News reaches us that a priceless Roman mosaic in Italy, depicting a bull in all its ancient fury, has been restored after a tourist’s clumsy encounter. British heritage experts, ever ready with a pat on the back, have saluted the cultural preservation. Well, well.
One might be forgiven for thinking this is a tale of triumph, a victory for civilisation over the barbarian hordes of Instagram-obsessed travellers. But let us pause and consider the deeper rot. The mosaic, you see, is a relic of a world that thought itself eternal.
Roman engineers built amphitheatres that still stand, roads that still guide our journeys, and a legal code that haunts our courts. Yet Rome fell. Not because of foreign invasion alone, but because of internal decay, a loss of virtue, an obsession with bread and circuses.
Sound familiar? Today’s tourist—the creature who damages a mosaic for a selfie—is no different from the Roman citizen who cheered the games while the barbarians sharpened their axes. We British love to tut at the continent’s carelessness.
‘Oh, these Italians with their fragile treasures.’ But we have our own broken windows, our own vandalised statues, our own amnesiac public. The real story here is not the mosaic’s restoration.
It is the fact that we need to restore it at all. A culture that cannot protect its heritage does not deserve to have one. Yet British heritage experts salute.
They clap for Italy while ignoring the slow erosion of their own historical memory. National identity, once a granite pillar, is now damp sand. We treat the past as a backdrop for holiday snaps, not as a foundation for the future.
The bull mosaic will be guarded, of course. Cameras. Fines.
More signs. But the spirit that preserved such works for two millennia—that spirit of reverence and continuity—has fled. We are intellectual decadents, content to admire the shells of greatness while the marrow dries up.
So yes, salute the restorers. They have done a fine job. But do not mistake this for a victory.
It is a temporary patch on a crumbling wall. The barbarians are not at the gates. They are inside, carrying selfie sticks.
