Bread And Circuses

This phrase has suddenly come to mind because I have began to feel myself swept up with the sense of National zeal that is sweeping the UK at the moment, as the Olympic torch makes its way throughout the country.

Billions of pounds has been spent on this project, that is no doubt fulfilling the purpose of distracting the populace from the difficulties of a recessionary period.

I am not decrying this nor thinking it is a bad thing at all, simply it has suddenly struck me how appropriate that this phrase is for this moment in time.

It originates in the Roman poet Juvenal from about 100 AD, and was very much intended as a satire on the way in which Rome had begun to be governed.

It is perhaps ultimately a good thing that we have something to distract us, and there is a tangible sense of expectation surrounding the opening ceremony for the Olympics, which as I write will take place this evening.

This morning, I was excited in expectation of hearing church bells from my open bedroom window.

Sadly, I could hear no bells, not even a local doorbell.

I watched the Olympic breakfast News programme, broadcast for the first time this morning from the beautifully situated BBC studio overlooking the Olympic Park.

Rain is possible during the course of today, but it seems not to matter, and everybody is talking up the chances of the ceremony this evening not suffering rain at all.

Enough television footage of the theatrics we will see this evening for everybody to be keen to see it, and there is a conspiracy of silence around the question of who will actually light the Olympic flame at the culmination of the opening ceremony.

If I were a gambling man, my money would be on it being the Queen herself, or perhaps the eldest of Prince Charles's sons, who one day himself will be our King.

I cannot imagine what other celebrity might be asked in this special year to undertake such a significant symbolic act.

But it is certain that the event this evening will perhaps break the record for the largest ever television audience worldwide in history.

Tomorrow will tell.

This is certainly a moment of history in the making, and I feel certain that we will all look back at this moment in time as a great moment of satisfying success, and certainly everything I have seen to date of the arrival of the Olympic flame has had an almost religious sense of purpose.

But it is Bread And Circuses, what was satirised by Juvenal, almost 2000 years ago, and perhaps the first recognition that the great ambition that was Rome had become lost in the midst of entertainments that were to distract the people from lack political of direction.

I say again, I do not wish to come across as cynical about everything Olympian, at this moment in time I am puffed up with pride at what is unrolling.

Perhaps I just wish that as a Nation we might recognize something important in our joint enterprise as a society more often, and in ways that perhaps might cost less when everything is said and done.