Rome Journal XV: The Tiber

"Fluvio Tiberius" by Hallie Cohen

The Tiber runs through Rome, the Seine through Paris and the Thames, famously through London.  “Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song,” wrote Edmund Spenser in his “Prothalamion.” The river’s name probably derived from the same pre-Roman sources as Tiberius, which was a common name for those of both aristocratic and common estate. Romulus and Remus of course were left to sink or swim in the Tiber and thus began Rome and the phrase “crossing the Tiber” has taken on a religious significance to the extent that it connotes a kind of conversion to Catholicism and a recognition of the Papacy, as a representative of God on earth. The Tiber had a history of flooding up until 1876 when the city attempted to control the waters with stone breakwaters and streets called lungoteveri. The Tiber divides Rome. For instance if you are visiting the Colosseum or the Circus Maximus, which are part of the Rome you may know from postcards, you cross the Tiber at the Ponte Suplicio to enter Trastevere, which is a more bohemian part of the city full of winding ancient where artists studios compete with churches for the visitors attention. We associate the Seine with lovers, the Thames with royalty and the Tiber with empire. You might not talk about the Tiber like you do the Seine or the Thames and its not the subject of musical works like the Danube, but it’s where Rome was founded and as you pass over it, you feel it’s the elemental silent force out of which a civilization was created. As Julius Caesar crosses the Rubicon he makes the fatal choice between politics and power, his desire to be a hero or a politician, famously intoning "the die is cast." And we know where that landed him. "I see war, horrible wars, and the Tiber foaming with much blood," said Virgil in The Aeneid.

Giornale Pugliese I: Rome

Among the greatest sites of Rome are the hordes of tourists ascending and descending the steps of the Colosseum and the Baths of Caracalla. The invasion conjures images of cockroaches, termites and particularly ants, which produce their own sophisticated colonies in the shadows of human civilization. There are sections of Rome adjacent to the major tourist destinations where Italian has become the second language and native speakers are required to hire interpreters if they wish to be understood. The tourists visiting Rome, particularly in the summer months, also resemble fungi, which suffocate and kill certain kinds of trees. It is said that tourism is the life blood of Rome, one of its few major industries in an age when the greats of Italian cinema—Fellini, Antonioni, De Sica and Pasolini—are long dead, and Cinecitta, the home of the great Italian studios, no longer produces classics for the world (La Cicciolinia notwithstanding). Rome has become like Brecht’s fictional city of Mahagonny, where “die achtung fur geld” is the overriding principle. Beauty once constituted the profound and incalculable wealth of Rome, but the city that once fell to the Visigoths is now being overrun by packs of digital-camera wielding hyenas, their mouths dripping with the entrails of their victim.