Time Suspended in the Darkest Days
It was the darkest days of winter when the dice players set up their table in the street. They didn’t care who walked by. Breaking the rules that applied the rest of the year ? No one would stop them. Io Saturnalia ! Anything goes.
In the temple of Saturn in the forum they loosened the wool around the god’s feet so that he could get up to dance. Even gods must play their roles except for a few days, 17 December to the 23. Once winter planting was over, it was time to forget all that. Io Saturnalia !
The world would start again in a few days’ time but not before a party. Gifts were given, house rules relaxed, slaves dressed like masters and sat at the table to be served; did the lordly senators and military men slip away to their chalets with their wives, to a warm spot on Capri or in Calabria ? They might have but the trains weren’t running yet. Maybe they too joined in. Io Saturnalia !
Saturn, that old god, the god who rules time, who is time, comes before Zeus because the endless parade of hours comes before everything else. He has a wicked reputation that one, ready to devour his children but now he shows his other, kinder face, and lets his children carouse and indulge. The Roman state made sure there was bread on every table. (A subvention to the bakers, a bit of socialist grease to keep the world running smoothly.) Io Saturnalia !
Saturn and his wife Ops, the earth goddess of abundance, rule this end of the year. Mock anything you like! I wonder if the priests in the temples came in for their fair share of abuse during the festivities ? Only the penitents went to the other temples in those days.
Saturnalicius princeps, a mock king, led the celebrations in every town; drinking and public licentiousness, no official titles, no impressive garments that set you apart, and for a short while everyone forgot what day it was. The festival prefigures Christmas but is wilder, an act of defiance in the cold, looking forward to Spring.
Behind it is a distant memory of the Golden Age, when all were equal and there was peace. It was one way for an aggressive empire to forget the hierarchies of titles and ranks, let its hair down and indulge the innate human intello-libido for freedom and chaos, imagining life as it once was in that mythical dawn of equality. Io Saturnalia !
Because even under the microscope of the quantum world, where time goes backward and forward in an strange, uncanny universe of parallel lives, where going changes where we arrive, time rules. Time has come today ! Enter the temple where Saturn rules, benevolently for a change, and humans seize the moment. Io Saturnalia !
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I write regularly on European and French art, culture, scandals and politics at Continental Riffs on Substack and then drag a few of the pieces over here to Medium. Keep your credit card in your pocket, it’s easy to subscribe. See below and get more scintillating prose about that faraway paradise.
Originally published at https://continentalriffs.substack.com.
