Rome’s Urban Memory Keeper
Author and historian Anthony Majanlahti thinks about the Roman Empire every day, multiple times a day -- and it shows
Anthony Majanlahti lives exactly where you’d imagine he would.
He’s best known for The Families Who Made Rome, a vivid blend of social history, travel writing, biography, and commentary. Published in 2005, the book remains a staple on the shelves of serious Rome devotees.
But his current project is even more ambitious. Tentatively titled The Eternal City, it’s a 700-page urban history that, as Majanlahti puts it, “will tell the story of Rome from its earliest roots right up until yesterday.” Commissioned by Oxford University Press, the tome has been in some stage of development for over a decade. If all goes as planned, it’ll be on bookshelves next year.
It’s somehow no surprise that the Canadian-born Majanlahti, 57, lives in a building with ancient Roman foundations, medieval substructures, and a Renaissance façade. Inside? Think soaring ceilings, classical statues, stacks of books, and walls lined with oil portraits, etchings, and historical maps.
The apartment lies halfway down Rome’s famed Via Giulia -- the elegant thoroughfare named for Pope Julius II, who ordered it built more than 500 years ago. The first new road built in Rome since antiquity, Via Giulia marked a turning point in the city’s Renaissance renewal.
Majanlahti spoke to The Italian Dispatch’s Eric J Lyman in the apartment’s grand living room. The conversation ranged from his distaste for Caesar Augustus, the problem with calling Rome ‘The Eternal City,’ the historical figures Majanlahti would invite to dinner, and what it really means to be a Roman.
This post marks The Italian Dispatch‘s first Q&A. It’s been edited for length and clarity.
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EJL: Your current book project is ambitious and complex, and you’re working on it at a time when questions about identity have become politically charged. You are Canadian. What would you say to someone who argues that a book like this should be written by a Roman?
AM: I’d tell them that I am a Roman.
EJL: You’re going to have to elaborate on that. In what way?
AM: Rome has always consumed more people than it produces. I’m a Roman in the ancient, classical sense -- and in the medieval and early modern sense, too. I came from abroad and chose to live my life here. That’s what being a Roman means. It has very little to do with where you were born. Cicero and Hadrian weren’t born in Rome.
EJL: You and I first connected when I contacted you about Giovanni Battista Piranesi [an 18th-century etcher and print maker]. I’ve also asked you about other semi-obscure figures I’ve been interested in: Bartolomeo Pinelli [a 19th-century illustrator], Romulus Augustulus [a late emperor], Pope Joan [purportedly a female pope from the 10th century], and Augustus Hare [a 19th-century raconteur and travel book writer]. Each time you had informed opinions ready, as if you knew I was going to ask. It seems like you have an encyclopedic knowledge about Rome. I’m wondering: Do you think you have weak spots?
AM: Ah, old Augustus Hare! He’s a peculiar character. Well, as for weak spots, I started out having almost nothing but weak points with a few strong ones. But over time, I’ve built a much more comprehensive knowledge and I have the new book project to thank. I’ve always been curious, but if it weren’t for the book I wouldn’t have found many these things out. I have an oddly retentive memory for Roman history. I can’t remember birthdays or appointments, but I remember details about Rome without trying. I wouldn’t be so vain as to claim an encyclopedic knowledge, but I know a lot and I’m learning more. The glaring gaps are gone, but there’s also a whole new panorama of ignorance that has opened in front of me.
EJL: Can you give me an example?
AM: Without humiliating myself? OK, I’ll admit I struggle to remember Etruscan history. I’ve grown more interested in it, but I still don’t think I have a strong grasp. I also wish I knew more about the Agro Romano, the agricultural belt around the city that fed it for centuries. My remit for the book is to focus on the city, which, in a way, is artificial. You couldn’t have Rome without the Agro Romano, but I haven’t had time to study it deeply.
EJL: Let’s speak about the book. How did it start?
AM: Oxford approached me after The Families Who Made Rome was published. That was a great honor. But I still had to submit a formal proposal and outline, which took two years. It went through academic and marketing committees, peer reviews, and so on. Then I signed a contract saying I’d finish in three years, even though my earlier, shorter books took four. They said the timeline was a formality. But now I’m eight years in and they told me I must hand it in this fall, or they’ll close the contract. I’ll make it.
EJL: Can you give some insights into the book itself? What’s the ‘elevator pitch’?
AM: It spans a vast stretch of time, and it views the city as a kind of living organism … one that grows and shrinks, sometimes starves, sometimes gorges, sometimes devours itself. It builds on top of itself using fragments of its former self, constantly reconceiving what it is. After the Empire falls, the idea of Rome becomes far greater than the city itself. It becomes not just a place, but a story, a concept. The idea of a city, which lies at the root of the very word civilization.
EJL: All that in 700 pages? If your editor called tomorrow and said, ‘You know what? You can go to 900 pages,’ would you?
AM: Yes! Of course! A book like this is already a process of omission, not inclusion. With more space, I’d add more about the Agro Romano. I’d also focus more detail on the earlier periods of Roman history. The book is divided into four sections: ancient, medieval, pre-modern, and modern. The closer it gets to the present, the more detailed it becomes. If I had more room, I’d balance that out.
EJL: You said that The Eternal City is just a working title. Are there other options?
AM: That’s what Oxford wants to call it, but there’s another book with that title published not too long ago. It’s also not my first choice, because it isn’t evocative enough. If you want a dry but accurate title, call it The Oxford Urban History of Rome. I’d be fine with that. I also dislike the phrase ‘The Eternal City.’ It implies a kind of unchanging permanence. The only eternal thing about Rome is that it’s constantly changing.
EJL: Still, some things are eternal, right? What’s your favorite ancient tradition that continues to this day.
AM: I think it’s Ferragosto [the mid-August holiday when Italians head to the beach en masse]. It was originally Feriae Augusti, a holiday imposed by Augustus. The whole month is named after him. It marked the break between planting and the harvest. Later, medieval popes associated it with the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. Today, we still celebrate it without knowing it's an ancient Roman festival.
EJL: Speaking of Augustus, I know you aren’t a fan. Why?
AM: He was a mass-murdering emperor. He wiped enemies and even whole cities that rebelled. He’s the last emperor to carry out large-scale human sacrifices. But he’s also proof of how having good PR helps in history. Even I feel some affection for him, knowing what I know. But I remind myself: he killed the Republic. He could have healed it. We remember the portrait of him from I Claudius [a 1934 historical novel made into both a film and television series] as a sweet old man watching his grandchildren play. That’s fiction. He was much cleverer and more ruthless than his adoptive father, Julius Caesar. He learned from Caesar’s mistakes. Remember, he wasn’t raised to be emperor, he was adopted posthumously. They never lived as father and son. But once Caesar became a demigod, Augustus could call himself Divi filius -- son of the divine -- and use it as propaganda. He filled the Senate with yes men, and he made his obedient Senate pass a bunch of laws that put all the power in his hands. There are contemporary lessons there.
EJL: Remember the meme from a couple of years ago: “How often do you think about the Roman Empire?”
AM: Ha. Not just every day; multiple times a day and in many different contexts. I think about it in a context of modern politics and foreign affairs. I think about it when I walk through Rome and see bits of antiquity embedded into modern walls. Or how ancient columns were built into corners of buildings to protect the precious stucco from passing horse carts.
EJL: Who is the most recent figure featured prominently in the book?
AM: Probably Benito Mussolini. He was the last head of government to take a serious interest in the city, though it was mostly a toxic one. He called himself ‘the great demolisher’ and referred to ‘his majesty, the pickaxe.’ He stripped away medieval additions to ancient ruins to create a false impression that they somehow survived untouched.
EJL: But Teatro di Marcello is still a 50-50 mix between ancient and the medieval.
AM: Yes, and it’s an interesting example because you can see that Mussolini’s excavations dug down to ancient levels. The medieval level is all chewed up with pitted walls and post holes. Beneath that, it’s pristine.
EJL: The last question -- and I know it’s a cliché. But if you could invite five or six Roman historical figures to dinner, who would they be?
AM: I’d start with Titus Tatus, the first King of Rome. He was a real figure, unlike Romulus, who is almost surely an eponym. Fabius Maximus, the first general to stand up to Hannibal. Fabius basically invented guerrilla warfare. And I think Julius Caesar would be a lot of fun. But not Mark Antony; he’d drink too much.
EJL: That’s three.
AM: Then Matidia, Hadrian’s mother-in-law and possibly his lover. All the great second-century emperors, apart from Nerva, are related to her, either by marriage or by descent. She had a unibrow and a hairstyle like a fortress and was a covert empress her whole adult life.
EJL: Any popes?
AM: So many popes to choose from. But probably Gregory the Great and Boniface VIII, who sounds like he’d be quite a fun dinner companion. After his death, he was brought to trial by his enemies and multiple witnesses recalled him saying ‘it was no more a sin to have sex with a young man or a young woman than it is to rub one hand against the other.’
EJL: Wow, I didn’t know about that! That’s a full table. But you didn’t pick anyone from after around 1300. Is that on purpose?
AM: I’d be very interested in meeting Giuseppe Garibaldi, although I think he’d be terribly long-winded. So, maybe I’d skip him and invite Mussolini, and just for fun his wife, Donna Rachele Guidi.
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Post-scriptum:
My mother is from the Dominican Republic, and I’m American on my father’s side. But you’d never guess that cultural mix from the names my parents chose for their kids. My siblings and I have my father’s Anglo surname, and our given names -- Jennifer, Donald, Eric -- are right out of middle America.
Growing up, I often wondered if our lives might have played out differently if we’d all had Latino names. What if we’d been Yennefer, Donaldo, and Errico? Would we have turned out differently?
Without knowing the term, I was drawn to the idea of nominative determination -- the theory that a person’s name helps shape their future.
Lately, though, I’ve become even more curious about counterexamples. Take Romulus Augustulus, mentioned above. His father, the general Orestes, clearly had imperial ambitions. He named his son after Rome’s mythical founder, Romulus, then added a diminutive form of Augustus, Rome’s first emperor.
At first, the name seemed prophetic. Augustulus became emperor as a teenager. But then it quickly unraveled. He ruled for less than a year before being deposed in 476 by the barbarian general Odoacer, who executed Orestes along the way. The boy-emperor was spared and sent into exile near Naples, where he lived quietly for decades. He never tried to reclaim the throne and history didn’t even record when or how he died.
The Western Empire had been crumbling for many years, but Romulus Augustulus is widely remembered as its last emperor -- an end far more forgettable than his name would suggest.
Great conversation. Piazza Margana is a favorite place. Is the trattoria that specialized in vitello tonnato still there? I love the little car that parks behind that gate and the tree that grows up in that open-air garage. I tutored a brat who lived across the way. He had an American passport but had never been to the U.S. His father was Russian and his mother Austrian and both were one step ahead of something.
I learned a lot I didn't know about one of my favorite cities.
I like the comments about possible dinner guests: Mark Anthony would drink too much and Garibaldi would be long winded. I'm surprised there were no dinner guests from the Renaissance. The list jumped from the Middle Ages to Fascism.
I'd still like to be invited to that dinner, though.