Dante's Ordeal

The citizens of Rome have a peculiar way of venting their frustrations. Instead of climbing walls, they climb monuments. Several times a year, some angry Roman or other makes his way to the top of the Colosseum, the dome of St. Peter's or the monument to King Victor Emmanuel II, where he stands or sits for a while in a public expression of outrage. Police and firemen are so nervous about the popularity of monument perching that last week they scrambled onto the dome of the Pantheon to rescue Liza Barkley, 19, a tourist from Philadelphia. Liza was hustled off to a psychiatric clinic before she could explain, through an interpreter, that she was an architecture student and had climbed up a scaffolding to inspect the structure of the dome.

The current champion of Roman monument perchers is Dante Ottaviani, 27, who last week set a city record by perching for seven days and seven nights on the rim of the Colosseum, 150 ft. above the cobblestones. A one-time petty criminal turned street peddler, Ottaviani was protesting the fact that the cops had confiscated his stock of transistor radios and cigarette lighters on the grounds that he did not have a proper license to sell them.

Totally bereft of money and merchandise, Dante was too ashamed to face his wife Laura and five-year-old daughter Sabrina, who were waiting for him in their dismal one-room flat in the slum quarter of Centocelle. Instead, he clambered up the Colosseum, accompanied by a sympathetic friend (who climbed down again, half-frozen, after only 37 hours). Wrapped in a pink blanket that from a distance resembled a toga, Dante survived a dismally cold week on hard rolls, tea and water, sleeping on a ledge the size of a card table. Once, he slipped, almost fell off, and twisted his ankle.

Dante did, however, make his point. Rome's Il Messaggero editorialized that "once poor Christians were thrown to the lions in the Colosseum. Now other poor Christians go there who have no other way to make themselves heard." Eventually, a city hall official climbed up to give Dante a letter promising him the license he wanted; feverish and weary, Dante climbed down from his aerie. Rome's embarrassed city council issued a statement that future requests for municipal favors "must always follow the stipulated administrative norms," but that may be easier said than enforced. Two days later, four unemployed Italians climbed up the Colosseum's jagged walls after the city-owned bus line turned down their requests for jobs.

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