我們?yōu)楹坞y以超越羅馬

“比起現(xiàn)世人對(duì)我的看法，我更在乎后世人對(duì)我的評(píng)價(jià)。”古羅馬最負(fù)盛名的雄辯家西塞羅在公元前59年如是說。盡管這句話是他在私下里對(duì)他的好朋友阿提庫(kù)斯說的，但沒有人會(huì)對(duì)此感到驚訝。西塞羅因其令人厭惡的自負(fù)而在羅馬人中臭名遠(yuǎn)揚(yáng)。如果有人認(rèn)為西塞羅死后一千年還會(huì)有人記得他，那羅馬人一定會(huì)為此歡呼雀躍。

但事實(shí)上西塞羅是一個(gè)謙遜的人。兩千年已經(jīng)過去了，他的話語還在啟發(fā)著世人。他的身后名不僅來自于他自身的成就，還來自于那座他發(fā)跡的，令世人神往的城市。“Urbs Aeterna,”在西塞羅去世后五十年，詩人奧維德稱呼羅馬為“永恒之城。”羅馬人統(tǒng)治的帝國(guó)早已衰落；他的紀(jì)念碑早已倒塌；西班牙語，意大利語和法語在他的語言上生根發(fā)芽；但是有關(guān)他的回憶永不消逝。確實(shí)，從最近席卷社交媒體的meme可以看出，在美國(guó)基本上有百萬男性每天都在想有關(guān)羅馬的事。

為什么？我覺得并不是出于對(duì)西塞羅和奧維德的崇拜，而是可能由于一些更加世俗化的原因。只因羅馬帝國(guó)佇立于古代的頂點(diǎn)：強(qiáng)大無比，令人畏懼，受人歡迎。

如果這些要素集合在一起像在描述霸王龍，那這可能不是個(gè)巧合。羅馬人就像恐龍一樣，他們不僅富有魅力，其痕跡也被安全地遺留了下來。全盛羅馬帝國(guó)時(shí)代已經(jīng)過去了兩千年。羅馬富麗繁華的景象早已不再，角斗士在競(jìng)技場(chǎng)內(nèi)灑下的鮮血早已干涸，凱撒麾下羅馬軍團(tuán)逆我者亡的氣勢(shì)也早已消弭。在觀看電影《角斗士》時(shí)，無論觀眾們多么喜歡羅素·克勞，他們也不會(huì)與電影中觀看角斗的民眾共情。羅馬人距離我們太遙遠(yuǎn)，并不會(huì)使我們感到不安。相反，他們似乎變成了異邦人。

通過色彩，喧囂和巧奪天工的建筑展現(xiàn)的力量，是激動(dòng)人心的，甚至是驚心動(dòng)魄的。成功的帝國(guó)深知這一點(diǎn)。這就解釋了為什么美國(guó)和眾多歐洲國(guó)家的首都的建筑都是受羅馬帝國(guó)的啟發(fā)。但當(dāng)然，這些21世紀(jì)的建筑并不只效仿了羅馬。我們知道極端自大和鋼鐵會(huì)導(dǎo)致什么后果，但國(guó)會(huì)大廈和凱旋門的設(shè)計(jì)者并不知道。隨著法西斯主義的出現(xiàn)，西方政治中一項(xiàng)悠久的傳統(tǒng)達(dá)到了可怕的高潮，然后隨之而來的便是消亡。

但是世人對(duì)于權(quán)利的迷戀依舊存在。如今，只有最惡毒的怪人才會(huì)坦白自己癡迷于納粹。但是曾在征服高盧時(shí)屠殺了一百萬人和俘虜了同樣人數(shù)的凱撒，其雕像依然佇立在羅馬的中心，每日與不計(jì)其數(shù)的游客合影。凱撒的帝國(guó)不同于近代的帝國(guó)，他離我們太過遙遠(yuǎn)以至于我們無法追究他的罪責(zé)。

當(dāng)然，這也沒有解釋為什么如今的美國(guó)男性會(huì)特別關(guān)注予古羅馬人，而不是古埃及人，亞述人或維京人。原因可能是與其他一些古代文明相比，美國(guó)可能在古羅馬上看到了扭曲的自己。就像他們一貫所做的那樣。當(dāng)今的美國(guó)保守派滿懷憧憬地回憶那些開國(guó)元?jiǎng)?，認(rèn)為他們開創(chuàng)了一個(gè)堅(jiān)強(qiáng)獨(dú)立的美德時(shí)代。而那些開國(guó)元?jiǎng)讉円彩侨绱丝创缙诘牧_馬的。那時(shí)，年輕的共和國(guó)對(duì)抗強(qiáng)大的君主制所贏得的每一場(chǎng)戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)都可以作為一個(gè)美德故事來振奮人心。就像美國(guó)人一樣，羅馬人也曾生活在君主的統(tǒng)治下。不甘于受君主統(tǒng)治，他們發(fā)起了一場(chǎng)英勇的起義，最后成功驅(qū)逐了國(guó)王。1832年，為紀(jì)念喬治·華盛頓誕辰一百周年，雕刻家霍雷肖·格里諾為其打造了一個(gè)宏偉的雕塑，把他塑造成了一個(gè)將權(quán)利（寶劍）歸還給民眾的名副其實(shí)的羅馬英雄。格里諾把身著長(zhǎng)袍，頭戴假發(fā)的美國(guó)第一任總統(tǒng)描繪成一名英雄，這也象征著兩個(gè)共和國(guó)的相似性：羅馬共和國(guó)與美利堅(jiān)合眾國(guó)。

在21世紀(jì)，現(xiàn)代的美國(guó)與古羅馬的相似性似乎不是那么明顯。伊拉克戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)，東方崛起的競(jìng)爭(zhēng)對(duì)手，法庭上的政治報(bào)復(fù)，民粹主義對(duì)憲法傳統(tǒng)產(chǎn)生的威脅，使很多人興奮和驚愕的對(duì)“為首的將要殿后，殿后的將要為首”的極端鼓吹。比起羅馬歷史，人們肯定會(huì)對(duì)這些發(fā)展更為熟悉。

《角斗士》，21世紀(jì)最知名的劍與涼鞋的史詩（其續(xù)集目前在制作中），描繪了一個(gè)在許多方面既關(guān)乎過去，關(guān)乎未來的世界。民眾沉浸于眼花繚亂的娛樂；軍隊(duì)攻擊神出鬼沒的外敵；還有高科技的火力武器。它是一面反映未來幾十年的鏡子。

如此看來，當(dāng)今這么多美國(guó)人思考羅馬帝國(guó)也就不足為奇了。他們?cè)谒伎家粋€(gè)曾經(jīng)既陌生又熟悉，既可怕又迷人的被安全留存下來的文明，同時(shí)也在思考他們自己的形象。

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Original Text

Why We Can't Get Over the Roman Empire

“I worry far more what the judgement on me will be in a 1,000 years time than what the trolls are saying today.” So wrote Cicero, Rome’s most celebrated orator, in 59 BC. Although the comment was made privately to his close friend, Titus Pomponius Atticus, no one would have been surprised to read it. Cicero was notorious among his fellow citizens for the insufferable quality of his conceit. The notion that anyone would remember him a millennium after his death would have been greeted in Rome with widespread hilarity.

Yet in truth Cicero was being modest. Not one but 2,000 years have passed since his death, and still he is being quoted. His posthumous fame is tribute not just to his own achievements, but also to the enduring hold on the popular imagination of the city of which he was a citizen. “Urbs Aeterna,” the poet Ovid called Rome some 50 years after Cicero’s death: “the Eternal City.” The empire ruled by the Romans may long since have declined and fallen; its monuments crumbled into ruin; its language evolved to become Spanish, Italian, and French; but its memory remains a golden one. Indeed, according to a meme that has recently taken social media by storm, millions of men across America are apparently thinking about it every day.

Why? Not, I think, out of any particular devotion to Cicero or Ovid. The reason is likelier to be altogether more visceral. The Roman Empire was the apex predator of antiquity: powerful, terrifying, box-office.

If that makes it sound like a tyrannosaur, then perhaps that is no coincidence. The Romans, much like the dinosaurs, are not merely glamorous—they are also safely extinct. Two thousand years have passed since the heyday of the pax Romana. The age when the capital was at its most teeming and gilded, when the sands of the Colosseum were black with the blood of gladiators, when the rule of Caesar was backed by legions capable of visiting slaughter and ruin on all who opposed them, are long gone. Few people watching Gladiator, no matter how much they might be rooting for Russell Crowe, feel complicit in the enthusiasm of the crowd. The Romans are too distant to be truly unsettling; instead, they have become exotic.

The display of might—especially when backed up by color, clamor, and overpowering architecture—can be stirring, even thrilling. Successful empires have always understood this. It helps to explain why so many capitals in Europe and America are replete with monuments inspired by imperial Rome. Yet the shadow these buildings cast in the 21st century is not merely a Roman one. We understand, as the designers of the Capitol and the Arc de Triomphe did not, to what extremes swagger and steel can lead. With fascism, a long tradition in Western politics reached a hideous climax and then expired.

But the fascination with power endures. Only the most toxic crank today would confess to finding the displays of Nazism alluring. Yet Julius Caesar—who was reported by one classical biographer to have slaughtered a million people and enslaved another million while conquering the region of Gaul—still has his statue in the centre of Rome, while, just down the road, touts dressed as centurions and gladiators encourage tourists to pose with them outside the Colosseum. The empire of the Caesars—unlike more recent empires—is removed in time enough from us to be protected by a certain statute of limitations.

Of course, this does not explain why modern-day men of America are busy thinking about the Romans rather than, say, the Egyptians, or the Assyrians, or the Vikings. The answer, perhaps, lies in the way that the Romans, more than any other ancient people, seem to offer America a distorted reflection of itself. So they have always done. Just as American conservatives today look back wistfully to the Founding Fathers as patrons of an age of rugged independence and virtue, so did the Founding Fathers look back with an equal wistfulness to the early years of Rome. There, for any infant republic victorious in a war against a great monarchy, was a morality tale to be found that could hardly help but serve as inspiration. The Romans, like the Americans, had originally been ruled by a king; then, resolved no longer to live in servitude, they had dared all in a heroic and ultimately successful campaign to expel him. In 1832, commissioned to mark the centennial of George Washington’s birth with a fittingly imposing statue, the sculptor Horatio Greenough represented him as a properly Roman hero, returning his sword to a grateful people. Simultaneously toga-clad and be-wigged, the first president of the United States was portrayed by Greenough as the heroic, if sartorially challenged, intersection point of twin republics: the Roman and the American.

In the 21st century, the parallels drawn between ancient Rome and the modern United States tend to be gloomier. Wars in Iraq; the rise in the east of a rival superpower; political vendettas pursued in the law courts; anxieties that venerable constitutional traditions are menaced by populism; the emergence of radicals preaching that the last will be first, and the first will be last, to the excitement of many, and the consternation of others. All these are developments that will be familiar to anyone with even the most glancing familiarity with Roman history.

Gladiator—the most celebrated sword-and-sandals?epic of the 21st century (of which there is a sequel currently in the works)—offered a portrait of a world that seemed, in many ways, as much about the future as the past. Citizens fed on dazzling entertainments; armies striking at an elusive foreign foe; the high-tech delivery of weapons of fire. Here was a mirror being held up to the decades that were to come.

Perhaps, then, it is not surprising that so many Americans today should be thinking about the Roman Empire. They are thinking about a civilization that is at once strange and familiar; terrifying and glamorous; safely extinct and the image of themselves.

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譯者注：

“the last will be first, and the first will be last”

出自Matthew 20:16-28：So the last will be first, and the first last.

《馬太福音》20:16-28：因此，為首的將要殿后，殿后的將要為首。

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sword-and-sandals

劍與涼鞋：一種以古羅馬、古希臘或古埃及等古代文明為背景的電影、電視劇或小說類型，通常包含英雄、戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)、神話和冒險(xiǎn)等元素。

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這篇文章是針對(duì)最近在Tik Tok上比較火的一個(gè)meme寫的，簡(jiǎn)要講就是女性問家里的男性“How often?do you think about Roman Empire?”感覺本篇文章的作者有些上綱上線，畢竟在Tik Tok發(fā)視頻整活的人應(yīng)該不會(huì)考慮那么多。感興趣的同學(xué)可以看一下下面這篇文章，講的還是比較詳細(xì)的。

https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2023/09/21/tiktoks-roman-empire-meme-explained/?sh=2627dbe9765b

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原網(wǎng)址:

https://time.com/6316386/tom-holland-roman-empire-obsession-essay