© Jan Asselyn
Italian landscape with the ruins of a Roman bridge and aqueduct.
There is a genre of landscape painting from the 17
th and 18
th centuries that ought to give us cause for reflection. They are paintings of Italian landscapes where goatherds and their flocks wander amongst the ruins of Roman aqueducts, bridges and temples.
The fascinating thing about them is that they depict a European society which, more than 1200 years after the fall of the Roman empire, still had not regained the level of production and infrastructure that the Roman empire had at it's height. It wasn't until the industrial revolution in the 18
th century that the productivity and infrastructure in Europe managed to surpass the Roman empire in its heyday.
The paintings of goatherds and farm animals amongst the ruins of infrastructure and temples from classical Rome are like pictures of people moving among the remains of a high-tech civilisation that they no longer have the ability to match. The city of Rome had at its height a population of a million people. That required a very advanced infrastructure for water and food supply, transport, goods delivery, trade and so on. The city was, at the time, the foremost example of a building materials industry, that had the capacity, and level of competency, to deliver the enormous amount of building materials that such a city required.
When the empire collapsed, the infrastructure was no longer maintained. The aqueducts broke down and towns and cities lost their water supply. Roads and bridges deteriorated and were not repaired. Goods transport and trade was reduced from a surging river to a quiet brook. 1200 years after its days of glory Rome was a ruined town with a population of less than 10.000.
Comment: The issues in Spain and the EU regarding Catalonia are just beginning.
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