The Eternal City on screen and in print

For the discerning actual or armchair traveller, there are many city guides giving details of where to visit and how to spend time. This is a different approach – introducing some wider ‘popular culture’ reference points – some history, some reading, a film or two.

Attempting to condense the history of Rome into a few hundred words is a little like setting out to paint the Forth Road Bridge with one tin of paint – a wee bit optimistic. However, what the Reduced Shakespeare Company has managed to do for the Bard, appreciated by many over a long period of time at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, I will attempt for the Eternal City.

From its beginnings in the early settlement of antiquated legend through to its heyday as seat of Republic, Empire and on to its role as capital city of the Catholic Church, Rome has enjoyed a history about which big words are used: resplendent, majestic, awe-inspiring. The settlement on the banks of the Tiber, beleaguered by warring tribes, was fated to grow into a city-state that dominated the world in antiquity and the history books from the moment Romulus, Remus and a she-wolf entered the scene at stage left – or forest right depending on your view. Being men – nearly always men but Roman matrons are not to be trifled with – of rugged independence with a tendency to violence when het up or riled the Romans re-invented the idea of the Republic as a way of governing affairs. This idea was inherited from the Greeks whose power by this time had waned but still had an influence: heard of that chap Socrates or his friends Plato or their pal the playwright Aristophanes?

Due to a series of accidents; murders; armies needing pacifying and powerful men seeking more power, the Republic gave way to the Empire which, as old-fashioned historians (often in glasses and tweed jacket with initials such as AJP or WF or BHS) used to tell their students and anyone who would listen, sowed the seeds of its decline from its very inception. Thus began an era which made internecine warfare between families such as the Mafia quite tame. Aristocrats, plebians, the mob, heroes and villains, soothsayers, political intrigue, big battles, huge triumphs with lunatic Emperors and their loopier progeny and relations – the story has it all.

These themes were to be repeated in later medieval and Renaissance periods – the Romans gave their fellow Italians a taste for city governance combined with family madness, public intrigue and dangerous power-plays involving Uncle Umberto or Auntie Bella. Eventually, as it is with these vainglorious human endeavours (as they say in all the best Victorian hymns), earth’s proud empires pass away and another rises from the ashes. Instead of the Circus Maximus with spectacles involving Christians being thrown to the lions, the Christians took charge and non-Christians or heretics (believers of a different sort) were often thrown into the fire. The martyr St Peter, the rock on which the Church was built, established the Apostolic Succession and his successors created the Papacy, built the Vatican and established the Holy See which became another city state with all the accompanying intrigue and machinations. This time the story involved men in cassocks of many colours (black for the humble priests and red for the not-so-humble cardinals), with the leader both temporal and spiritual, meaning in this world and the next, of the universal church known as Pope dressed in white. The Pope may not have many divisions (as 20th century dictator and son of the seminary Joseph Stalin once put it) but he did have millions of followers, an impressive civil service known as the Curia and ‘wheels’ to boot. Any aspiring Cardinal (in red) who was ‘papabile’ (deemed as suitable for both a change of wardrobe and status) could look forward to the motoring possibility of the ‘Popemobile’ – a transport of delight Vatican-style made famous by Pope John Paul II. In short, the man who is ‘papabile’ has a chance of transportation in the Popemobile. If the smoke from the chimney puffed white the world knew that a new occupant of the Throne of St Peter had been elected. A curious thing – God’s ultimate Holy Father is chosen by a ballot of his peers – the anointed one is elected.

The city on film – Spartacus, Quo Vadis, Roman Holiday, La Dolce Vita, The Shoes of the Fisherman

The late actor, writer, raconteur and all-round Renaissance-style polymath Peter Ustinov used to remark that the Americans were very good at making Hollywood movies about the Romans – they understood the Ancient Roman mentality. Thus it is fitting that Ustinov stars in two of the recommended films. Spartacus (1960) tells the story of the slave revolt led by Kirk Douglas as the eponymous hero and pitted against the might of Rome’s legions led by Crassus, played magisterially by Laurence Olivier. Ustinov plays the weaselly slave auctioneer (a memorable line is “why me? I am more civilian than most civilians”) who ends up helping to save Spartacus’ love interest, played by the classical actress Jean Simmons, by smuggling her out of the city

In Quo Vadis (1951), the story of the rise and spread of Christianity from the birthplace of Christ in Judea to the very gates of Rome is told set against the background of the persecution of the Christians by Emperor Nero. Peter Ustinov plays the murderous emperor with maniacal glee and much declaiming and rolling of eyes.

On a lighter, and much less epic note, Roman Holiday (1953) has two leading Hollywood stars of their day – Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn – having the time of their lives in 1950s Rome and duly falling in love. Scooters and ice cream abound which predates some of the famous scenes in La Dolce Vita (1960) when Swedish actress Anita Ekberg took a fully-clothed but very suggestive dip in the Trevi Fountain.

The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968) is a film adaptation of a Morris West novel that imagines the election of an eastern European pope a full decade before it happened, played by the late film actor Anthony Quinn, famous for his role as Zorba the Greek. Quinn’s character tries to mediate between Russia and the United States during the Cold War and has a penchant for going among the people of Rome disguised as a parish priest. He has difficulty coming to terms with modern life after years in a Siberian gulag in the Soviet Union.

The city between book covers – Imperium by Robert Harris; I Claudius by Robert Graves; the Falco mysteries by Lyndsey Davis.

If the reader is looking for an insight into the political, social and familial workings of Ancient Rome the two Roberts – Harris and Graves – provide that in abundance. In Imperium Robert Harris, political journalist turned novelist, tells the story of the young lawyer Marcus Cicero who rose to greatness in the dying years of the Roman Republic as one of the finest orators the world had ever seen (note all those superlatives – the Roman story as a whole invites them). Harris writes a thriller at once captivating and colourful and evokes the very smell of the city as he paints the portrait of political lives in dangerous times.

Robert Graves (1895-1985) develops similar themes in his much earlier work – Graves is of Harris’ grandfather’s generation. Classical scholar, poet and writer of great renown in the mid 20th century, Robert Graves sets his novel during the high-point of the Roman Imperial adventure and the extraordinary story of the unlikeliest of Emperors – Claudius. A scholar, librarian and writer he is part of the Imperial Julian family and is a chronicler of the family goings-on. Murder, intrigue and lust for power form the driving narrative with Claudius grandmother Livia emerging as the most ruthless operator of them all, manipulating the central players through a combination of guile, charm and deadly poison. The book was turned into a celebrated TV serial by the BBC, starring many of the best and brightest of British stage and screen; Derek Jacobi as Claudius, Sian Phillips as Livia and Brian Blessed as the Emperor Caesar Augustus leading the cast.

Lyndsey Davis’ Falco is a private detective in late-Empire Rome with a line in world-weary scepticism and a complicated emotional life. Davis paints a vivid picture with her hero constantly fighting Roman bureaucracy and his prospective in-laws. His adventures takes the reader into the heart of the uncivilised aspect of the Rome of the Emperor Vespasian where slaves are downtrodden, life is cheap and business of any sort corrupt. Falco does his best to remain above the stench whilst wooing his love - the aristocratic Helena Justina.

- All films mentioned are available on DVD and books from all bookshops and online. Imperium and the Falco mysteries are published by Arrow Books and I Claudius is published by Penguin