The news arrives with the force of a classical epigram: Italy has restored the ‘lucky testicles’ on an ancient Roman bull mosaic. Cue the pearl-clutching from British heritage experts who have, predictably, been ‘called to preserve history’. But before we don our tweed and rush to lecture the Italians on archaeological probity, let us pause.
This is not a vandalism. It is a declaration. A nation that remembers what its ancestors intended is a nation that still knows how to laugh.
Compare this to Britain, where we treat our heritage as a corpse to be embalmed rather than a body to be celebrated. The restoration of the bull’s scrotum is a small, defiant act against the dessicated guardians of ‘authenticity’. It says: we are still Romans.
We still believe in luck, in fertility, in the rude vitality of the past. The mosaic, uncovered in Pompeii, was originally adorned with a prominent pair of testicles, long since eroded. Italy’s decision to reattach them is not historical revisionism; it is historical completion.
The British experts, no doubt, will produce a multi-volume report on the spectral analysis of the original pigments, while the Italians simply get on with the business of living history. The Fall of Rome, as I have written before, was not caused by barbarians but by a loss of nerve. Italy’s nerve, it seems, is intact.
Let this be a lesson: sometimes preserving history means restoring its balls.
