Happy Floralia

I wouldn't want to break with tradition here, and since today marks another obscure Roman holiday, I thought I would go ahead and write about that.  I mean, I could be doing work.  Or writing about work.  But I'm not.  I'm also heading a lot of sentences with conjunctions, which is a no no.  But, what are you going to do?  Not read my blog?  You and 7 billion other people.

Anyway, April 28th is the first day of Floralia, sometimes known as ludi Florae, or the Games of Flora.  Flora was an ancient goddess sacred to the Romans, most likely arriving in their culture via all the Sabine women that they kidnapped and raped incorporated  into their society.  A temple dedicated to Flora was built on the Aventine Hill, very near the Circus Maximus.  There was a second temple dedicated to her, or to Flora Rustica (she liked it rough), on the Quirinal Hill.  One or both of these were dedicated during the Roman "regal period," when Rome was ruled by a king, before the Republic and the Empire.

If I keep this up, I'll name all seven of the Roman hills.  Four more to go, meretrices!

Flora was a goddess of flowers, plants, vegetation, and fertility.  You probably could have guessed that much without the explanation, just based on her name along.  With the coming of the new growth and the reemergence of green vegetation after the winter, it was natural for the celebrations surrounding Flora to occur during the spring.  Thanks to this, she was assumed to be a personification of the spring, or a goddess of the spring.  Thus, she was venerated during the games that came at the end of April; her celebration lasted for six days.  While she was not one of the "big" names in Roman mythology, she was nevertheless important, especially considering her association with the spring, rebirth, and the growing of plants.

One important note about the Games of Flora, especially for us Westerners and especially for Christians:  animals, especially goats, rabbits and hares, were released during the games to celebrate Flora and her gift of fecundity.  These animals were chosen based on their "fertile and salacious" nature, according to Roman poet Ovid.  Another interesting tie-in with modern Christianity, although possibly more loosely tied-in, is the notion that, for Floralia, Romans eschewed the wearing of white garments and instead chose more colorful attire, similar to the pastels we associate with the spring and especially with Easter.  Hell, might as well stretch all the way to the coloring of eggs, too, right?  Why not.  It's Floralia, after all!

The celebrations involved plays, dances, and, of course, games.  Two things of note for the Floralia, though:  one, it was more a Plebian holiday, whereas most of the other celebrations in Rome heavily favored the Patrician families.  Since the common folks participated so readily in the celebration, Floralia was popular with the people, even if Flora was not considered one of the big, important goddesses--especially if you compare her to Ops or Ceres.  The other interesting thing about Floralia was that prostitutes actively participated in the games.  Normally, prostitutes were kept on the edges of society, no matter how valuable their services were to the populace.  Since most prostitutes were slaves, they were excluded from society and were not considered citizens of Rome.  Even women who were not slaves but entered into prostitution were thusly excluded from society.  However, all prostitutes, even prostitutes who were not slaves, participated in the games, showing that even the whores were not completely excluded from Roman society.  Their activities, aside from the obvious, included mock gladitorial battles, dancing naked (now we're talking!) in public displays, and performing their own plays--hopefully naked, as well.  Hooray, prostitutes!

So, gather up your goats and rabbits, pelt your friends with beans and lupins, and go watch some strippers dance around a pole or two.  It's Floralia!  Get out there and celebrate it!

Felix Dies Natalis, Roma!!!

I keep meaning to tell you about my new life, but, hahahahahahahahahahaha, whatevs.  I'll get to it eventually.

The one thing that has struck me as strange is that I picked up a new follower, though I can't identify who the noob is.  I find this remarkable because I've been staring at the same 107 pictures and names for the past year or so, and then someone new pops up and confuses me.  Regardless, welcome to the fold, my new friend.  I hope you're not scared away by the word "vagina."

The reason for not telling you about the "exciting changes" in my life today, however, is that we have a very important birthday to celebrate today:  Rome's.  That's right, the Eternal City was founded on April 21st, 753 BC.  In Roman terms, this was year 0 AUC, which stands for ab urbe condita, or "from the founding of the City."  It was a Roman demarcation of time, which makes sense.  The Romans didn't give much of a shit about what happened before their majestic home and city was founded.

They didn't give much of a shit, not because they were proud (well, okay, they were a little full of themselves), but because the place where Rome currently sits was a majestic slophole of a swamp prior to Romulus cracking his brother over the head with a spade and then breaking ground on his new home.  A slophole, I might add, that was inhabited by a bunch of fucking savages--like a town in New Jersey with a Quick Stop.

You've heard about the Seven Hills, right?  The Seven Hills are the seven hills (duh) surrounding the Tiber river on which the city of Rome was built.  The ancient Romans chose to live on those hills because the valley was an insufferable bog rife with malaria-bearing mosquitoes, and the lowland wasn't really all that habitable until the Cloaca Maxima (or, "largest sewer") was constructed.  Even then, in the beginning, it was more for draining the lowlands and may not have been the best at removing waste from the city itself.  It took subsequent improvements on the sewer system to make it more effective.  In the beginning, it was still open the atmosphere around, so mosquitoes and other disease-carrying insects could still breed in the water that was being transported away.

It's kind of strange to think about how far we've come in 2700 years...

Romulus went on to become the first king of Rome.  We don't know who his parents were, because he was found in the wild and suckled by a she-wolf until he became a man, along with his twin brother, Remus.  I mean, his real parents.  Romulus and Remus were the offspring of a Vestal Virgin and Mars, the Roman god of war (and, originally, agriculture).  However, Virgil, while writing the Aeneid, was able to link Romulus and Remus (they're a package set, until it became king-making time) to the hero Aeneas, who fled the burning city of Troy after Odysseus et al. snuck into the city and ended the war.  You remember that, right?  Big wooden badger horse and all?  Good.

Aeneas, after doing his own tour of the Mediterranean world--including plowing Dido, Queen of Carthage--went on to become one of the people who helped found Rome.  After plowing Dido's fields for a while (figuratively, as Carthage didn't have a lot of agricultural lands), Dido wanted a little more commitment, and Aeneas said, "Pax, ex sum!"  He then crossed the Mediterranean from north Africa to the boot of Italy.  There, he met a cat named Evander who told Aeneas where a great place to found a great city was.  That place, naturally, was the Seven Hills (and nasty swamp).

So, here we are, celebrating Rome's birthday, with three possible founders.  Incidentally, Evander was a Greek who fled the southern part of Greece and settled with his many followers on one of the hills of Rome--the Palantine Hill, if you must know.  It is from here that we get the word "palace."  When Evander was showing Aeneas around, he probably said something like, "See, this is my hill.  You go over there and settle on one of those other six hills.  Capisce?"  He totally said that, because it's Italian, and when in the place where Rome will eventually be founded, do as the people who will eventually become Roman do.  Er, yeah.

This is what the founding of Rome most likely was:  an accumulation and aggregation of the tribes that lived on the seven hills under one crown, the king being Romulus.  From there, with the city founded, they went on to war with the surrounding tribes, including the Latins (from whom the Romans stole a language), the Sabines (from whom the Romans stole women), and the Etruscans (from whom the Romans stole a peninsula).

So, in your post-Easter ham coma, and before we start planting trees on Earth Day tomorrow, if you're feeling like you need a reason to celebrate, why not take a moment to wish Rome a happy 2767th birthday.  Darling, you look marvelous, not a day over 2500, if I do say so, myself.

Oh, Thank God, It's the Irish!

Look over just to the right of the main body of my blog. No, lower. Yeah, right in there, in the section where I've listed the books I've read in 2010. Notice anything?

Yeah, I finally finished reading How the Irish Saved Civilization! And, well...yeah.

I honestly don't know why it took me so long to read this book, other than the fact that it fell behind my bed and I didn't think about it for six months and then it got shuffled down in my pile of stuff to read. Apparently, in my world, Neil Gaiman & Shakespeare > Irish. And, well, probably pretty much every one else's world, too.

Being that it's the Monday before St. Patrick's day, I thought I'd write up a little review of the book right here.

So, I think this book would have been better titled How the Irish Saved Western Civilization's Writings from the Ravages of Bands of Barbarians Hellbent on Sacking and Destroying the Roman Empire Mostly by Being on the Fringes and the Forgotten Edges of Europe. However, that doesn't flow so well, or it would just be really difficult to get onto the cover of a book and still be eye-catching.

Anyway, that alternate title pretty much sums it up.

Thomas Cahill, the author, starts out by painting a picture of the final days of the Roman Empire. Because Rome had been the sterling standard for civilization for eleven centuries, everyone wanted in because, once in Rome, it was easier to become a citizen than it was to be evicted (unless you count death as an eviction). There were lots of other problems cropping up in Rome that led to the ultimate downfall of the empire, but when the Germans began pouring over the Rhine in the early parts of the fifth century, it pretty much spelled the end for Rome's power.

Along about this time, some kid named Patricius, who lived on the western shores of Britannia, found himself kidnapped and forced into slavery by Irish raiders. This was also about the same time that Constantine was having his crisis of faith and made the conversion to Christianity--basically on his deathbed--despite having become a tad more lenient upon the Christians than some of his predecessors--Diocletian, to name one--for a number of decades. And, well, if Christianity was good enough for the Emperor, then, by golly, it was good enough for the rest of the Roman citizenry.

Because, you know, when in Rome, do as the Emperor does in order to curry favor with him and help keep your guts on the inside of your body or your head firmly attached to your shoulders.

So, Christianity spread through the noble classes because they wanted to be like Mike the Emperor and then it began catching on with the slaves because, when you've got nothing else to look forward to than a life of servitude, Christianity's promise of reward in the afterlife looks pretty good.

This is the world that Patricius lives in. And, since he's now a slave, he begins to pray to this Christian God and eventually he makes the big conversion shortly after being captured and living in Ireland. After about seven years, he escapes, hops a ship to the mainland, studies to become a man of God, and returns to the Ireland, wherein he goes about spreading the word to the Irish. Being that the Irish don't have much in the way of a nobility or a social hierarchy, they latch onto Christianity fast. And, as people are being converted, more and more folks are giving themselves over to the ministry and monasteries are being erected right and left.

In a bit of cultural switcheroo, the mainland, which had thrived under Pax Romana for over a thousand years, now was a war-torn mess, with roving bands of barbarians, bandits and even the last vestiges of the Roman legions fighting all over the place. On Ireland, where the Romans refused to go because of the mad, untamed, war-like people inhabiting the island, a widespread peace spread across the land (Pax Hibernia?) as Patricius did his work. So, as shit was going crazy on the continent, people were unassing the joint right-and-left, but where to go? Why, hell, let's go to this lovely little green island with all it's quaint little people, it's monasteries and it's sexy red-headed bitches.

As people continued to show up on Ireland, seeking refuge from the insanity going on on the mainland, they brought with them their possessions, which included books. And, what do monasteries have in spades? Scribes who love copying shit down from one page to the next! As such, once they were finished copying scriptural texts, they began copying some of the writings from the old Roman Empire and from the Golden Age of Greece and lots of other places. Wherever people showed up, they brought with them books, and those books got copied down and thusly the Irish monks saved countless texts that would have otherwise been burnt or destroyed or sacked during the battles on the mainland.

Eventually, there were enough monasteries and monks that they had to start finding new places to live. So, the monks--with all their writings--began moving into Great Britain, and then into France and eventually made their way down through Switzerland and into Italy--a kind of full-circle for the writings of Rome.

Aaaaaaaand...that's it. That's how the Irish "saved" civilization. Even though the whole thing was started off by a Briton who was a citizen of the Roman Empire who eventually considered himself Irish. Don't get me wrong; Cahill does a great job of writing the book, and the text itself is pretty easy to read. One other thing that Cahill does a good job of is linking these things together, one after another, in a way that's reminiscent of one of my favorite human beings, James Burke. While it's easy to read and the text isn't bogged down by being too full of itself or anything, the premise is pretty thin, though I understand what Cahill was trying to say and all. Without the Irish copying all this stuff down, we wouldn't have copies of the Iliad or the Odyssey. And if we didn't have any of those things, what would Hollywood have to ruin?

So, while we're all sloshing down green beer on Wednesday and remembering how much we love Guinness (you have my full permission to falcon punch anyone who says "they brew better stuff over in Ireland"), raise a glass to Patricius, who helped save "civilization" by bringing Christianity--and peace--to Ireland. Oh, and let's not forget to salute Ireland's abundance of redheaded beauties!

And to think...in the entire book, there was no mention of Lou Holtz or any saucy redheads. More's the pity...