Learning from the Romans

In an effort to keep my aging brain cells from going AWOL, to take advantage of a great employee perk, and because I am a glutton for punishment, I am taking a class in ancient Roman history at the university where I work. I’m half Italian, so there are bound to be some ancient Romans among my distant ancestors. If there are such things as benevolent ghosts, and any of my Roman ancestors are among them, maybe they’ll whisper a little history into my ears.* The honor of the famiglia and of all Italians is at stake.

The Romans were cool. We can learn a lot from them, even now. Here are a few things we can glean from them.

1. You can become a head of state, even if you are batshit crazy.

Look at Caligula and Nero. They both needed major therapy and strong medication, but there were no psychiatrists in those days, so they just had to go on being crazy. That didn’t stop either one of them from becoming emperor. The Emperor Tiberius named Caligula as his successor. Nero had his mother pushing him into office. Once you become emperor, nobody will dare point out to you that you are a sick bastard. In other words, no matter what kind of mental handicap is afflicting you, you can achieve your highest dreams if you only have the right people pushing for you.

The unfortunate drawback for Caligula and Nero was that they were both assassinated. You can only carry craziness so far.

2. Wolves make great babysitters.

Legend has it that the future founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, were thrown out as babies by one of their more miserable relatives, in the hope they would die and not cause any problems. Instead, a female wolf found them, took them home and fed them until a more appropriate foster parent happened along. Romulus and Remus grew big and strong and decided to build a city on some hills nearby. In a blatant case of sibling rivalry, they had a big fight and Romulus killed Remus. We don’t know if he was sorry afterward. Romulus had a way of going in and taking what he wanted, no matter who else wanted the same thing.

3. If you never write anything down when it happens, your descendants can make up some fantastic fake history.

As anyone who has ever played “Telephone” knows, stories that are passed down by mouth often bear little resemblance to what actually happened or what the first person telling the story actually said. In the first few hundred years of Rome’s existence, the Romans didn’t write much down. Later, when there were some actual, literate historians there, they had to reconstruct Rome’s early history from legends. In addition, they couldn’t resist fudging a little themselves, especially if they could make some wealthy family happy by faking some heroic ancestors. Public relations were thriving, even if historical accuracy was not.

As you can see, we can learn a lot from the Romans, even though they lived a couple of thousand years ago and they didn’t even have computers. They still managed to go out and conquer almost everyone they wanted to conquer, keep the conquered people mostly happy, and keep this up for a long time, until they came up against some determined Germans. But that’s a whole other story.

*On the other hand, I probably shouldn’t wish for this, since the Romans had a bad habit of making up a lot of their history. See No. 3.