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By Root 657 0

is attainable; in this, their logic retains at least a hint of its theological underlay. They opt instead for compromise that reflects and embraces the reality of envy and other consequences of human imperfection. After working on Greek social relations for so long, I was often struck by the relative ease with which most Romans appeared to avoid discord, and a Spanish woman told the daughter of one of our neighbors that she was astonished to see Romans who had staged a big fight then go off to dinner together in apparent amity. Rather than complain to the point of being disagreeable (although they actually do a great deal of complaining), Romans take the long view. When one asks a Roman how things are going, the response is often a shrugged nun ce lamentamo (we're not complaining) or, more formally and positively, ci accontentiamo (we're reasonably content); and once a man I had asked how things were going replied, "Mi adatto" (I adapt).

Indeed, being content is relative to ineluctable realities. Many Romans are inveterate skeptics, refusing to believe-or at least refusing to admit that they believe-in the possibility of honest, decent administration. By the same token, however, they also readily accept that this refusal is itself strategically useful inasmuch as they often need a justification for the illegality of their own actions. Thus, for example, a man whose job was to supervise workers' safety and compensation reported that the city authorities were guilty of using undocumented immigrant labor-Romanians working for illegally low wages (5o,ooo lire for fifty hours of works and without the safety protections that are required by law-as a shortcut to completing all the numerous building projects timed for the jubilee celebrations. When government breaks the law like this, he demanded, what can one expect of private operators?

His exasperation shows that civic honesty remains more of an ideal than an experienced reality. People may even be genuinely convinced that it is unattainable. But it is useful, at the very least, as a stick with which to belabor an authority that clearly, and often, fails to meet such an exacting standard. A disgruntled former shop proprietor went to the garbage collection authority to find out why there were no bins at one location where he had gone with his disposables when he could find none next to his own house. This good citizen was seriously told in response that the bins had been removed to make way for a political demonstration. Apparently, demonstrations being a regular feature of Roman life, it was too much trouble (fatica) to keep replacing the bins! On another occasion, the city police said they "could not confiscate the big umbrellas"-used to shade an illegal extension of a restaurant into the public space of the roadside-"because we have nowhere to put them!" With that kind of official response, conditioned as it probably is by the expectation of substantial bribes for delaying action, offenders not only feel able to commit offenses but, in doing so, make their immunity to legal pursuit ostentatiously evident: it is, remarked an infuriated leftist councilor, "a display of arrogance ... like a dog marking a tree with its piss," and one that has its own instrumental logic in warning away anyone audacious enough to conceive of challenging their actions. Under these conditions, Roman cynicism about the possibility of a clean and industrious bureaucracy can only flourish.

The sudden burst of anti-corruption activity at the national level during the 199os produced both idealistic enthusiasm and, especially as the justice system proved unable to overcome all of its own endemic corruption, cynicism about the motives of those who rode to political prominence on platforms of honesty and good government. One local supporter of the disgraced Socialist Party went so far as to argue that the system of bribes and favors (Tangentopoli, Kickback City) that had engulfed his party had actually been a means of creating new economic opportunities and employment, especially as it encouraged government