The other day, I was busy setting up a rug across from our fireplace so that it was centered on the fireplace, TV and coffee table when sitting on the couch. I soon owned the design and later sat there watching the Kansas City Chiefs get beat by the New England Patriots. Sitting there, feet from the screen, I was sensing events transmitted in the smallest fraction of a second it took light to travel from the screen to my eyes to allow my brain (nowadays I admit slower in its processing) to interpret that the Chiefs were still being outclassed. It occurred to me that if I were to somehow move back far enough for it to take a whole second for the light from the scene to make the transit to me once again, I’d have to remove myself 186,282 miles, the distance light travels in one second. Later, days after the Chiefs were defeated in their bid to play in the Superbowl, the sunlight I perceived outside as I sat on that couch, now precisely centered on the TV and all in between, left the sun 8 minutes and 20 seconds earlier. When you thought about it, the photon particles lighting up everything around me were old.
Lucky for us, we live in a world where everything about us takes far, far less than a second for the light of an event to reach our eyes. But think about it, if we were to get back far enough, we could intercept the light from past events, just like the Patriots intercepted the football on the Chiefs. Looking up at the scatter of stars in the night sky, some are far enough away that their light is thousands of years old when it reaches us. Likewise, if one of those distant stars were to cease shining, we would not be aware of it for thousands of years after the fact. Though just a little far removed from my couch, we’re essentially perceiving the past, essentially looking at past history.
Just imagine. Imagine I was able to break my earthly bonds and move my couch to position it precisely where it needed to be so that looking back at Earth I intercepted the photons from say 216 BCE and was in essence transported to when Hannibal was routing the Romans at Cannae, or relocated, to where I could intercept the light from 15 March, 44 BCE, to watch as Caesar “is”, or would it be “was”, assassinated. If we participated in the past would it be our present? Wow, in command of such quantum ability, the question presents itself, who really owns the past?
These last few weeks on that same couch, I’ve been reading up on the history of Rome. At its birth, I think of it as “small Rome”, initially the name of a muddy village thought named for its founder, Romulus, on a hill overlooking a swamp by a river. Rather quickly, it transformed into a broader connotation of its name. I call it “large Rome”, a new nation in control of what we refer to as the entire present-day Italian peninsula. From that achievement, it looked outward to transform itself once more, this time into the most dominant power of the ancient world, “global Rome”. What’s odd is that from its humble beginning, no clear explanation exists as to how it mushroomed in achievement to ancient world superpower status. While ancient writers like Pliny, Cicero, and Livy tried their best to craft a plausible narrative, a tidy explanation just doesn’t exist. Only theories and possibilities persist. Oh, there are hints here and there but nothing pointing to a clear intent to dominate, no strategy of conquest. In the scope of things, human history, though messy business, makes for a short story in a thin book. We homo sapiens just haven’t been around long enough when it comes to everything else swirling around us. Our story is essentially just beginning with its early chapters rather sparse. Putting meaning into millennia of vagary uncovered by archeologists - fragments of documents, stone shards of Latin text inscribed on a stone, seemingly contradictory information, the lack of a firm chronology of events and the individuals involved - is a mighty never-ending task to navigate that continues to present day. Getting back to my favorite species of homo sapiens, those assertive ancient Romans, once again. Did they even realize they’d made that milestone leap from village to city-state, followed relatively quickly by a light speed jump from city-state to global power across the entire ancient Mediterranean? Was dawn on those days somehow different than all previous mornings? I doubt it. Did a cabal of men sitting around a bowl of olives, a jug of Falernian white wine, and why not throw in some snails sautéed in garlic or dormice prepared in honey craft an ambitious five or ten-year policy of expansion? I don’t think so. Gradual change just doesn’t work that way, doesn’t shout “Ecco qui (Here it is), this put us over the top”. What they did have, however, appears to have been character traits which, taken together, separated them from other also-ran city-states.
What, if anything, marked these small-town Romans as special? Well surprisingly, it wasn’t because their DNA made them more aggressive, markedly more militaristic or enamored with conquest. In many cases, their results were pyrrhic with victory achieved at enormous cost. What they did share was a common sense of local identity that grew to national pride, a strong sense of honor to their family and ancestors, the belief that the gods, like guardian angels, charted their destiny, and political decisions that had unforeseen but favorable consequences. Because they remained in power for so long and achieved so much, we remain in the shadow of their influence. What they achieved formed the DNA of Western culture. Their achievements echo and ripple everywhere. We are steeped in their accomplishments, some as rudimentary as the words we use in our daily language. Here’s an example where something as simple as a speaker’s platform erected in the Forum is reflected in our present-day vernacular. Just how this came about is interesting. Rome was primarily a land power, attuned to land warfare. When Romans fought at sea, their terrestrial fighting style had to find a way to make sea battles more like land battles. Contact with the enemy was essential, but unfortunately, they were aboard their own ships. To facilitate face-to-face contact, bronze spikes were mounted on a warship’s bow and became the main weapon of Roman ships. During battle, the objective was to successfully maneuver to drive the ram into the hull of an enemy ship and board the ship or having punctured the hull, sink it. At some point in the fourth century BCE, rams from captured enemy ships were fastened to the base of the speaker’s platform in the Forum. The Latin word for ram is rostra which soon became the name of the platform and in turn gave birth to the English word, rostrum. Imagine being able to see a fierce confrontation at sea like the Battle of Actium, the ramming and boarding by Roman marines or the rostra in use in the busy Forum by an animated Senator, absent whatever he might have to say. A capability like that would be absolutely amazing if only spacetime would cooperate.
If I could maneuver my couch like TV’s Dr Who maneuvers his telephone booth through time, I’d forgo Cannae for now and take a test ride to instead re-experience a special evening in Calitri. It happened only this past August during the annual Sponz Fest music festival, so relocation from our living room would be less than half a light year away. During the week
of the Sponz Fest festival, Calitri sees its population swell with an influx of thousands of visitors. The Borgo comes alive with a spirited mix of music venues, art exhibitions, parades, pop-up cafes, and restaurants, more on the scale of activity there 50 or more years ago. At times, unless you were among the merrymakers, it was hard to sleep with the singing and people in the streets into the wee hours of the morning. We enjoy the event and it was easy to bear especially when we joined in. This past August, however, Maria Elena was confined to a sedia a rotelle (wheelchair) for a month with broken bones in her foot, smack-dab in the middle of Sponz Fest. Due to her condition, she was hardly ever out during the festival. When she did get out, usually for a medical appointment, she wanted to make a day of it. It was on the evening of one of these days, as I pushed her sedia toward home over the uneven cobbles of Via Berrilli that we heard the music.
We made a brief stop about a hundred feet earlier. It had been in a grotto recently converted into a café, opened in time for the festival. Work restoring this particular grotto had started about a year earlier. I recall passing by back then and watching as a mason, sans helmet or mask, did the dirty work of chipping away at the domed ceiling and refaced the side walls. I wouldn’t refer to these grottos as caves, because to do so fails to give the grottos of Calitri the sense of dimension they deserve. Better to think of them as caverns for it fits with the image of something cavernous and they are, vast in expanse, some penetrating deep into the mountainside. It helps to be able to visualize the streets in the Borgo. Walking along Via Berrilli, on the upslope side, you find the grottos, some with stairs or a porch style front entry, though absent roofs. On the opposite side of the street, the downhill side, are the doorways to more conventional style homes with terracotta tiled roofs and views extending out over the countryside.
A while later, rolling and bouncing farther down the street
toward home, we arrived at the point where a day earlier I’d come upon a minstrel. Maria Elena also heard him playing when curiosity got her to nose her wheelchair out onto our balcony. He’d been perched up in a window overlooking the street as he strummed and serenaded away. The ornate metal bars of the railing, bulging outward, was a perfect location and all that kept him from falling. At that hour he wasn’t there, nonetheless, we could still hear music. But while we could hear music, it wasn’t music any minstrel might play. It originated from farther ahead, from another grotto.
We were familiar with this grotto. On past occasions, we’d been inside when a group of men insisted we join them as, boys being boys, they were celebrating for whatever reason, and again when a group of women held a political gathering there. Whether configured with long banquet tables or rows of chairs, this grotto had been in use for years, possibly centuries. Days before Sponz Fest, I’d noticed activity there. Apparently, it had been rented and a three-wheeled Ape, slim enough to allow it to course through the narrow lane, shuttled back and forth from the town hall piazza to the grotto loaded with supplies. A sign had been hung above the street announcing the name of the pop-up establishment, only steps from our door. Its name was “EST”, a carryover from the name of a restaurant located about two hours away in the suburbs of Bari on the Adriatic coast of Puglia. For a few days, we would get to enjoy Pugliese style food as a family of restaurateurs closed their hometown enoteca and transported their cuisine to Calitri for the festival. There’s a special story behind the name “EST” I’d like to share.
We were familiar with EST, not as the name of a little-known restaurant, but as the name of a particular wine from Montefiascone, a hill town dating from the High Middle Ages (1000 – 1250 CE) close to Lake Bolsena, just north of Rome. Much earlier it had been an Etruscan town, well before Romulus and Remus argued over where to site Rome. It has been theorized that Montefiascone
occupies the site of the Etruscan Temple known as Fanum Voltumnae. This was the geographical and spiritual center of the Etruscan nation, a group of twelve city-states. Fanum means sanctuary or sacred place and signified a complex versus a single temple. The Etruscans formed the league of the “Twelve Peoples” there for religious purposes. Livius, a Roman historian, mentioned the Fanum Voltumnae as the place where the shrine was located. Modern historians have been looking for the Fanum since at least the 15th century but its exact location, never pinpointed, remains a mystery. What you will definitely find there is wine. We’d visited it once upon a time specifically to sample the vino with a label that screamed Est! Est!! Est!!! Est I’m told is Latin for “It is” and Est! Est!! Est!!! or It is! It is!! It is!!! makes for an unusual name for a wine until you read the bottle’s label for a glimpse at the story behind the name. Though some of it is outright invention on my part, let me share it with you.
The Bishop, following behind, would then know where to stop for a break or night’s rest. The journey underway, it wasn’t long before his acolyte had the route littered with “ESTs” judiciously scrawled here and there. Close to Rome and still hard at work, the advance man, by then an expert on Italian vintages, stopped at a Montefiascone inn. It was here that he was so captivated with the house white that he wrote Est! on the door not once but three times. When the bishop arrived and saw the extended graffiti, he had to have been intrigued. What could that clever literation, three consecutive ESTs, essentially “It is Good! It is Good! It is Good! mean? Had his man overindulged, somehow made an error or in the dark and well in his cups not realized he’d already written EST once or twice? Impossible to know its real meaning, the Bishop’s curiosity brought him inside and when he’d settle-in and taken his first thirst-quenching sip, it proved life-changing.
He was so taken by this incredible wine, he never completed his journey. Was he missed? Henry V was still coronated, reigned, and fought his wars, while Bishop Fugger enjoyed the rest of his days along the shores of Lake Bolsena, outside
Montefiascone, taking pleasure in his newfound wine. Germany faded to a memory. Though he hadn’t died, he’d already gone to heaven. If he continued his priestly duties at all, he may have been the first bishop to work remotely from his diocese, something on the idea of present-day, work-at-home telecommuting. Legend holds that when the bishop passed away, he bequeathed his earthly possessions to Montefiascone with the stipulation that each year a barrel of his beloved Est, Est, Est be poured over his grave on the anniversary of his death to seep through the soil and appease his eternal thirst. This was likely an invention, especially difficult to fulfill, for the Bishop’s tombstone lies flush with the floor of a subterranean chapel inside the local Church of San Flaviano. The lid of his tomb may, however, add some credibility to the story of his love for the Montefiascone white for it depicts the bishop lying in his tomb with a goblet positioned on either side of his miter head-dress. More piling on to an already tall tale or veritas? Additionally, the grave’s inscription, liberally translated reads, “Herein lays my Master who died from drinking too much Est.” Who knows, maybe myth is more powerful than truth, then maybe, telling from sales and tourism in Montefiascone, it blurs and becomes the same as truth.
Back on Via Berrilli in Calitri where it intersects our vicolo courtyard, we followed the music inside the grotto. Their sign now hung, they too had opened announcing “EST” (It is good) to all.
Though smaller then Michele’s grotto café, this grotto had additional amenities and a more substantial kitchen with, in addition to wine, offerings of food. The music that had attracted us originated from a portable phonograph. A single LP, “Swing in the Films of Woody Allen” was all they’d brought along. Every so often, they’d flip it over, but the twelve or so melodies were all that was needed to set the mood in the stony bass acoustics of the grotto. We sat alongside nothing more than a barrel substituting as a makeshift pub table. Relaxed, we soon dug into an unpretentious Frisa del Contadino, a traditional twice cooked bread with assorted toppings. People came and went practically with the rhythm, as we engaged in conversation with adjacent patrons and passersby. When we weren’t occupied, we watched as the family scurried to keep up with demand that seemed to increase
with the hour … like the pro he was, father sliced the prosciutto by hand so thin, they emerged like ribbons from a kitchen mandolin, mother worked a corkscrew into a fleshy cork with ease to then describe the sunshine in the bottle that materialized, while lovely Elka saw to the needs of customers. As the Bishop had, we enjoyed a cool bottle of EST! EST! EST! in the heat of that August night. Its dry, crisp, full-bodied, golden nectar, as cool as the repetitive rhythmic jazz melodies, urged us to savor the moment along with the wine. Soon in the groove, semi-mesmerized, we lingered for hours in the moment. Much later, after the songs had played over and over, we looked for chalk so that once out on Via Berrilli again, we might mark the walls properly with EST! EST! EST! scrawled large enough so it might be seen light years away. Good memories, in a sense cherished private histories like this simple act of an evening in a grotto, are somewhat like wine, capable of warming us up from the inside. Of course, we hadn’t taken part in anything historic that night. Like most people, we were just living our lives which fill the time between major life events. There certainly are makers of history, those who lived and breathed key events. Then there are those who craft the words that describe those significant events, sometimes tainted with bias, revisionism, exaggerated fabrications, even the truth. Finally come those who revel in the annals of history, imagining, some from their couches, like me, that they can go where past is present, dateline BCE. Together, all share the past (the doers, the recorders, the consumers), its warts and agony, along with those uplifting seminal moments that have shaped mankind into what it is today. Each of us owns a piece of the past, for we are, all of us, its heirs.
From that Rogue Tourist
Paolo
