There is a view, held particularly by young people in the established democracies, that politics is boring. No one has done more to fight this perception than Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi.
As the world stands transfixed at each new revelation of his barnstorming lifestyle, and the Italian electorate clucks indulgently, it becomes ever harder to find a precedent that does justice to such a reign. (One should mention here the reported contention of Mr Berlusconi’s lawyers that he did not hold wild drug-fuelled “bunga-bunga” orgies but “gentle soirées where modestly dressed young women sipped mineral water and watched movies”.)
But does the history of Rome offer a parallel? Did the city itself have a previous ruler who got as much fun out of bunga-bunga, however that is defined, or even out of gentle soirées fuelled only by mineral water? The website www.roman-colosseum.info lists all the Roman emperors and characterises them in a pithy phrase, which may not amount to sophisticated history but constitutes a magnificent list.
Here we have Caracalla (“The common enemy of mankind”), Valentinian I (“The emperor given to fits of rage”), Sebastianus (“The usurper emperor whose head was sent to the imperial court”) and Anthemius (“The emperor who believed that he was a victim of sorcery”).
But the impression is that the abiding interest of most were the traditional delights of untrammelled rule, ie conquest, tyranny and slaughter, options not easily available to leaders operating within the European Union, even when they are answerable only to voters as unshockable as Mr Berlusconi’s.
Two candidates emerge. In Edward Gibbon’s 18th century masterpiece, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, there is no more compelling passage than his gloriously censorious account of the reign of the Emperor Elagabalus (218-222 AD): “effeminate luxury ... a chorus of Syrian damsels ... the grossest pleasures ... a capricious prodigality ... a long train of concubines ...” Wow! Bunga-bunga! Elagabalus was eventually murdered by the Praetorian Guard and dumped into the Tiber.
The other contender is Carinus (283-285), who divorced nine wives, and in some versions murdered several too. He still found time to indulge in what Gibbon, with a shudder, calls “irregular appetites”. Meanwhile, the palace “was filled with singers, dancers, prostitutes and all the various retinue of vice and folly”. But even Gibbon seems unable to suppress a sneaking admiration. There was public splendour too, “enjoyed with surprise and transport by the Roman people”, and years later old men would nostalgically recall the parades and circuses.
Thus perhaps with Mr Berlusconi. One small difference, though. Elagabalus reigned as a teenager; Carinus was not much older. The prime minister is 74.
