Sic transit gloria mundi

Tacitus2 is back in what's left of Roman Britain, on his annual archaeological dig.  It looks fascinating, made more so because he tells the tale well:

So I have had some time to reflect on the twilight of Roman power on the frontier.  It looks at first glance as if we are poking around in the ruins of an abandoned city street.  Kind of like the alley of a modern distressed urban area, abandoned by its vagrant habitants, littered with the remains of fast food meals and empty muscatel bottles.

But that is a tempting, modern, perspective.  In fact glass bottles in Roman times were only owned by the relatively prosperous, not by back alley winos.  And you have to recall that even at the end....even after "the end" there were still a few dauntless souls trying to keep it all together.

His tale of the house is particularly poignant.  There are no answers in archaeology, only questions.  He asks them well.  The past echoes in the present, if we listen.

In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.

- Edward Gibbon

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