Lidea of telling the history of the Roman empire in a hundred pages makes you think you want to empty the sea with a teaspoon. And instead, miraculously, Aldo Cazzullo succeeds, with a galloping narrative, a carny’s skill that pulls the rabbit out of the hat when you least expect it.
Ancient Rome by Aldo Cazzullo
When we were the masters of the world (HarperCollins) is a perfect book for those who, like kids in schools today, he wants to know everything clearly, but without wasting time. Cazzullo has a genius for communication. And it’s not a common thing. Knowing how to speak to everyone, small and large, with a few clear and rational traits, while not losing the complications of a dense and articulated narrative, presupposes a daring talent and great mental energy.
The book, which at first glance may seem like a simple story of exemplary facts, actually has a very clear thesis that is developed gradually through the story. The author wants to show us that we are so imbued with Roman culture that the empire, destroyed by the barbarian invasions, still stands within us. Its language, like the Greek one, is at the basis of all our definitions of thought, its ability to mix with other cultures and other peoples, its political intelligence, its architectural art, its marvelous sculptures, still make part of our life measure.
Rome, the Colosseum at sunset. (Getty Images)
Cazzullo asks himself: «Why? Why Rome? How is it possible that a civilization that supposedly died sixteen centuries ago continues to influence the language and thoughts of our century? Why, among the many empires and kingdoms, among the many civilizations that have succeeded one another on earth, does Rome continue to give words and symbols to modernity, and still inspire the forms that power and art, business and communication?”.
He gives us the answer clearly and clearly: Rome’s fortune lies not only in charm, but in continuity. «The Roman Empire never fell because the idea of Rome traveled immortally throughout history, thanks not only to sovereigns who felt they were the reincarnation of the emperor, but to peoples who thought of themselves as the heirs of the ancient Romans ».
Constantine’s transformism
The barbarian peoples, for example, who we think of as “rude and hirsute invaders”, were in reality steeped in Roman culture. «They modeled, in their organizations, the military and political idea of the Romans, their language, their values». Even Shakespeare cannot escape the charm of Rome, and stages his heroes with a passion that reveals the profound influence of Latin myth, its heroes and its legends. And arriving at the twentieth century, Cazzullo recalls the case of Marguerite Yourcenar who wrote a famous novel about Hadrian, the emperor who knew the mysteries of beauty, who falls in love with the beautiful Antinous, who creates a new way of understanding justice and death. The history of the empire told in this book is a long journey through time.
The author allows us to enter, very agile and precise, into the dynamics that with Constantine transformed Roman dominion into a phase of Christianity. Religion gains power, but loses its authenticity: «If Constantine is already Christian, he is a Christian of a new species. Determined to use religion as an instrument of his power.” Cazzullo also makes it clear, however, that that embrace of Christianity allowed the empire to survive: a new Rome was founded, which resisted a thousand years after the fall of the city in the West.
We could say that the chapter “The infinite empire. The flight of the eagle from Justinian to Zuckerberg” is the heart of the book. Here, taking inspiration from Dante who in Justinian’s speech in the Paradise «makes a dizzying excursus, and summarizes in a few pressing verses the story of the eagle, symbol of Rome», the author demonstrates his thesis with a ride through the transformations, the suggestions, imitations of the Roman model, from Constantinople to the Holy Roman Empire, to the Third Rome, Moscow, to Napoleon who named himself emperor and had columns, arches and other elements built in Paris that recall the eternal city, to the British Empire or the American one.
Mussolini and the Forum… in the belt
The overview does not skimp on very significant details on the use of Latin, with its formulas, in these new empires, on the revival of symbols, rites, elements of clothing. There is no shortage of pages in which the author reminds us how much of a role the Roman Empire had in the imagination of Mussolini, who rode on the feeling or perhaps the never-fading desire among Italians to have a link with that past of greatness and splendor: «The Duce truly feels like the reincarnation of an emperor, or rather the founder of the empire» he writes. And on this point the author’s anti-rhetoric, which comes from the success of a book in which he recounted the disasters of fascism, gives us a bitter smile: «When he then wants to build an Olympic citadel in Rome to host the Games – which in effects will be held there in 1960 -, he calls it Foro Mussolini in his honor; even if for the anti-fascists, or even just the moaners, the Mussolini forum was the one that during the war almost everyone, having lost weight due to deprivation, had had their belts done».
Many pages allow you to discover the most recent developments in the myth of Rome: the fascination that many “new emperors” have for antiquity and in particular for the Gens Iulia, for Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus. Thus these new “augusts”, the magnates of the technological world, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Bill Gates repeatedly declare their love for the symbols of Rome. And it still makes you smile, because another advantage of this book is the gentle and intelligent irony, knowing a detail of the honeymoon of the founder of Facebook, who quotes Virgil, has the same haircut as Augustus and concludes his meetings at cry of “Dominion!”: «Mark Zuckerberg took his honeymoon to Rome with his wife Priscilla, but she said that it seemed to her that there were three of them: “Mark, me and Augusto”. In fact, the young husband continually spoke about the emperor, and continually photographed his statues.” There is probably some mania for power in the “digital emperors”, but also the dream of a new Rome, represented by a network that unites a multi-ethnic community of billions of people.
When we were the masters of the world. Rome: the infinite empire (HarperCollins) is the new book
by Aldo Cazzullo.
The memory of Italians
The Infinite Empire also arrives on the big and small screen, the book gives an account of it, from Ben-Hur to Gladiator, not leaving aside sagas like Star Wars. Totò, Fellini, Liz Taylor There are many artists who have nourished the legacy of Rome with their films and their interpretations and have contributed to keeping the imagination of the empire alive, sometimes exalting it, other times playing and joking about its most grandiloquent features.
Even with this book Aldo Cazzullo reminds readers that there is no need to be ashamed of being Italian, but he makes it clear, with his wisdom, his ability to make connections and comparisons, that knowing history is necessary in order to have a deeper look at collective identity and to consciously build the individual one.
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