Piero Boitani is an author of acclaimed books, such as the recent “Il grande racconto delle stelle” (“The Great Tale of the Stars”), praised in the “Times Literary Supplement”. Now Boitani abandons his scholarly pursuits and puts himself into the shoes of three ancient Romans. Scene I: 14 B.C.E. Augustus is distressed. The letter C (which is also the Roman numeral for 100) has fallen off the CAESAR adorning his statue. It’s a bad omen: he has only one hundred days left to live. His thoughts dwell on his past and his lifelong friends – Maecenas, Horace, Virgil, Ovid – as well as on the endeavours that await him in the little time he has left. Scene II: 306 B.C.E. An elderly senator offers sarcastic remarks about the new ideas that Christians are spreading throughout the Empire and mourns the decline of Greek-Latin culture. Scene III: 396 B.C.E. Now it’s the turn of the senator’s grandson. Everything has changed: the grandson is a Christian, the Empire has been broken up, Rome is no longer the capital, and Barbarians now keep watch over the borders. Ancient culture has been replaced by a gaping chasm; there is no longer any art, poetry, literature. One can only hope for a Renaissance, which seems so far-away.

Piero Boitani teaches Comparative Literatures at the “La Sapienza” University in Rome.