Most of us spend a lifetime searching for that "Uh Ha" moment when a new perspective on an old problem makes everything crystal clear. Some people call this their "Road to Damascus" experience... some call it their "why didn't I think of this before" experience.
My infatuation with all things Roman has led me to wonder how such an advanced civilisation could fall victim to the Visigoths who along with the Vandals were one of the most uncivilised tribes 'scurging' Europe at the end of the 1st century AD. I have read many commentators say things like "Romans didn't have a good nose for intrigue"..." Romans couldn't smell the corruption in which they lived "..." Romans couldn't see the nose in front of their face ". In the past, I had taken such statements as euphemisms... general criticism.
Today we are in Mérida... a village offering the best collection of Roman artefacts in Spain... perhaps in the world... and it's here I had my "Uh Ha" moment. We had just walked the Roman bridge... the longest bridge built by the Romans (why they chose Mérida for such a feat is beyond me)... and we had just completed our visit to the Visigoths museum.
(Can I digress here for a moment. I am the first to lay the boot into the Visigoths... they occupied 200 years of European history and contributed nothing! Nothing! Well, almost nothing... because in the Mérida Visigoth museum was a tablet with writing... dating back to 607 AD. But the lettering and words were recognisable to us English readers... unlike the Roman script shown alongside. These 'bogan' buffoons developed/borrowed the English script very early on... perhaps those of us of English decent may have to acknowledge a branch in the family tree that includes the Visigoths... perhaps they are not 'bogans' after all.)
Our next visit was to the Mérida archaeological museum... and I was ruminating the cause of the fall of the great Roman Empire. My "Uh Ha" moment struck me in the reception area... perhaps the euphemisms about smells and seeing noses should be taken literally... PERHAPS ROMANS DID NOT HAVE NOSES!
I was in the perfect spot to conduct research... I walked through this magnificent museum counting the number of faces of status that had noses and those that did not. I quickly realised I was onto something big... my walk broke into a jog... then into a sprint... the excitement of discovery was exhilarating... over 90% of the statutes depicted faces without noses. You could imagine a couple of sculptors getting lazy and saying, "This looks OK without a nose"... but a 90% no-nose ratio is too significant to attribute to lazy sculptors. In analysing my statistics, it was clear that the proportion of Romans with noses increased over time... many more of the sculptures from 100 AD had noses compared to 100 BC. It would seem that Romans started to grow noses during the time of their empire... they just didn't grow them fast enough to avert the Visigoths onslaught.
Just as we were leaving the museum, I noticed another startling coincidence. The attendants with yellow fingers coughed a lot. We all know that coughing is associated with lung cancer. Perhaps yellow fingers cause lung cancer. After I submit my thesis on Roman noses and get my degree, I might investigate yellow finger disease.
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