What Elon Musk gets wrong about the Roman Empire

I was in Washington, DC during the election, living halfway between the Capitol and the White House. Concerned friends suggested I move to some boutique hotel in Virginia for election week, in case of “trouble” in Washington. Or at least, they said, I should stock up the freezer, as I might not be able to get safely to the shops for several days if the results were bitterly contested. I took the freezer option (plus an enhanced cellar) and planned a week of working from home, to follow the news from each swing state, fortified by my supplies. It was all for nothing. By the time I woke up on the morning after the election, everything was settled: Mr. Trump had incontestably won. So I gave up the working-from-home option and walked to my office on the Mall. The city was just as normal, except eerily quiet (everyone else had stayed up very late, and those in the federal government were perhaps silently anxious for their jobs). Weeks later I’m still eating my way through the contents of the freezer.

Ancient Rome has been in the air ever since, partly thanks to Elon Musk, who has appeared on social media in Roman battle armor and has come out with a load of theories — eccentric, outdated or downright wrong (my description depends on how generous I’m feeling) — about the fall of the Roman Empire and, by implication, of America too. One of his favorites is the birth rate: “Rome fell because the Romans stopped making Romans.” (Yes, Romans were anxious about the birth rate, but they had been anxious about that since the very origins of their city, long before the empire “fell.”) But the commonest Roman question put to me is: “Which emperor is Donald Trump most like?” The true answer is “none.” But I now tend to reply “Elagabalus,” a little-known, unbridled teenager on the throne in the early third century. It’s not because I think Trump really is like Elagabalus, but because I suspect that this emperor will be a new one on the questioner, so they’ll at least have to go away and look him up.

In the real world of ancient Rome, there have been some great discoveries this year. Excavations at Pompeii have produced some wonderful new paintings (an unforgettable image, for example, of Phaedra and her stepson Hippolytus — from Euripides’ incestuous tragedy). But after a visit to the Archaeological Museum in Naples in the spring, where I found the Roman painting galleries nearly empty, I regretted that we tend to get over-enthusiastic about (often tiny) new finds, just because they are new. We overlook the hundreds of even more amazing, and more substantial, works of art from Pompeii discovered a century or more ago. Do go and see them in the Naples Museum if you are there; you won’t have to queue. Meanwhile, when it comes to intriguing discoveries, I have been more interested in the DNA analysis of the skeletons found on the site of the destroyed city, victims overwhelmed as they fruitlessly tried to escape. Tourist guides and archaeology textbooks have long told poignant stories about these — two lovers crushed in each other’s arms, or a mother and father desperately attempting to save their children. The new science shows how wrong (and romantic) we have been. It’s not just that we have got the sexes of some of them wrong — women identified as men, and vice versa. Analysis of the remains of one of the most famous ‘fleeing families” has shown that none of the group is biologically related at all. When you’re trying to escape a volcanic eruption, you don’t necessarily end up with relatives.

We lost two big beasts of classical archaeology in 2024: John Boardman, who had been professor in Oxford, and Colin Renfrew, who had combined research in Greek prehistory with Tory politics (ending up in the Lords). Both, in their different ways, were outspoken and fearless. Boardman’s most notorious intervention was when the scrubbing of some of the Parthenon Marbles, under the auspices of Lord Duveen in the 1930s, was being universally deplored. Personally, he said, he was rather on Duveen’s side, preferring the Marbles clean and white. And I recall seeing Renfrew in action, decades ago, at an event for academics hosted by a famous auction house. On display was the Sevso Treasure, a collection of ancient silverware of “doubtful provenance.” Most of the invitees tut-tutted about “provenance issues” while quaffing the free-flowing champagne. One person left sober was Renfrew, insisting he had come to see the objects, but that he would not stoop to accepting booze from a firm whose business practices he criticized. Renfrew 1, Other Academics 0.

The US election event still looming for me is next month’s inauguration. Word on the street is that we shall see an influx of Trump supporters in celebratory mood. I shan’t be making for Virginia or, this time, stocking up the freezer (assuming it’s empty by then). I’m booking my own “celebration” in the fleshpots of New York.