The time has long gone when anyone seriously tried to claim that it was decadence that did for the Roman empire – all those larks’ tongues and luxury silks – but in so many ways there’s a “last days of the empire” feel about life today.
And that’s not just because of two articles I noticed today – one in the Autun edition of Le Journal de Saone-et-Loire, and the other in an April copy of Macleans, which has just made its way around our village to me. (Can’t say English-language magazines aren’t well used here.)
Locally, just up the road from us, near the Gallo-Roman citdel at Bibracte, is a new farm, specialising in mare’s milk, mostly, it would seem, for cosmetics. No objection, per say, although I can’t help wondering what they do with the male foals, knowing what happens to dairy calves. Still, one can’t help thinking of Cleopatra and those fabled baths…
Seriously madder, I learn of a $525-a-jar cosmetic, the no-so-secret ingredient of what is the venom of the temple viper, Tropidolaemus wagleri, which “works in a similar way to Botox, which paralyses the muscles that cause facial wrinkles”. Poison away those wrinkles…
But no, my favourite example is still the billboard-sized screens showing adverts in Tube stations in London – with the latest climate change predictions ringing in my ears, the idea that we are producing carbon dioxide for this purpose still tops my list of decadent madness.
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