REGULARLY IN THIS SPACE I REFER TO PEOPLE AND EVENTS FROM CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY, roughly the period from the time of Homer in the 8th century B.C. to the decline and fall of the western half of the Roman Empire in the late 5th century A.D. My purpose is to demonstrate that, despite the sophisticated tools at our disposal in the present world — computers, advanced material science, space travel and all the rest — there is very little of consequence in the present that is genuinely new, particularly when it comes to social movements and theories of governance.

For example, our system of laws draws heavily from Roman law, which is one reason that technical points of law are so often discussed in classical Latin. Court rooms and judges’ chambers would go silent without lawyers using phrases like res ipsa loquitor (“it speaks for itself”) or habeus corpus (“produce the body”), or suspects presenting investigators with an alibi (literally “elsewhere,” as in where the suspect claims he was in relation to the scene of the crime.)

Another example: In last week’s column, I made a case that “the hippies” of the 1960s were nothing new in Western civilization, since they had much in common in both methods and premises with the Cynics of ancient Greece.

One thing that has repeatedly struck me about Washington, D.C. when I’ve visited is how much it resembles a Roman imperial capital. If you drugged and kidnapped a Roman citizen in the year 150 A.D. or so, put him in a time machine and revived him on the National Mall of the present day, he would be able to make sense of a lot of his surroundings — once the shock of cars, jets and modern communication technology had worn off, of course.

Lots of official Washington has buildings modeled explicitly on Roman civic buildings, and the memorials — particularly the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials — are imitations of the temples to Roman gods that crowded the center of every Roman city of consequence. The U.S. Senate takes its name from the Roman institution of the same name, though our senators would probably strike our time-traveling Roman as being strangely dressed. The military rituals that are a regular occurrence in our nation’s capital — parades, processions and so forth — would be familiar in their basics, too, if he had ever witnessed a Roman triumphal parade.

I mention all this because in a way I will be taking a similar journey to our Roman time-traveler, except in reverse. As most of you are reading this, the wheels will be going up on a 747 taking me and a friend to Rome for vacation. I’ll also be visiting Turin, Paris and Normandy after Rome, then flying home from Paris.

While the Rome of the present day certainly has its attractions, I am mostly interested in visiting the ancient sites that dot the city. (Rome also has its hazards, particularly its homicidal traffic — I understand that the horn button is referred to there as the “Roman Brake Pedal.”)

In a way, when I visit those ruins I will be looking for information about the present — looking for insight into the origins of the present day. You can learn a lot about a civilization from visiting its civic spaces, where societies showcase their values and priorities, and I expect that some of what I see will resonate with my understanding of our current civilization, probably in unexpected ways.

Not all of the ancient sites are ruins, by the way. There are several Roman buildings that have survived intact to the present day. I am particularly looking forward to visiting the Curia Julia, which was the building where the Imperial Senate met, and the Pantheon, a temple to all the gods of pagan Rome. The Basilica of St. John Lateran was built in the 300s next to the older and still-intact palace of the Lateranus family, from which it took its name.

There are also buildings that, strictly speaking, have not been continuously intact, but have been in a state of continuous repair and maintenance. The Church of St. Paul Outside The Walls was built in 386 by order of the Emperor Theodosius, and was largely intact until a workman repairing the roof accidentally started a fire that largely destroyed the structure. (Of all the roofers in history, I think it’s probably fair to say that he had the Worst Day at Work, Ever. “What did you do at work today, honey?” “Well, I replaced some roof tiles, and, uh, obliterated a priceless architectural treasure. Where’s the scotch?”) The building was completely rebuilt and more or less restored to its former glory, so being in it is still in some sense experiencing the structure as it was in ancient times.

So, dear readers, my next few columns will be filed from Rome and, later, from Paris, from which I will be flying home. Ciao!

Matt Talbot is a writer and poet, as well as an old Benicia hand. He works for a tech start-up in San Francisco.

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