Walls and Mirrors.

I was talking recently with Dear Friend about the constraints of life.

More specifically - the mercy of having the walls of other people's needs hemming in about us. Whenever a one of us is given totally free reign, surrounded with sycophants, shielded from the consequences of our actions -  the result is hardly ever good. Our most graphic modern example to come to my mind is Michael Jackson, but it's a universal story.

Recent events in London couldn't help but be (another) reminder of old Rome - the Imperial era, this time. 

See, for some time Rome had been developing something of a "thug culture" and as a young man ol' Nero (yes, that Nero) wanted in on the fun - 

 Although at first his acts of wantonness, lust, extravagance, avarice and cruelty were gradual and secret, and might be condoned as follies of youth, yet even then their nature was such that no one doubted that they were defects of his character and not due to his time of life. No sooner was twilight over than he would catch up a cap or a wig and go to the taverns or range about the streets playing pranks, which however were very far from harmless; for he used to beat men as they came home from dinner, stabbing any who resisted him and throwing them into the sewers. He would even break into shops and rob them, setting up a market in the Palace, where he divided the booty which he took, sold it at auction, and then squandered the proceeds. In the strife which resulted he often ran the risk of losing his eyes or even his life, for he was beaten almost to death by a man of the senatorial order, whose wife he had maltreated. Warned by this, he never afterwards ventured to appear in public at that hour without having tribunes follow him at a distance and unobserved. 

Now it's not in this account, but I've also seen references to the fallout of that beating up the Senator "youthful prank."  From that point on, Romans were terrified to resist when accosted in the street, afraid it might be the young emperor.

Three guesses what happened to the frequency of muggings in Rome after that.
Yeah... yeah, pretty much what you'd expect.