DAY 122 - SPLIT IN A TOGA

20 August, 2011 –Best Togs

Total:  1149.5 miles Total: 2,232,291 steps

“All right… all right… but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order… what have the Romans done for us? “ Reg from Life of Brian by Monty Python

One of the things which you quickly realise as you travel up through Albania and into Croatia is that, especially along the coast, people want to be Italian. Who can blame them—great clothes, great food, great sunglasses and of course great romantics—the Romans even lent their name to the word romance—well they could have done.

There is another reason why the links are so close and that is that the Kingdom of Dalmatia, which stretched the length of Croatia and down as far as Albania, was for at least seven hundred years a Roman province and a Venetian Republic. So the roots to Italy go deep. Nowhere is this connection more visible than in their architecture.

The most impressive remaining example of Diocletian Roman Architecture in Dalmatia is his Palace at Split, which was built for his retirement—a novel concept as Diocletian was the first Roman Emperor to voluntarily leave office. The palace remains largely intact and what is more, it remain lived in which adds greatly to its charm—you can imagine Romans walking through the narrow cobbled streets.

Understandably the link to Diocletian has been seized upon by the city to promote it as a tourist destination and with considerable success. 2011 has already been their best summer ever and they are attracting more and more young people, as well as the traditional Mediterranean cruise ships.

So there was an unexpected surprise when we paid a courtesy call on the Deputy Mayor of Split–Jure Sundov and he presented me with an invitation to the special, once a year, Days of Diocletian Banquet to be held in the vast subterranean basement of the palace. I was told that everyone had to dress in Roman dress and I saw a nice ‘get out’ clause apologising that I hadn’t packed my Roman toga. They had pre-empted this and presented me with a toga—no excuse!

The evening was a fascinating blend of public spectacle and private dining. The public spectacle in the main square was a Roman gladiator contest that the participants seemed to take very seriously as they clattered and thumped each other with wooden swords and pitchforks, with only thin padding on the spikes. The cheering and lust for battle of the spectators—mostly tourists—by the combatants, showed how little we have travelled from the gladiatorial spirit and why concepts such as truce are so difficult to implement. Informed by Slavica’s observation about the attitude of women towards war, I noticed how the women seemed to be more engrossed by the spectacle of the fight than men; and certainly when it came to the judgement of the thumbs up to live or thumbs down to die, there seemed to be a disproportionate number of thumbs down from the ladies if the poor gladiator hadn’t put up a decent fight—though of course, there were no females involved in the contests.

The banquet, in the cool basement, provided welcome relief from the stifling heat above ground. The recipes were all authentic Roman meals and that was very interesting because I grew up under the shadow of Hadrian’s Wall and I recognised some of the dishes, most notably broth with barley, that is a part of Northumbrian cuisine to this day. My political instincts were to try at all costs to avoid being photographed in costume – if there is a negative story, you can be assured which image the picture editor is going to pull from the file to illustrate the ‘political plonker’.

Normally, the only time those pics of you in your House of Lords Induction ‘Santa Claus’ outfit ever get seen in public, are if you have been convicted of fiddling expenses, or have been caught getting up to nefarious activities in a tax-haven. Anyway, out of affection for picture editors, I wanted to give them a few more options for when they are needed—though, as I am not claiming any Parliamentary expenses at all this year and not earning any income either, and have no assets and therefore no need for a tax-haven, it may be tempting fate to think that they may remain on file and unused for a little longer—famous last words!