Rome Journal: Sub specie aeternitatis

Overstimulation creates a high bar. You crash and the only thing that works is another hit say of success or Percocet. Freud regarded Rome's stratified architecture as a metaphor for mind. From the point of view of aspiration, it offers a history of striving. Can one learn from Maxentius, Marcellus, Augustus, Hadrian ( whose poetic aspirations were addressed in Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian)? John Williams' addressed the quintessence of Augustus and "The Augustan" impulse in a novel named after the famed emperor-- also  responsible for exiling Ovid. Remember that Plato would have recused all poets from his Republic. Take a deep breath next time you're in Rome, especially if you're passing an antiquity on the famed 75 going from the top of the Janiculum to Independence Plaza and the central train station,Termini. Rome makes you look at even elation under the prospect of a sobering eternity.

read "The Fall of Rome" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and, talking about antiquity let's give it up for "Rapper's Delight" by The Sugarhill Gang