Lessons from Italy

Everyone said Italy would be beautiful; and it was. When my wife and I visited this past summer, we were both in awe. The country looks like a Renaissance painting; utterly different from American landscapes. Partly this is because cypress trees and umbrella pines are everywhere. Partly it is because relics of the past abound.
One thing is plain however. Our civilization owes a great deal to the accomplishments of ancient Rome and Renaissance Florence. Their achievements are more than impressive; they are testimony to the durability of the human spirit. The plumbing system uncovered in Pompeii demonstrates that human ingenuity has a storied pedigree; while Michelangelo’s David proves that human artistic genius is not confined to one time period or nationality.
But there is another lesson to be learned; one that is not as sanguine. We nowadays are inclined to criticize the pedestrian ambiance in which we live. Commercialization is everywhere and we find it lacking in inspirational qualities. It does not have the panache of a Leonardo da Vinci or the gravitas of the Roman Coliseum. To us it seems ordinary and crass.
Looking upon the Roman Forum and the Pantheon, one cannot help but be impressed by the physical undertakings of our long dead ancestors. Nor can we deny the genius of those who invented the use of perspective in art. But there is more to be seen if we look closely.
Pompeii is a good place to begin. It is much larger and more technologically advanced than might be expected. But then there are the little touches; the ones that alert us to what life was like for the flesh and blood human beings who lived in Pompeii. For instance, there is the famous brothel. Most visitors are amused by its visual depictions of the sorts of sexual activity for sale. They listen to the tour guides explain how business was transacted, but they don’t pause at the observation that most of the working girls were slaves.
Nor do most tourists ponder the condition of the gladiators. When they walk through the town’s amphitheaters, they are impressed by their size and acoustics. Perhaps they also note that our term for “fornication” derives from the entrance halls where illicit sex occurred. What they probably neglect was that the gladiators were also slaves. They may have been the sports superstars of their times, but they were not free to live lives of their choosing.
We who are free take our circumstances for granted. We do not consider it special that we can—for the most part—do what we like when we like. Nevertheless, the fact that we do not have masters controlling our fate is an historical achievement of the first magnitude. It took millennia to accomplish and was won at the cost of countless lives.
Looking now at medieval Florence, one is impressed not merely by the ubiquitous sculptures, but by its domestic towers. The grandees of the Renaissance city lived in fear for their lives. Their homes were fortresses because they had to be. Families would literally attack one another in order to assert political precedence.
In some of these buildings the front entrance was a tiny crawl space accessed by climbing up a ladder. The goal was to prevent easy entrée by one’s enemies. But this meant that persons on noble stature had to scrunch themselves up every time they entered their own homes. Imagine how demeaning that must have been.
Even the art that we today admire was a tool in the internecine warfare of Renaissance cities. The Medici, for example, commissioned these works in order to elicit the good will of ordinary citizens. They wanted to make sure that they would come to their defense when folks like the Pazzi sought to assassinate them.
We, of course, don’t worry about such things. Yes, there are the occasional assassinations, but they are the exception. Poisoning people to get ahead is no longer a conventional means of achieving power. We instead resort to things like political spin and poisoning the airwaves against rivals.
The point is that our lives may seem boring compared with those of the generations that preceded us, but this monotony is an enormous boon. Our market economy is relatively predictable, and builds on the contributions of the millions who came before us, but it is also relatively safe and liberating.
The techno-commercial world in which we reside provides us with opportunities our ancestors did not have. We can make personal choices without having to worry that our master will put us in chains or that a rival will cut us down with a sword. We can innovate; we can grow rich; we can even take trips to Italy without asking anyone’s permission.
That’s not too bad.
Melvyn L. Fein. Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University