December's Postcard from Rome
Details of how to join a live-streamed Christmas walk are at the end!
Today Rome has a crisp wintery edge—scarves and proper coats in order—but three weeks ago I was at Herculaneum under blue skies in November shirtsleeves. Entering the site the sea glittered in the distance, a swim still not beyond the realms of possibility. The coast is now half a kilometre or so from the boathouses of the ancient town where the skeletons of those who waited, hopeful and trusting, for rescue are still visible. I’ve never been able to bring myself to photograph them; all that hope and trust is, I find, just too acutely human to bear.
As I left the site I passed a, partially nibbled, corbezzolo (usually called strawberry tree in English, more scientifically arbutus unedo in Latin).
It struck me as a suitably classical fruit to be spontaneously thriving (all that volcanic soil is, after all, extremely fecund) on the edge of poor, doomed Herculaneum for the strawberry tree is mentioned in the Aeneid, the great piece of Augustan literary propaganda. Before I ever came to the Bay of Naples I read the Aeneid at school for GCSE Latin. Although I undoubtedly wasn’t paying as much attention as I should have been, the Sibyl’s cave at Cumae and the Phlegrean Fields will forever be the evocative prism through which I view this part of the Campania Felix: shrouded in hazy legend; perhaps illustrated by Turner.
And so we return to the corbezzolo: the Aeneid tells us that after Pallas, son of Evander, is killed by the King of the Rutuli his body is placed on a bier woven with oak and shoots of arbutus. He is the first of Aeneas’ allies to die on Italian soil; his death seen as a sort of offering to the gods to favour the future foundation of Rome.
I was reminded of that nibbled corbezzolo as I took folk to see the painted garden of Livia at the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme on Thursday. It is one of the most beautiful things in Rome, and one can usually have it to oneself. On this chilly, crisp December afternoon it was also pleasingly heated, and there’s a comfortable seat in the middle of the room. What’s not to like?
The significance of the fruit certainly would not have been lost on Livia, wife of Augustus. Her garden is a glorious pan-seasonal natural impossibility—fruiting quinces and pomegranates jostle with flowering irises and camomile—exalting the perpetual bounty of the Pax Romana wrought by Rome’s first emperor and Aeneas’ descendant.
In the nineteenth century the corbezzolo with its green leaves, red fruit (when mature), and white flowers—the colours of the tricolore—would become a symbol of the nascent Italian state. Pascoli’s ode Al Corbezzolo concludes with an allusion to Pallas’ sacrifice:
Il tricolore!... E il vecchio Fauno irsuto
del Palatino lo chiamava a nome,
alto piangendo, il primo eroe caduto delle tre Rome.
The flag!… And the old hairy Faun
of the Palatine, weeping, called out the name
of the first fallen hero of the three Romes.
The second of Pascoli’s “three Romes” was that of the Church. A tenuous link I know, but I shall persist because yesterday I was at St Peter’s Basilica where the glistening Baldacchino and Cathedra Petri have been released from their scaffolding after months of buffing and gilding as the imminent Jubilee approaches. (By the way, I was delighted to be asked by Apollo Magazine to write a piece about the Jubilee, which you can find here.)
Outside the gleaming Basilica, in piazza San Pietro, the tree was having its lights tested and the presepe is being constructed. In this festive spirit, on the evening of Sunday 15th December and following various (much-appreciated) requests, I’ll be reprising my lockdown activities with a live-streamed gallop through Rome taking in as much Roman festivity as I can in an hour.
The festive jaunt will be streamed via Zoom meeting, will begin at 6pm CET (which is 5pm GMT, 11am ET, 9am PT for example), last one hour, and will cost €30 per screen connection. Recordings will be available for the same price. Questions and comments along the way are extremely welcome. To book please email info@understandingrome.com
For those of you who are members of Tiro a Segno of New York: I’ll be doing a version of this just for you earlier the same day, so please don’t sign up twice!
Saluti from Rome!
Agnes
Your post also reminded me of corbezzolo honey, bitter and sweet at the same time, and my favourite along with chestnut honey.