How the Barbarians Destroyed Rome

You have probably never heard of Fa-hsien, the Chinese Buddhist monk, who wrote of his travels in India and Central Asia at the beginning of the 5th Century. And if you have never heard of Fa-hsien, you damn sure never heard of his idiot nephew Hou-hou, who, in an attempt to retrace his famous uncle's steps, took a wrong turn at Outer Mongolia and wound up in Italy ...

Well, there I was wandering around among these seven hills and coming up with nothing, and I can tell you, I was ravenous. The city was a huge disappointment. It looked so promising from a distance, but it turned out to be nothing but a rotting ruin. So I was fortunate to run into the old man.

"You should watch where you're going," he said reproachfully, as he dusted himself off. But he seemed as glad to see me as I was to see him.

"You wouldn't happen to have any food?" I enquired, cutting directly to the chase.

"We don't get much company around here these days," he responded unresponsively. "And when I say 'we,' I mean 'I.'"

"Uh, ... food," I pressed, pointing to my open mouth. "Know where I can get some?"

"Oh, food?" he mumbled, as if waking from a reverie. "I actually have a little farm nearby. I can sell you some."

"Uh, well, that's a bit of a problem," I explained in my most ingratiating voice. "I'm a monk, you see, and we're sort of used to, um, getting fed for free."

"Don't look like any monk I've ever seen," he frowned. "Robe's the wrong color."

"Ah, yes. Ha, ha," I laughed in an attempt to lighten the mood. "Chinese Buddhist monk, you see. Can't you tell by my accent?"

"Hmph. I see," said the old man. "I'll tell you what. You're hungry, and I'm lonesome, so I'll feed you, and you'll listen to me talk."

That sounded like a good deal. I can fake attention as well as anyone.

"That city down there is Rome," he began. "Was Rome, anyway. It was once the seat of the greatest empire the world has ever known."

I wanted to tell him about the Ch'in and Han, but my mouth was full. Anyway, it probably would not have been a good idea to offend him before I was full.

"And then they came and ruined everything," he said ominously.

"They?" I prompted between mouthfuls of pizza. (Yeah, yeah, I know. It couldn't've been pizza. I was hallucinating from hunger.)

"Yes, they!" he continued. "There were the Goths, who favored dark, somber clothing and heavy eye shadow. And the Vandals, who scribbled graffiti everywhere. They were ..."

"Barbarians?" I volunteered.

"Barbarians? Yes, I suppose that's a good word for them. That's not what we called them, but I like it. I'll have to remember that."

"I suppose they did the usual things?" I said encouragingly. "Burned, pillaged, raped?"

"Uh, no," replied the old man. "They ran!"

"Um ... ran?" I almost spit out my pepperoni and anchovies. "Why?"

"It was to recapture the former glory of Rome, I think," said the old man. "We used to be a mighty, martial people, conquerors of the known world! But success was making us soft, or so some people believed, at least. These ... these ... marathoners, as we called them, thought they could simulate the grandeur of Rome by running 26 miles."

"So?" I asked innocently.

"So?" he repeated sarcastically. "So? I'll tell you so! It wasn't bad until one of the marathoners got knocked down by a chariot. What do you think the Emperor did?"

"Oh, he must have banned marathoning, huh?" I guessed.

"Not even close," retorted the old man.

"Oh, I know! He made them run around in that great, big auditorium thingy I saw!" Pretty quick on the uptake, I thought.

"The Colisseum? Nope."

"Then some other athletic stadium or running track somewhere," I suggested.

"Wrong again," he said smugly.

"But why not?" I whined. "Something like that would be ideal for running!"

"No way," he replied, "because ... Well, I don't really know why. I've always wondered about that myself. But running a marathon without tying up the city just wasn't done."

"Ok, I give up. What did the Emperor do?"

"He shut down the city," said the old man.

"Shut down the city?"

"Is there an echo out here?" snapped the old man irascibly. "Yes, he shut down the city while the marathoners ran. No one was allowed to bother the runners. They would run around the city in a loop, and all the roads would be closed. No one outside the loop could get in, and no one inside the loop could get out."

"But that was only when there was a marathon was going on," I pointed out. "That couldn't have been much of a problem."

"Oh, really?" he sneered. "Well, one marathon was never enough for those people, and 365 wasn't too many. The crisis for me came when my dear old granny was dying in a hospital inside 'the loop.' I lived outside 'the loop.' I begged the centurion blocking the intersection to let me through."

"And did he?"

"No. He just said there was always a way around. He suggested going via Carthage."

"So, what did you do?" I asked, fascinated in spite of myself.

"What could I do?" he shrugged. "I went to Carthage. Came back with an elephant to run their damn blockade."

"Right on!" I cheered. "How did that go?"

"Not as well as I had expected, I'm afraid" he sighed. "Carthage is a fur piece from here. By the time I got back, Rome was pretty much the way you see it now. Couldn't get anything in. Couldn't get anything out. So everyone either died or packed up and moved away. There was nothing left but the graffiti and the eyeliner. Oh, I stayed, of course. After the round trip to Carthage, I didn't have the energy for any more travel."

"But what became of the barbarians?" I asked.

The old man sighed again. "No one knows for sure," he said, "but rumor has it that they crossed the great ocean to the west, where there are myriad cities to paralyze, voluminous traffic to snarl, and legions of people to annoy."