A CURIOUS OBJECT AT THE SOCCER WORLD CUP 2010: THE VUZULELA

I have been always passionate about soccer and during my spare time I watch on TV the matches of the World soccer cup tournament that is broadcasted from South Africa.During the inauguration match, I have seen how all the supporters are extremely loud not because they use their voices to sing, but because they blow a plastic trumpet that reminds me about Rome and the ancient world.To have a better idea of how this object worked, I have decided to attach to this article a picture with the interior relief of the arch of Titus located in the Roman Forum in Rome.The arch of Titus is a dynastic monument that celebrates, through its inscription not only Titus but also his father Vespasian. The similarity of these two trumpets is really striking. As a matter of fact what the modern and the old trumpet have in common is the situation of euphory and joy: the relief of the arch of Titus shows the procession of the booty taken from Jerusalem to Rome during the wars of 69-79 AD. The relief shows on the left the transportation of the Jewish Menorah stolen by the Romans from the Second Temple. On the right, although some art historians identify them as lictors, some other scholar argue that these long trumpets are the Shofar, that were the silver oliphants used by the Jews to call the chiefs of the main tribes so that they could all gather inside the Temple.According to the Bible, the Shofar was also used to announce holidays and the Jubilee years.Trumpets like the Shofar were used also to sound the alarm in case of attack, although it didn't work to stop the invasion of Vespasian who was the governor of Judea before becoming the successor of Nero after the " longum annum" of the four emperors (69 AD).

Hominem mortuum in urbe ne sepelito neve urito.

This is a famous provision of the Twelve tables that rules about the funerary practices in ancient Rome. Before being written, this rule was part of the oral culture: it states that in the city nobody can be buried or cremated.The meaning of this ancient prohibition elicits several questions such as " what was the city at that time?; How it was delimited? People were cremated or buried in ancient Rome?" These questions are indeed very interesting and help understand the relationships Rome had with their gods. First of all, a general principle in the ancient cultures states that a dead body is a source of corruption and the world of the living people should be far from it. In addition, although Rome had the chance to build 3 city walls throughout its history, it cared more about its pomerium, which is the sacred limit of the Urbs rather than its physical boundaries. In fact, the pomerium was a string of land that ran parallel to the city walls and had the shape of a shallow ditch: that boundary protected the city dwellers from the unknown world and guaranteed that the citizens were respectful of the Pax Deorum which was an absloute requirement to keep in good standing the relationships between gods and humans. Furthermore, the burial practices in ancient Rome reflected the influences of the eastern cultures on Rome.At the time of the twelve tables the bodies of the Romans were cremated and the first Columbaria were built.However, because the provision includes also the " buried" people,we can deduct from history that people were buried in the Orientalizing period, that is to say almost three hundred years before that this law was written. Therefore, this is the clue of the old age of this norm that was observed even before that the alphabet was introduced in Rome.

THE MODERNITY OF THE ROMAN MONARCHY AS AN ELECTIVE FORM OF GOVERNMENT

In the first book of Livy's Histories there is a constant theme: the seven kings of Rome do not even attempt to give their power to their sons and at the end of their reign; their prerogatives return back to the senators. The senators elect an interrex among the patres who governs for 5 days and so on until a new king is elected. Once the interrex found a suitable nominee to the kingship, he would bring the nominee before the Senate and the Senate would review him. If the Senate passed the nominee, the interrex would convene the Curiate Assembly and preside over it during the election of the King.This primitive form of government is in line with one of the major fears of the Romans who were afraid of dispotism and tyranny. I believe that the main reason was the deep sense of religiosity of the early Romans.In fact, if the Roman monarchy had been hereditary, the functions of the augurs would have been nullified by the passage of power from father to son. In addition, Romans were also concerned with being governed by the best ruler as possible and the role of the gods in this selection played a pivotal role.Celestial signs were expected on the nominee to strengthen his carisma and to make appear his election as a good selection.Currently there is a monarchy that is built on the same system of the kings of Rome: the Vatican city is an elective monarchy because, although the pope is elected for life, when he dies, the power goes back to the college of Cardinals. The college of cardinals, after having set up the pope funeral and completed the religious functions to honor his memory, they get together from all over the world in the sistine chapel and elect the pope in the Sistine chapel.Curious to notice also that the official language of the Vatican is the Latin and many of its institutions and laws have been derived from the ancient Rome.

THE FIGURE OF LUCRETIA COMPARED TO THE HOMERIC PENELOPE

At the end of the first book of his Histories, Livy introduces the figure of Lucretia, whose rape, will cause the expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome (I.57).Lucretia's weaving work is similar to the work that Penelope was doing waiting for the return of her husband Ulyxes from Troy.In the ancient world the spinning wheel did not exist because it was an invention of the 14th century and all the spinning was done with the spindle. In the realm of the Greek Gods, the Moirae were in charge of spinning the wheel to show the length of the human life and of cutting the thread when somebody was destined to die.In ancient Rome, much later than Lucretia's period, under the reign of Domitian, reliefs of the Forum Transitorium, that became later called the Forum of Nerva, show the Goddess Athena- Minerva weaving. In this specific case, for the Romans of the empire, Athena symbolized not only the aspect of war, but also the patient work of the Roman matrons who were busy weaving for their families.Therefore, because Athena was also the goddess of the crafts, the myth of Aracne is connected to her. Aracne ( which in Greek means "Spider") was a mortal weaver who boasted that her weaving skills were better than Athena.The offended goddess set up a contest and the goddess was so envious of the magnificent tapestry of Aracne that she destroyed the tapestry and the loom and slashed the girl's face. After this strike, Athen transformed Aracne into a spider. The myth is narrated in Ovid Metamorphoses (VI 5-54).

THE CONCEPT OF ROMANITAS THROUGHOUT THE HISTORY OF ANCIENT ROME

The definition of Romanitas is a broader concept that embraces "what does it mean to be Roman".Because the history of ancient Rome is divided in three major periods, I would say that the idea of Romanitas was seen differently throughout these ages of the Roman history. For example, the idea of Romanitas in the monarchic period could not exist because Romans began to believe in their political and military capacities at the time of the expulsion of the Tarquins in 509 BCE.Moreover,in the republican period, being Roman would have meant, for the patricians being respectful of the family traditions exemplified in the Mores Maiorum; on the other hand, being Roman for a plebeian would have meant the hard work to get from the Res Publica a share in the government and participation in the political rights. During the empire, Romanitas signified more " being as close as possible to the emperor and to his values" as the new achieved status of the liberti shows through their tombs and releifs in the Roman art. Being Roman in that period would have been meant something like the American expression " Being smart and make money to achieve a good social status".In its early history of the US the founding fathers of the constitution identified themselves into the ideals of the republican Rome, where the soldiers were not a professional category and fought for their land.A real example of Romanitas is indeed George Washingtom who left his fields in Virgina, to fight for the independence from England and returned back to his farm after the second term of his presidency.The only difference I can see between the Americans of the Enlightenment and the Romans of the republican period is the religious component of the "Romanitas" in Rome, that implied that Roman religion was a state religion carrier of civic responsibilities of the pater familias,whereas the American Romanitas, had in the founding fathers a different relationship with God that was inherited by the practices of the Protestant Puritans.