The city of Rome Noisy and eternal Rome has always been violent, aggressive and intimidating

NO CITY, writes Robert Hughes, “has ever been more steeped in ferocity from its beginnings than Rome”. This dauntingly aggressive city-state made itself the capital of Europe’s biggest empire, and then became the seat of western Christendom. Unsurprisingly, it has acted as a magnet for men (and the occasional woman) of intimidating ambition, untroubled by the use of violence for the attainment of their ends.
One of the city’s semi-legendary rulers was Tarquin the Arrogant who is credited with inspiring the “tall poppy” approach to governance: he reputedly believed the best way to start administering a vanquished city was to remove the heads of its leading citizens. Among Rome’s later emperors was Valens, whose purge of pagans was described by one fourth-century chronicler as “monstrous savagery”. As Mr Hughes writes, “men were maimed, hideously torn with hooks, and dragged off to the scaffold and the chopping-block.”

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