You make fun of “decadent” Roman Emperors? In the horror stories from Suetonius you have prototype of “monarchy gone wild,” of mad emperors who use position only to satisfy arcane and criminal lusts. I don’t write to defend such things, but the condemnation isn’t moral—how can it be, when my reaction at reading excesses of Caligula or Nero or Tiberius is to feel a great sense of loss, or envy at what they could do that I can’t? Caligula had the genius idea to form a long line of ships on the sea, put platforms on top of them, fill them with earth, so that he could fulfill a prophecy of walking on water between two points. He gathered the army on the seashore facing Britain and ordered them, instead of invading, to collect seashells. He then called this a great booty for the Roman People and the Senate and threw a few pennies at the soldiers saying “Go Happy! Go Rich!” He captured two Gauls but dressed them up in Ice-Nigger-Face to look like Teutons and then enacted an obviously transparent “hunt” to pretend he had captured them in front of the soldiers. Everyone laughed and rolled their eyes, for sure. But he was caught up in the story of his own godhood. At Rome he used to lock down the Colosseum during the hottest hours and withdraw the awnings so that the people would suffer in the heat and pregnant women wouldn’t be able to leave. Sometimes he replaced the regular gladiator shows with pathetic fights between cripples and deformed animals; he would lock down the granaries to let the people go hungry for no reason at all. He was the greatest troll ever. When the Jews of Alexandria came to complain about civil war simmering in that city, he ignored their pleas and asked them why they don’t eat pork. When you look at Elagabalus you see this tendency taken to its logical conclusion: this man was a trap-Emperor, and asked his doctors to give him a sex change operation. It is believed he was a devotee of Cybele, and like the insane priests of that cult…wanted to castrate himself. Instead of this, he became a prostitute inside the palace, and used to publicly give himself airs over how much he was making. Commodus became a gladiator and found great pride in his swordplay, although such things aren’t so strange to imagine in our time: and they are to be welcomed! Nero was a pioneer of gay marriage. The first time he did it as the groom, and the second as the bride: he made the old senators listen as he mimicked the sounds of a young wife getting deflowered behind the doors. Of all his exploits I found most fascinating that he put on the mask of a lion and, having tied up various men and women naked in his mansion on the island, came at them with the rage of a beast and in a frenzy bit at their bodies and genitals. I don’t celebrate any of this, but I think when in our age elites are accused of similar behavior…this isn’t right…I think we flatter ourselves. We want to think they’re a lot more interesting than they are…it’s easier to think we’re ruled by demons than by defectives who would normally be running a smoked-fish stand or running vodka parlors outside Minsk. We don’t want to admit that we’re as lame in vice and deviance as we are in greatness, and for the same reasons. You see these old wet rags of an “elite” getting arrested, and in almost every case it’s for something on the level of a Pee Wee monkey-show, self-exposure in a porn cinema, masturbating themselves in front of some frigid cinema whore with leatherface and bugged out eyes, exposing their weapons of mass destruction to a Dominican maid. It’s hard to understand what even goes into this kind of “decadence,” but it’s of a different kind from the excesses of the worst Roman Emperors, who, even when they were trannies, seem more manly and brave than our perverts. I wonder if it’s not possible to think of history in entirely different way, I mean: all we think now is from point of view of the people, and the story goes about progress or regress with respect to how they fare; or at best how something like science or hygiene advances, or technology, or moral responsibility, or equality, or inequality, or anything else you want….advances or not. But history would look very different if pursued with eye of connoisseur for superior specimens, judging them as you would prized steers or stallions. In such case you would have to dismiss these kinds of freaks like the emperors I mentioned, and judge them defective…but for entirely different reasons. You would learn to see history from view of life and biology… as great bestiary…and learn what is necessary in our time also to make way for the long-lost tropics and jungle…the abode of the gods….that can return….and return……..
