Imagine if we were to invite an alien being to read through the Earth’s obituaries. Surely he must come to the conclusion that this is a planet full of saints, beautiful people and kindly souls. Every dead soldier was heroic, every parent loving, each businessman thoughtful and caring.
Every newborn baby is beautiful and a genius, every dead person Christ-like. But what about in-between birth and the corpse? Observation tells me there are a lot of nasty shits in the world. Where are their obituaries?
‘Don’t speak badly of the dead,’ they say. So no truth here. Die and you shall be good! I believe the reason for this is a leftover of primitive superstition. The Romans allowed no burials within city limits. They also did not bury their dead near a crossroads. There was a genuine fear that the dead could strike at the living and that burying people near intersecting roads would give their ‘ghosts’ a chance to move freely in every direction.
Everyone is ‘good’ after they die because if we say bad things, even if we speak the truth, ‘they will come and get us,’ strike out from the other side.
A general fear of death is behind this too. Speak of it and it may happen to you!
photo credit: Pink Sherbet Photography via photopin cc
This bastard’s crazy.
This site is amazing. A true history lesson for those that wonder what a website would have looked like in 1978.
I can’t believe you two got past the spam filters. Do they have computers in nuthouses now? hahaha
Reading this reminded me of a visit to one of places Romans took their dead across the Tiber. The church calls it something else. Castle of the Holy Angel in English, or Castel Sant’Angelo.
When I took the girlfriend on Roman Holiday last year she said she wanted to go inside the Castle. She circled it on the tourist map.
“It’s not a castle,” I said. “It’s a tomb, the tomb of the Gay Emperor. Hadrian. Caracalla is in there too, and that one built the bath houses.”
We were walking on that bridge with the statues that approaches the so-called castle when when the girlfriend asked me to hold her gelato. I did this while she dug her guidebook out of her bag. “Are you sure about that?” She asks. The gelato was melting. “It says here that the Archangel Michael appeared on the roof of Castel Sant’Angelo after the plague.”
“Fairtale,” I said, and licked a drip running over the lip of the cone.
“Get this,” I said, telling her what happens when Rome gets sacked: “The Pope runs from his Vatican palace on his private elevated causeway, all the way to the tomb of the Gay Emperor. It is there that the Holy Father cowers in fear of the stroke of death.
“I don’t want to hear any of that,” she said. “Can we now mail some post cards from the Vatican post office?”
I should think that a Man of God would have stood his ground and faced the invading mob. I was telling my wife about Daniel in the Lion’s den. ‘I could do that too,’ I told her. ‘Love to see it,’ she said. Quick route for her to the half pension.