Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the terminal phase of civilisation. Not because of some geopolitical crisis or economic collapse, but because the British Museum is now officially in the business of restoring the testicles of ancient bulls. Italy, in a fit of bureaucratic earnestness, has sought the counsel of British experts on how best to polish the stone scrotum of a mosaic dating from the glory days of the Empire. This, I am afraid, is the state of our intellectual elite: men and women who once decoded the secrets of the universe now spending their afternoons deliberating on the proper patina of a bovine sack.
Let us not mince words. The mosaic in question, a masterpiece of Pompeiian art, depicts a bull in the midst of a ritual sacrifice. Over the centuries, its most prominent feature, those very testicles, have been worn smooth by the unauthorised caresses of a million sentimental tourists. For reasons that no rational person can defend, visitors to the site have developed a compulsion to fondle the stone scrotum. It is now a tradition, a sort of pagan pilgrimage to a fertility shrine in miniature. That anyone would wish to touch a bull's testicles, even in marble, says a great deal about the spiritual vacuity of our age. That the Italian government would devote public funds to restoring them says considerably more.
We are, of course, witnessing a historical pattern as old as time itself. The Roman Empire fell, in part, because its citizens abandoned the pursuit of virtue for the pursuit of sensation. They craved circuses, not solutions. They polished their statues and debated the proper curvature of a chariot's wheel while the barbarians sharpened their axes at the gates. Today, we have our own circuses: the endless performance of cultural policy, the frantic stewardship of the past while the present crumbles around us. We restore testicles because we cannot fix the National Health Service. We debate the correct shade of red in an Etruscan fresco because we are afraid to debate our national identity. The British Museum, once a temple of enlightenment, is now a boutique repair shop for the genitalia of long-dead cattle.
The irony is too exquisite to ignore. The very tourists who have worn down these stone attributes are the same ones who will, in a generation, be unable to name a single Roman emperor. They will queue for hours to touch a bull's balls, but they cannot tell you why the Empire fell. They will snap selfies with the mosaic, then return to their hotels to binge on streaming services that offer them nothing but the narcotic of distraction. And the cultural mandarins, bless them, will produce learned papers on the ethics of restorative touching. They will hold conferences. They will publish monographs. And the bull's testicles will gleam anew, a monument to our collective absurdity.
I am not opposed to restoration. Far from it. I support the careful preservation of our heritage, the diligent work of conservators who protect the tangible links to our past. But there is a line between preservation and fetishism, and we have crossed it with the vigour of a gladiator in the arena. To call in the British Museum, of all institutions, to advise on the proper reconstruction of bovine anatomy is a sign that the West has lost its moral compass. We are now a civilisation that elevates the trivial to the urgent, that invests its finest minds in the most frivolous of endeavours. Edward Gibbon, who chronicled the decline and fall of Rome, would weep. Or perhaps he would laugh. I am not sure which is more appropriate.
Let us not delude ourselves: this is decadence. This is what happens when a society has solved its material needs but forgotten its spiritual ones. The bull's testicles are a Rorschach blot for our age. We see in them a quaint curiosity, a tourist attraction, a problem for experts. We do not see the symbol of a civilisation that once conquered the world and now devotes its energies to polishing its own relics. The barbarians, I assure you, are not at the gates. They are already inside, and they are touching the exhibits.
Arthur Penhaligon
