Genius of the Itinerant, Un-Propertied. Gypsy Survival - Rome falls, Roma survive

Cultural genius: a familiar concept. Each civilization has something.

• Egypt - Genius in monumental building;
  
• Athens and Greece - Genius in the arts, philosophy, government, sculpture, architecture.
• Rome - Genius in uber-organization and overcoming-overempiring those in their way. Anything with that name still does it.
  

Rome now - crumbling. Here is Ostia Antica now, the old port of Rome. See Italy Road Ways. Lovely to stroll through, but not much left.

This was a center for Mithraism, however, and parts of that survive in differing forms in Christianity and the Gypsies. See

• America: Genius in founders of democracy, now in jeopardy.
• Gypsies: Perhaps the least changed in culture over a thousand years - is that true? How did they do it? How did they survive when Rome did not, and America may well not? Is that true?
  

1. Itinerance; isolation; cultural continuity. There may be its own kind of cultural genius in staying on the move. "Not all men are like trees; some must travel and cannot keep still." Gypsy proverb at ://www.passiondiscs.co.uk/articles/the_roma_gypsies. Read long but good history article there by T. Herbert.

And the taboos, customs, do not change. Enforcement of the group over the individual. Isolation and itinerance may also promote some health - customs, not to use others' utensils, care about absorbing into oneself contamination. Customs of washing in running water, drinking from running water, being on the move. Were the Gypsies hit as hard from plague? or cholera and other dangers of density, overpopulation, the pestilence brought by proximity. Read "The Ghost Map," by Stephen Berlin Johnson, //www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/2006/04/the_ghost_map, about sleuthing the causes and transmission of cholera in London 1848. Density, ingestion of others' contamination.

Perhaps travelling was not a help against plague - Gypsies were accused of transmitting it, //www.travellersinleeds.co.uk/_travellers/HistoryPre20thC.; and were accused of carrying plague, see timeline for 1496, at //www.florilegium.org/files/CULTURES/Gypsy-tmeline-art.

That moving about itself has been forcibly changed. Many countries by now have stopped by legislation the traveling of Gypsies, largely out of embarrassment at this uncivilized barbaric behavior, or for fear of them, see "Bury Me Standing, The Gypsies and Their Journey," by Isabel Fonseca, Alfred A. Knopf NY 1995. Ms. Fonseca lived with Gypsies in their communities.

2. Foregoing property accumulation. Claiming no real estate, accumulating no wealth other than as carried by wagon. Possessions now are accumulating, with the settling, for some.

3. Self-sufficiency in trade. Carry on a trade, but work for no other man. That is disappearing in areas with the stopping of the caravans and settlement in highrises. The traveling trades are not available.

4. Linguistic uniqueness. Many surnames have had to be changed to meet the ethnic assimilation efforts of the various governments.

5. Consanguinity. Control of who marries whom; marriage laws. Even with the abuses that can occur in relationships in any culture, the taboos and shame appear to be especially strong in controlling the choices and behavior of a woman in he culture. Is it true that a Roma woman would not turn to prostitution. Does that mean she has no escape at all, or is it a protection, and from what. Takes more thinking here.

6. The sum total: re what is behind the attacks on Gypsies through the years? Culturally, it is anathema. Why we can't we leave others alone. Why the drive to impose and reject or re-form others. The threat of difference must be overwhelming. We are becoming like Rome. Organize and force. Force fails, ultimately, but the wagon wheels - on and on, if allowed. Film to see: "Romani Kris - Gypsy Lore." Just saw it on a website.

What an affront to the West - who instead insist, settle down. Get a little land. Hoard. Get a job. Invest! No tolerance for those who chose another path. Genocide. And Gypsies have been and are targeted for it; all the while developing behaviors and maintaining belief systems that promote its own survival still. See ://www.geocities.com/~Patrin/genocide. Look at the timeline of persecution at this site, "Travellers in Leeds: A Permanent Site for Travellers, Gypsies and Roma" - a history of travelling and killing, banishment, imprisonment, and arranged by country - //www.travellersinleeds.co.uk/_travellers/HistoryPre20thC.html

This look at a cultural genius is not to romanticize the life of gypsies. It is hardship, abuses within and without, and on-the-brink living.

Still - Roma - succeeding where Rome did not. The genius is in survival.