for so long? Polybius, a Greek historian who was captured and lived in the familia of the Scipio’s in the time of the Republic, thought he knew. A quick note on the Roman family. Much of the Roman culture devolved from the way Roman’s thought of family. Everyone who lived together, often several generations, servants, slaves, tutors, etc., was part of a family. They might not even be related by blood, adoption being quite common. But the oldest male was the Pater Familias, Father of the Family. He held the power of life and death over everyone in his familia. The deference to age and respect of authority which marks the Roman republic started in the family.
Polybius believed that the Roman system was a combination of all of the types and therefore, did not have to run through the cycle. Rome was governed by Magistrates, Consuls, Praetors, and Quaestors, elected for one year. There was the Democracy. The Consuls were like monarchs for their year, but only one year. But they had to share authority for some tasks, the law and finance, with the Praetors and Quaestors. That was an oligarchy. For several hundred years, virtually all magistrates were elected from one of about one hundred of the old established families: Aristocracy. The Senate was composed of former Magistrates providing a body of experienced men who had served the Republic, the rule by the wisest.
The Consul could recommend a law to the assemblies, the two bodies who could enact laws, but it was up to those bodies to pass the law. Those bodies were elected by all citizens, grouped by location in the Tribal Assembly, and by wealth in the Centuriate Assembly, democracy again. The Plebeians participated but did not rule. The mob, always willing to sell their birthright for a little security promised by a demagogue, was severely limited in their function. If the Assemblies voted to enact a bad law, the Senate, with no formal power, but with the authority of age and wisdom, could ask the Assemblies to not enact the law. The assemblies would usually comply. Finally, there were ten Tribunes with authority to, by a single word, veto, block any laws they deemed detrimental to the republic.
If these checks and balances sound familiar, they should. America’s forefathers studied the republic closely when they established the Constitution of the American Government, even calling it a Republic. The new American government was consciously modeled on the Roman Republic. And the intention of the founders was to limit government much as the Roman Republic was limited. Jefferson knew the limits of democracy, "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."
But that isn’t what happened to America. Instead, the mob has gained more and more access to rule, and the consequence is that the rulers have been less and less the best driven by a sense of duty and have become more and more the least and the power hungry, the demagogues. The House of Representatives was to be the people’s voice, the way for the Plebeians to participate without ruling. The Senate, to be chosen by the legislature of the states, was to be shielded from the pressures of the mob and was to provide the ‘wisdom’ of the best. The President, elected by the Electoral College which was to convene in Washington and elect the best person, was also to be shielded from the mob. We were to have the same mix of oligarchy and democracy that served the Roman Republic for hundreds of years.
That has changed. Direct election of the Senate and virtual direct election of the President has given the mob full squealing voice in the halls of government. Now, the government has either to supply bread and circuses or play the game of practical politics. "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." - H. L. Mencken. Al-Qaeda anyone?
The demagogues have been taking the rights and power from the states and the citizens and accumulating it in Washington. Any power once granted to the government will eventually be abused by that government.
As my Corsair neared the coast of Italy, I thought of Jefferson, and I recalled some of my favorite quotes of his:
That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.
If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny. This should be on every piece of paper that leaves the FDA.
Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.
I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government...
And I wonder, what would he think of what we have done to his creation?
Naples is a seaport and has been since its founding. Seaports have a particular feel to them, being cosmopolitan by chance instead of choice, always with the influx of foreign ideas, foreign money, foreign sailors, and foreign merchants.
Naples was founded between the 7th and 6th centuries BC by the Greeks and was given the name Neapolis. During the Roman period, the town preserved its Greek language and customs. After the fall of Rome, the city passed from one set of rulers after another: Byzantines, Lombards, Normans, Swabians, Angevins, Aragonese, Spaniards, Bourbons, and revolutionary French. Everyone had a hand at ruling Naples.
But the thing that most interested me was the result of the great brooding mountain that seemed to overshadow everything in Naples. On a day in 79 AD, Vesuvius blew its top and sent ash, poisonous gas, and finally lava pouring down onto the Roman city of Pompei, burying it under 20 feet of lava. It happened so quickly and completely, that people had no opportunity to flee. The town was lost to history for the next 1600 years.
It was discovered by chance. People quickly realized that they had discovered a major find, a Roman city undisturbed by later tribulations. But they also discovered something quite shocking to the Victorian mores of the time; the Romans were a lusty people. The Romans had no concept of pornography, that being an invention of the Chrisitan Europeans. The word pornography was coined to decribe the collection of Roman arts and crafts discovered at Pompei. A virtuous Roman matron would have proudly decorated her house with a phallus, with paintings depicting sexual activity, with lamps in the shape of a phallus and good luck charms coverd with phallus'.
Shocked at something so different, all of these erotic art works were locked up in the Secret Museum and only available to scholars. Only in the last few years has the Secret Museum been opened to the public. That is what I wanted to see.
As soon as I got the plane ready for the next day, I hooked up with a taxi to take me to the museum. I should have known better than take an Italian taxi. I’d rather be in a burning plane spiraling out of control than an Italian taxi again. At least you can bail out of a burning aircraft! Somehow, we arrived at the museum without any major structural damage and no deaths. I paid the taxi driver, while praying he didn’t kill anyone as he sped off, belching gray smoke from the exhaust of the taxi.
The ‘secret’ rooms require a second separate admission, which goes back to a decree that only men, of sober bearing and education be allowed to see the collection.
I wandered among the rooms of the erotic implements of Pompeii, amazed at the quality and quantity. It seems that every house, every shopkeeper, would have had a figure with an enlarged penis on which bells were hung to keep away evil spirits. Imagine, an entire city of tinkling dicks. One bronze of the God Mercury had five phalluses so that many more bells could be attached making noise to scare away evil. The Romans worshipped the phallus. Maybe they weren’t really all that different than us, just more honest?
Many of the rooms in the Roman villas were decorated with erotic paintings on the walls, and not just the bedrooms. Often it was the dining room as in the Villa of the Mysteries. Of course, the town brothel was appropriately painted. Now were these paintings instructional or arousing?
In one bathhouse, the wall above the alcoves where patrons stored their clothes was painted with a different sexual position/perversion for each alcove. To find your clothes you just followed your perversion. Where are your clothes? one might ask. I'm under the blowjob, you? Meet me under the boy taking it in the ass.
What surprised me about the collection was the preponderance of the woman on top or the man behind sex positions depicted. There were very few of the ‘missionary’ position in the paintings or vases or sculpture. One painting showed a man taking a woman from behind with the cautionary words inscribed on the wall above, ‘Enter slowly.’ I couldn’t help but imagine that he needed some KY as well and I wound up laughing out loud, which drew many stares in my direction. Oh, how Christians have lost their sense of humor about sex along with the sense of the naturalness of it.
I quickly went through the rest of the museum; I especially wanted to see the famous mosaics of Alexander. But after the erotic art, it was hard to get excited by the rest of the collection, if you’ll excuse the pun.
I found a neighborhood restaurant not far from my hotel for dinner. Naples traditionally used lots of fish, for obvious reasons, along with spices and olive oil, all available in a major trading center. I told the waiter, whose English was passable, and better than my guide book Italian, to bring me the specialties of the house. He brought a fish appetizer, with many small bites, squid, octopus I recognized. The rest I just ate and was glad. He brought a small salad for a change of pace. For the main meal it was a fish stew, along with a carafe of the house wine, and my God but it was good. I waddled back to the hotel and fell into bed.
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