Classical Cities

I met Steve for lunch today and promised him a short blog and a poem for this week's theme. It was a great lunch, great pizza, great talk about Rome and the Coliseum among many other things...

some of the beauty and splendour of Rome

... not so sure about the poem.

Classical Cities

The thing about cities
is that they are full of beautiful women.

High cheek lines, red velvet mouths,
white swan necks, proud breasts and slender thighs.

Auburn, black or blonde long hair
Scarves and stripes, silk and stockings.

Stylish, eye catching, head turning, beautiful women.
The older the better...

The cities that is.

Thanks for reading, Bill Allison.

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Ancient Cities

Two of the problems when it comes to writing about ancient cities are a) what is ancient and b) what is a city. I was reading an article the other day that kept referring to Ancient Rome. Ok, Rome is definitely a city but the ancient part of it is debatable when you consider that the Rome being referred to was 2,000 years ago whilst the earliest cities (and we’ll come to them) are considered to have existed 3,000 years before that i.e. 5,000 years ago.

artist's impression of Uruk, circa 4500 BCE

Incidentally, Rome at the height of its power had over one million people in it before it collapsed in around 400 CE. The next city to have over a million in its population was London in the 19th century.

So what is ancient? Well, for the purposes of this article, as it relates to cities, I’m taking a time period where we have physical evidence and texts that the places exist.

Much of the following is taken from the World History Encyclopaedia by Joshua J. Mark published on 05 April 2014:
In the study of the ancient world a City is generally defined as a large populated urban centre of commerce and administration with a system of laws and, usually, regulated means of sanitation. This is only one definition, however, and the designation `City' can be based on such factors as the:
population of the settlement
height of buildings
density of buildings/population
presence of some kind of sewer system
level of administrative government
presence of walls and/or fortifications
geographical area of the settlement
or whether a `settlement' was called a `city' in antiquity and fits at least one of the above qualifications.

the fertile crescent

Professor George Modelski, of the University of Washington, encourages a definition based on the work of the historian Tertius Chandler (in his book Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth) which defines a city, as distinct from a village, based upon population. Modelski writes:

Adopting Chandler's means of definition, then, settlements such as Tell Brak in modern-day Syria (first founded in c. 6000 BCE) cannot be considered cities.

The city of Uruk, today considered the oldest in the world, was first settled in c. 4500 BCE and walled cities, for defence, were common by 2900 BCE throughout the region. The city of Eridu, close to Uruk, was considered the first city in the world by the Sumerians while other cities which lay claim to the title of `first city' are Byblos, Jericho, Damascus, Aleppo, Jerusalem, Sidon, Luoyang, Athens, Argos, and Varasani.

All of these cities are certainly ancient and are located in regions which have been populated from a very early date. Modelski cites the population of Uruk at 14,000 in the year 3700 BCE but 80,000 by the year 2800 BCE. I was a bit surprised by the figure of 80,000 as when I was checking I found that Carlisle has much the same population now and that seems, to me, a fairly large city.

the ruins of Uruk today

I wanted to use a poem that actually praises the city, from the ancient to the present day, as a place to live. There is a reason why people have wanted to live in them but I can’t find one that really suits my purpose so I’m going to make use of this chance which sort of works.

Ever since my school days I’ve disliked Robert Browning purely on the basis of one poem. This is a short section with a corrected title:

Up the City – Down the Villa

Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,
The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square;

Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there!

Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at least!
There, the whole day long, one's life is a perfect feast;
While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more than a beast.

Well now, look at our villa! stuck like the horn of a bull
Just on a mountain-edge as bare as the creature's skull,
Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull!
--I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair's turned wool.

But the city, oh the city--the square with the houses! Why?
They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there's something to take the eye!
Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry;
You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who hurries by;
Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the sun gets high;
And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted properly.

Down the Villa

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Pining

Anyone fortunate enough to have visited Rome will have been struck by its distinctive stone pine trees, sometimes also called Roman pines or 'umbrella' trees on account of their tall slender trunks and flat canopies. The 'eternal city'  is estimated to have over 500,000 of them. They have lined the roads into Rome since the Republic was in its infancy over 2,000 years ago, though their popularity and spread within the streets and open spaces of the city dates back to the Italian Renaissance (late 15th and 16th centuries, sometimes referred to as the Cinquecento).

The stone pine (botanical name pinus pinea ) has been cultivated around the Mediterranean for at least six millennia and was introduced to Italy by the Greeks. As well as looking beautiful and providing much-needed shade, it is also the source of the pine nuts (pignoli ) used to make pesto and to garnish Italian salads, and according to Livy (writing at the tail-end of BC), the wood was used for ship-building, 'pinea ' thereby becoming an alternative word for ship. 

A stone pine has a lifespan of between 50 and 150 years, so the task of maintaining and replanting a population over many centuries is a significant civic undertaking. Quite why it became so popular in Rome (now synonymous with and a recognised symbol of the capital), is not well documented, but the love affair is a deep and enduring one and these beautiful and striking trees have long been an integral part of the landscape and spirit of the place.

Rome's famous 'umbrella' trees

It was assumed until a few years ago that stone pines would forever decorate the city's streets and parks, but recently Romans have begun to fret. The very pressing cause for concern is a parasitic insect, the pine tortoise scale (toumeyella parvicornis ), which was introduced accidentally into Italy in 2014 via a consignment of timber from the USA and has been spreading steadily northwards from Naples, decimating the pinewoods of Campania and Lazio until arriving in Rome five years later.

Diseases of trees are nothing new. We've become accustomed to losing large numbers of trees to Dutch Elm disease, Ash dieback, Horse Chestnut canker and Plane wilt. The more connected the world becomes, the easier and quicker it is for contagions to spread (as we found with Covid-19). In fact the poor stone pine is suffering from another affliction as well, an earlier parasitic visitor from the USA, the western conifer seed bug (leptoglossus occidentalis ) which arrived in the 1990s and feeds on the sap of the developing pine cones, threatening not only Italy's pine nut industry but also the tree's ability to propagate itself.

Worrying though the advance of the conifer seed bug is, attention is now focussed on the threat being posed by the tortoise scale bug to Rome's famous 'umbrella' trees, for the voracious parasite is quite capable of killing off a stone pine in two or three years. Many of Rome's trees are suffering from the pest. An initial large-scale felling of infected trees caused an uproar and so a fund was set up to inoculate stone pines in the hope of stemming the parasite's advance, for the city would be robbed of much character if the trees all die off.

an integral part of the landscape

There was much cynical party political point scoring at the outset of the campaign to save the trees, but the president has allocated €500,000 to the project that seeks to inject the trunks of trees with a treatment to fight the scabrous parasite and thus preserve "this natural and cultural part of the city's heritage." 

Although mobilisation in this war between new world fauna and old world flora was hampered by the arrival of Covid, the associated lockdown, and what some see as typical Italian inefficiency, the fight to save the stone pines is well under way now. And as a back-up, operation Ossigeno (oxygen) is creating nurseries of thousands of new trees should the worst happen. Let us hope that Romans are not left pining for their loss.

I've written a few poems that take playful liberties with time and history (introducing cigars into ancient Greece, early radar into Roman Britain, making valentine cards available to stone-age Romeos et cetera ) and I've done it again with this latest from the imaginarium, ostensibly about planting trees in renaissance Italy. Enjoy.

Cinquecento

Buonarroti's voice on the answerphone:

Do you want to do some ceiling Saturday?

Raffa hits delete, drops a couple of ice cubes

into his glass of red. They hiss and splinter

much like his head after long hours spent

trying to get Olimpia's breasts to look right.

He's no intention of spending this week-end

up a scaffold on his back thanks all the same,

on a better offer from his pal Sagnallo. Tony

lent him a hand to renovate the workshop so 

now's time to return the favour helping plant 

five hundred stone pine saplings for a Count.

Villa d'Este promises fresh air, a decent bed

and maybe the chance to rekindle his affair

with the flame-haired servant in the segreto.

Happy memories. If lucky, he could pick up

a commission. Another portrait on the books

would see him comfortably through summer

and the Sistine Chapel isn't going anywhere.

Raffa swills down a slice of greasy pizza, 

throws some clothes in a bag, lights a spliff,

climbs into his trusty marbled Cinquecento

and roars away into Rome's petrol dusk. If 

he steps on it he'll make Tivoli by midnight.

beautiful and striking stone pines

I intend to plant a tree in my re-vamped Blackpool back garden next spring. It won't be anything as stunning as a stone pine. That would be too big and would look strangely out of place on its own. A fig or an olive tree is more likely, and if the climate in the jewel of the north remains mild over the next few years, I look forward to it prospering. I shall certainly take a leaf out of the new King's book and talk to it.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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A V 4 R B - Love Locks

Since the early Noughties, a new fashion has been gaining popularity in Europe. It is causing distress in many council chambers,  especially those in major cities.  It ruffles the feathers of Heritage champions more than pigeon droppings and is causing mathematical consternation among civil engineers.  It is an outward expression of a love tryst and it threatens to destroy many of the historic bridges that traverse the great Rivers in the Northern hemisphere. From the Parisian Pont de l'Archeveche to the Venetian Rialto, European bridges are being weighed down by love. And the problem is infectious.  It has begun to spread worldwide. 

It isn't a disease or a natural phenomenon. The problem is man made. Sweethearts are declaring their need for a lasting love relationship by engraving their initials on a padlock, locking it to a bridge and then throwing the key into the water so that the lock cannot be removed. Love-locks are so contagious that campaigners are trying to stop people attaching them to bridges in an attempt to stop the destruction of historic landmarks. It is said that they not only detract from the beauty of many historic bridges but also the excess weight is a serious problem on ancient structures. 

To some they are unsightly litter. 5,500 padlocks were recently removed from the Ponte Vecchio in Florence because they not only caused an aesthetic problem but were scratching the metal structure of the historic bridge. In Edinburgh, the city council decided to capitalise on the trend by allowing lovers to buy padlocks and attach them to four panels on the Forth Road Bridge, raising £10,300 for the Queensferry RNLI.  In Gretna Green, a traditional place of elopement for lovers, couples are welcome to attach a padlock to the Courtship Maze. 

The recent surge began in Rome on Ponte Milvio, following publication the novel, I Want You, by  Federicco Moccia.  The idea of a love-lock is featured in the movie, Now You See Me, starring among others, Woody Harrelson, as one of four street magicians recruited by an unknown benefactor to amaze the world.  I won't spoil the plot for those who haven't seen it.  I thoroughly enjoyed it. 

The origin of love-locks dates back to World War One and began because of one person's broken heart...

 

Love Locks 

 

Once upon a time in Vrnjacka Banja,

Nada, a maiden pure and true,

fell in love with Relja.

A handsome Serbian officer,

he swept her off her feet,

soon betrothed, they would often meet

upon Most Ljubavi, The Bridge of Love,

in this picture postcard town.

But as they planned their nuptial feast,

The Great War began,

Relja was sent away to fight, like every other man.

As Nada waited patiently,

she sewed her wedding gown,

nimble fingers sewing prayers

for Relja’s safe and swift return.

Nada’s love grew every day for her Relja far away.

 

 

But as the tales of Homer tell, as men so often do, 

he forgot his promised love,

falling for another beauty, on the island of Corfu.

Poor Nada could not bear the pain,

her heart was torn in two,

her wedding gown, a funeral shroud,

her fate a legend that soon grew, until

to save themselves from Nada’s fate,

young women of the town,

engraved their own and lover’s names on padlocks,

locked them to the fateful bridge,

they threw away the key.

Love-locking hearts together, for all eternity.

 

Now so many bridges are embellished in this way.

Lovers of the world, it seems,

believe even today,

that by this inter-lock of names,

they bind themselves together,

so their commitment will remain.

But padlocks are mere metal,

they go rusty over time,

and bridges begin to fail under the excess weight,

so the locks are loosened, forced apart.

Does removing them from their appointed place

change the lover’s fate?

The tragedy in all of this,

a truth poor Nada knew,

no lock is ever needed to hold a heart that's true. 

 

 

Thanks for reading.  Adele

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