Italian Reflections: The Platypus Travels Part V

When your empire controlled one quarter of the world's population, even your sports arenas are interesting.

Of course this was not a sports arena in the modern sense.  Humans and animals died here in droves as an entertaining object lesson in "Romaness" for all levels of society. The image they created in stone and blood was so powerful that we line up by the hundreds every day just to see its remains.  -and what remains!

When all these things are washed away, Old Father Tiber will keep flowing, and what will be left of us -miles of broken asphalt and a million lost golf balls?  Will our oppressions be less because less will remain of them to be seen?

The Colosseum in ruins is a sign, a cypher.  The Roman masonry is still heavy enough to bare the weight of meaning.