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the "Coliseum" in Los Angeles. An
additional 100,000 attended in per–
son.
"The happiness of Rome," de–
clared Gibbon, "appeared to hang
on the event of a race."
Today, the happiness of many
also seems to hang on the outcome
of the Grand Prix, the Indianapolis
500, a soccer or football game, or
dog or horse races.
Juvenal, Roman poet and satirist
of A.D. 100, wrote: "The public has
long since cast off its cares; the
people that once bestowed com–
mands, consulships, legions, and all
else, now meddles no more and
longs eagerly for just two things -
bread and circuses."
Today, millions of Australians,
Canadians, English and other Euro–
peans, and Americans also seem to
have lost their sense of national pur–
pose and destiny. We are more pre–
occupied with the latest football or
soccer score than with the outcome
of intemational conferences on dis–
armament or solutions to problerns
in ecology.
The Romans became obsessed
and engrossed with fiction and inde–
cent stage productions. "Almost
from the beginning the Roman
stage was gross and immoral," wrote
Myers in
Rome, Its Rise and Fa/L
"It
was one of the main agencies .to
which must be attributed the under–
mining of the originally sound
moral life of Roman society.
"So absorbed did the people be–
come in the indecent representa–
tions of the stage that they lost all
thought and care of the affairs of
real life" (pp. 515-516).
Is
it so much different, today?
The Fun Culture
Our Western world seems ad–
dicted to frivolity and fun, obsessed
with sensuous pleasures. We have
built a new "Fun Culture" in which
millions seek escape from reality.
Many modero Europeans, Ameri–
cans, Canadians, and Australians
are addicted to watching television,
14
VACATIONERS
sunbathing
and swimming in the lavish
pool at the Acapulco Hilton
(upper right). Deepsea flsh–
ermen off the coast of Flor–
ida (below). Thousands of
avid fans mili around to pur–
chase air roce tickets (far
r ight).
Don Lorton
-
Ploin Trvth
or they swarm to the latest bloody
motion picture, absorbing the vio–
lence, the sadism, the sex, and the
horror displayed.
Because Rome became absorbed
and obsessed with its own thrills,
pleasures, and leisure activities, we
read its historical epitaph: "And so
in this dream of the absolute fixity
of the Roman system, men went on
getting, studying, enjoying, dis–
sipating - doing everything except
to prepare for tighting....
"And so the barbarians at length
PlAIN TRUTH April 1973