Bush called GMA to say ‘congrats’, but no Roman holiday for our besieged Emperadora

ROME, Italy – There will be a Cabinet "revamp", I’m told by my usual Alikabok in Manila, but it will be a slow-paced, though decisive one. All the Cabinet members have submitted their "resignations" as instructed to clear the way for change. Let’s hope it’s coming.

Despite the rains, both the Luneta speech and the Cebu inauguration went well for GMA, confirmed in office for another six years. According to my sources (yep, by coded cellphone), Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Narciso Abaya says there is no perceived "capability" by any troublemakers to create mayhem, violent mass action, or "rebellion".

In the meantime, US President George W. Bush rang up President GMA, perhaps enroute home from the NATO meeting in Istanbul, Turkey, aboard Air Force One. In their talk Tuesday, Dubya congratulated GMA and gave the usual assurances of support and cooperation. (Probably they want "access" in Gensan, too.)

I don’t know what we’d do today without the cellphone, which they call movil or Mobile here in Europe. Everyone I see here has one – even those pretty girls zooming along on their motorbikes and scooters. In any event, some friends phoned me from Manila, asking why I hadn’t returned in time to attend La Emperadora’s coronation. I replied that I didn’t have to attend that and other festive affairs extolling GMA’s victory. I’m not looking for a job. I’ve got one.

There are many, however, surrounding the President these days, actively lobbying for appointment to the Cabinet or other sensitive (i.e., money-making) positions. The President must beware of the opportunists, excessive wannabes, and influence-peddlers. Those sycophants and bootlickers must now be pandering to her, a moist eye on key designations.

I don’t wish to sound pompous, or eager to impress anyone with my . . . uh, knowledge of classical history or scholarship. But it’s instructive to be here in Rome at this moment, ringed by the ruins and shards of vanished imperial glory. In short, the lesson – learned from contemplating the rubble of the Roman Forum, the shell of a once magnificent Colosseum, the crumbled Via Sacra, the time-pitted Arco de Tito, or the Arch of Constantine, and the remnants of the Tempio di Giulio Cesare – is that nothing material lasts.

A leader’s legacy – as did that of Rome’s – lies in the example, and the institutions that leader leaves to succeeding generations. For instance, in our first year of Law school, we still study Roman Law. And everywhere you wander, from Segovia in Spain to Bualbek in Lebanon, to the far shores of Turkey, you spot ancient Aqueducts, build by the Romans, still bringing water for drink and irrigation from the distant foothills and mountains.

Also ubiquitous, even in Scotland, down to London (Londinium, the city founded by the Romans), you’ll espy the old Roman Roads. They lead from the nearest seaport, over the sea to ports in Italy from which the armed Legions embarked to put down rebellions or conquered new lands in Africa and Middle East or to destroy Carthage. One of first things the Roman Legions did was construct a road – and this network today stretches all over Europe, as far east as Romania, then on to Istanbul (Constantinople).

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The Legions, each unit headed by a centurion, clanked out of Rome on the Via Appia Antica which you can still use today. It used to be known to ancient Romans as the Regina Viarum or Queen of Roads, running all the way from the walls of the capital to Brindisi, on the Adriatic Coast. It was a remarkably straight road, and the secret of Rome’s power was that several Legions could be dispatched with great speed over those roads to reinforce any garrisons which were beleaguered or crush revolts wherever they might erupt. In sum, the Romans – not Hitler – invented the Blitzkrieg.

Along to Applian way, of course, is the Quo Vadis Domine church, where St. Peter met the apparition of Jesus. Also next to the Via Appia are the Christian catacombs, the most famous of which were that of San Callisto and San Sebastian. In these underground gravesites were also offered the underground Christian Masses and prayers during the years of persecution. (The term Catacombe derives from the Greek words kata, meaning "near" and kymbas, (i.e., "cavity"). The Christians dug about 300 kilometers of tunnels, borrowing through the soft tufa rock beneath the roadways.

Perhaps our Church has grown too wealthy and too worldly, and we ought to return to the simplicity, humility, and faith of the church of the Catacombs. The church of those whose steadfastness led to their martyrdom in the Colosseum, where a raging mob of 50,000 spectators roared approval for their "executions".

The mob remains as bloodthirsty and cruel these day, as when gladiators and wild beasts contended in that Co-losseum founded by the Emperor Vaspasian in AD 72. The crowds used to cry out "jugula" or "cut his throat" to gladiators raising their hands to ask what to do with their defeated rivals. Contrary to popular misconception, the "thumbs up" signal meant "death", not "life".

Incidentally, it was also the Emperor Vespasian who imposed a tax on toilets – just as GMA’s tax collectors are now desperately trying to tax everything. Vespasian remarked: "Anyway, money has no smell." On the contrary, there is a great deal of smelly money being made by druglords, kidnappers, and crooks, in connivance with cops and big shots in our century and place.

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Nobody’s worried about history in Rome, today, on the other hand. When you fly into Fiumicino airport from Paris, one hour and 45 minutes away, you arrive to the warm embrace of the sun. It’s a summery 26 degrees outside, in stark contrast to the mists of Edinburgh and the rains of London.

Right now, everybody’s rubbernecking near the Piazza del Popolo (originally laid out in 1538). This is because Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas, and the other big stars of the movie-in-progress, Oceans Twelve, are billeted there in the hostel Rossi right across the famous Café Rosati.

Yesterday, they were filming that action movie in the Rose garden, just above the ruins of the Circo Massimo (where Hollywood originally filmed that renowned chariot race between Ben Hur and his hated Roman enemy, Massalla).

Rome has, once again, become a mecca for movie-makers and the dream factory gurus.

If you’ll recall, it was here that the legendary Director Federico Fellini created La Dolce Vita – the sweet life immortalized in his 1960 film of that name – in which he soaked the exquisite Anita Ekberg’s desirable body in the "purifying" waters of the Fontana di Trevi, carved by Nicola Salvi in the 18th century.

I passed by there yesterday, and there were the usual hordes of tourists dropping their "Three Coins in the Fountain", another movie title. Actually, the custom is to toss two coins into that fountain, backwards over your shoulder. The first is to wish for something (or someone) you want. The second is to "return" to Rome. So you can toss another two coins to enrich the scavengers there. In theory, all coins collected from Trevi go to charitable causes.

I also visited the pantheon on the Piazza della Rotonda. It is a building two millennia old, a contemporary of the Colosseum. It was a temple constructed by the Emperor Hadrian (who also built Hadrian’s Wall in Britain) in Ad 120, although it is credited to General Marcus Agrippa who built an earlier temple there in 27 BC. The name Pantheon is derived from the Greek pan (all) and theos (gods) and was dedicated to "all the gods". There is a remarkable hole in the roof from which the sunlight pours in, or from where you can enjoy starlight (though it shuts down at 7:30 p.m.).

Bring along your bestselling paperback, Angels and Demons by Dan Brown, an earlier precursor of the runaway bestseller, The Da Vinci Code which by the way is still Number One in England, Scotland, France – and Australia.

In Angels and Demons, some of the action is in the Pantheon, then in the Chigi Chapel in the Piazza del Popolo, and, naturally, in the Vatican. This time, the evil ones are not the Opus Dei, but the Illuminati who murder Cardinals and attempt to blow up the Vatican. Another Dan Brown novel, a 1998 book named Digital Fortress, has been re-issued and is outselling even John Le Carre’s espionage opus, Absolute Friends, in the bookstores.

Dan Brown is dazzling in his story-telling, his research and scholarship, although I can’t agree with some of his conclusions – a dissent certain to bring the wrath of his legion of admirers and idolaters down on my foolish head.

Oh, well. I believe his other novel, Deception Point, is aptly named.

With apologies to Winston Churchill, you can sometimes foist a lie on people, with "a bodyguard of truth". Most of what Brown says is true, and amazingly well-founded. That’s when he smoothly slips in the . . . uh, loaded conclusion. Don’t get me wrong. I agree with him about Opus Dei.