The ten thousand, with Sammy P.’s face
No longer with its presence does grace
But do not be depressed
Maybe it’s for the best
No one asks, “You got change for this Chase?”

“Now this is what I’m talking about!” Jack declared, throwing his arms wide and laughing.  It was a strange sound, like a cross between the cry of a carefree child and the insuppressible glee of a maniacal supervillain watching his plans come to fruition.  As usual, whether they could understand what he was saying or not, the other tourists kept their distance.

Matthew was feeling much better on his second day in Rome.  A good night’s sleep had done wonders for his mood.  When they first returned to the hotel he had worried that his roommate would keep him up with wild stories or nonsensical planning, but for once Jack had calmed down and gone straight to bed.  He said he needed to keep his strength up for the days ahead, whatever he meant by that.

The day was bright, and the waiting line had not been as painfully long as the guidebook had indicated.  If Matthew was forced to complain about something, it would be that his friend had not totally followed through on his promise to let him pick their destination.  Matthew had wanted to visit the Forum first, but as soon as they exited the subway station and Jack laid eyes on the white stone walls of the Colosseum, shining in the sun, he knew that it would be impossible to drag his friend away.  Matthew was not, however, inclined to be particularly upset about this detour.  After all, it was pretty much illegal to visit Rome without going to see the Colosseum.

“The Colosseum!” Jack announced, for what Matthew counted as the thirty-seventh time since they had come up the escalator from the subway station (named, appropriately, Colosseo).  “If this isn’t a place for excitement and intrigue, then I don’t know what is.  Back in the old days, this was the heart of Rome!  The living, breathing, beating, and above all bleeding heart of Ancient Rome!  No other place existed in the entire world at that time that had such power to draw people in!  This was their entertainment!  This was their life!  Every Friday and Saturday night, Romans would call up their buddies . . . I mean, send messages by birds or yell across rooftops or whatever they did before they had telephones.  Anyway, my point is, the question everyone wanted to ask was: ‘Hey, you going to the Colosseum?’”

“No, it wasn’t,” Matthew corrected politely.  He had been leaning on a railing and staring upward, trying to imagine what the building had looked like when it was first built, when it had been around for only a hundred years, when it was filled with screaming fans and when it was inappropriately silent at night.  “No one would have said that back then.”

Jack stumbled as if Matthew had physically tripped him.  “What?” he asked.

“No one would have said that,” Matthew continued, “because it wasn’t called the Colosseum back then.  Its original name was the Flavian Amphitheatre.”  As usual, there were any number of things from his friend’s speech that he could have corrected, from contrasting the importance of places like the Forum and the Circus Maximus as gathering spots to pointing out that the modern weekend originated primarily from Judeo-Christian traditions.  But Matthew knew how to pick his battles, and he believed that names were important.  “And before you ask,” he added, “the word ‘Flavian’ just refers to the dynasty of emperors that built it.  It doesn’t have anything to do with flavors, or flares, or flakes.”

Jack’s brow furrowed.  “But . . . this is still the place with the gladiators, right?”

“Yes,” Matthew said, chuckling.  “This is the place with the gladiators.”

“Well alright then!” said Jack, regaining his earlier momentum.  “Gladiator combat!  Battles to the death!  Two men enter, one man leaves.  That’s what Ancient Rome was really all about.  Fighting for your life, sword to sword, knife to knife, fist to fist, and all the while the citizens of the greatest city in the world watched as you struggled to survive.  Now that is a performance.  Anyone who entered this pit knew that if he did not perform to his very best, and maybe even if he did, he would surely die.  That would be something worth watching.”

Matthew did not agree that watching men die made for good entertainment.  “You know they don’t do that anymore, right?”

“Of course,” said Jack, slumping down onto the railing next to his friend.  “The great gladiator fights all took place centuries and millennia ago.  But,” he added, grinning slyly, “don’t believe that there’s nothing left here from those brutal days.  The blood of the gladiators has seeped into the ground, taken hold, changed this place in a way that no amount of history can undo.  The ghosts of hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of men that suffered horrible, horrible deaths reside in this ancient amphitheatre.”

Oh God, thought Matthew.  Now he’s going to have us chasing after ghosts.  “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

“Sure, you know that, and I know that.  But what about those who want to reawaken the past and prey on the fears of the superstitious?  Wouldn’t this be the perfect setting for a ghost like that?”

Matthew groaned.  “You think there’s going to be someone running around the Colosseum wearing a bedsheet and saying ‘Boo?’  That’s ridiculous.  This isn’t an episode of Scooby D—”

Matthew froze for a moment, because he thought he had seen a figure moving through an archway across from where they were standing.  It was not a ghost, just a person whose features were concealed entirely behind faded gray clothes.  The figure walked with a halting step, as if it had recently fallen and twisted an ankle.  He stared at the spot for a minute or two, but the shuffling apparition did not come back.

“Like I said,” he repeated, though with less certainty and more directed at himself than at his friend, “this isn’t an episode of Scooby Doo.”

“Dude, just let her come,” said Cloud
‘Twas not hard to decide
Tifa versus Barret?
He would always pick her side

“Fine,” said Barret, standing up
“But I just got to say
If something happens to Marlene
I’ll blow you both away”

“Geez,” said Cloud, “why let him stay?
He’s really not much fun”
“Hmm,” said Tifa thoughtfully
“He does have that big gun

“Really, Barret’s a good man
Once him you get to know”
Cloud said, “Whatever,” checked his watch
“I guess we’d better go”

The three of them got on the train
To join Wedge, Biggs, and Jess
Barret tried to keep his cool
With limited success

“Damn! This ain’t no private car!
Split up! Avoid the fuzz!”
He said it was no private car
But once he yelled, it was

This week’s puzzle:

An unpopular Harvard graduate tries to get his colleagues to go along with his radical ideas.  While reluctant at first, they are swayed by his ability to compromise, a famous quotation, cowardice, and the shooting of some birds.

New! See an image clue. ▼

Last week’s puzzle:

A former lawyer travels the land for the sake of love, rescuing a young man from a horrible death and helping to reunite a family. Meanwhile, two criminals looking for a big score act as accessories to the defrauding of a blind man, participate in a bank robbery, and infiltrate a political event.

And the answer is . . . ▼

Joan of Arc was convicted of crime
Though many though her actions sublime
Later on, on appeal
Her guilt was deemed not real
But to save her they weren’t quite in time

Matthew followed Jack through alleyways, down streets, and across the river before his friend finally came to an abrupt halt in another piazza.  “Hey look, Matthew,” he said brightly, sounding not nearly as out of breath as he deserved to be after running for at least a mile nonstop.  “It’s another one of those whatchacallits—obelisks, right?”

Matthew clutched his knees and sagged toward the ground, unable to respond.  If he had been able to speak he could have told Jack that he was technically right, and that the object before them was, in fact, an obelisk.  He would also have been obliged to point out that Rome (and various other European cities, for that matter) was littered with obelisks, that these obelisks had no deeper purpose than to look cool, and that by this point they had no more to do with Egypt than french fries had to do with France.  Since he was still recovering his breath, however, all he could do was attempt to get his meaning across by means of a painful wheezing noise.

“Wait here for a second.  I’m going to go check it out.”  Matthew had no choice but to wait there; moving was still not an option.  So he stood there, panting, while his friend went over to examine the obelisk.  Eventually, when he was able to muster the energy, he put his hands back in his pockets, because there were a fair number of people in the area and there was no way of telling which of them might be out for his wallet and passport.

Jack came back, shaking his head.  “I can’t make heads or tails of this Egyptian stuff,” he said, disappointed that he had not discovered his own personal Rosetta Stone in the past half an hour.  “Oh, hey, do you think we lost them?” he asked, seeming to suddenly remember that they had just been “escaping” from the Swiss Guard.

After having taken time to collect his thoughts, Matthew was relatively certain that, had the guards actually been chasing them at any point, they would have been caught.  What he said to his friend, however, was: “Yes, if by ‘them,’ you mean our minds!”

“Huh?” said Jack, his smile faltering.  He had been just about to boast of escaping certain death at the hands of the Vatican enforcer squads.  “What do you mean?”

“You’re right,” Matthew responded harshly.  “I should clarify: you’ve lost your mind, and I’ve just somehow managed to become infected by your craziness!”

Jack frowned.  “Are you saying . . . that I should have waited until I had more evidence before confronting the guards?”

“I’m saying that you’re completely insane for thinking that confronting the guards would even be an option!”  Matthew tried to calm himself down, and he succeeded, to a certain extent.  “I think you’ve been reading too many books,” he said, most likely the only time in his life he would ever make that accusation.  “You think that just because we’re in a big city with a lot of history there must be some sort of ancient mystery or massive, global conspiracy that we’re supposed to unravel.  But real life isn’t that dramatic.  Those kind of cheesy adventures don’t actually exist, and even if they did, do you really think that we would be the ones that are supposed to do all that stuff?  We’re not secret agents or spies.  We’re just two ordinary people.”

Jack regarded Matthew with a peculiar look on his face.  “So what do you think we’re supposed to do here?” he asked.

“What anyone else does, of course!  Stroll around, see the sites, take pictures.  Gawk at things that seem strange to us but are perfectly normal to the people that live here.  I want to walk through historical places and visit art museums.  I don’t want to spend my time running away from dangerous people who may or may not be pursuing us.”

“You want to be a tourist?” Jack asked, making a sour face.

“Yes!  What’s wrong with being a tourist?  That’s what people like us do.  We tour.  Leave the sensational intrigue to the hack novelists.”

Jack stared at his old friend for a long time, as other people, Romans and tourists alike, flowed around them.  Matthew was a little unnerved, because he was not used to seeing his friend look so thoughtful.  Then again, he was no longer racing around and making loud, public accusations, so maybe it was a change for the best.

Eventually Jack smiled.  “You don’t believe that there’s any adventure left in the world, huh?  What a sad life you must live, Matthew.  But don’t worry.  I’ll make a believer out of you yet.”  Matthew groaned.  So much for change.  “I’ll tell you what, though,” Jack continued, “I’ll let you pick where we go tomorrow.”

“So,” said Jack, after Matthew had spent a few minutes trying to figure out if he knew of anywhere they could go where his friend wouldn’t fly off the handle and get them into an awkward situation.  “Tell me about this place.”

Matthew looked around, examining his surroundings for the first time since they had arrived.  “This must be the Piazza del Popolo,” he declared.  “You can tell by those twin baroque churches over at the opposite end, the Santa Maria dei Miracoli and the Santa Maria in Montesanto.  Way back in ancient times this was the site of the Flaminian Gate, where the Flaminian Way left Rome to head north.”

Jack scratched his chin and looked thoughtful again.  Matthew worried that his friend was coming up with a new conspiracy theory, possibly linking the ancient Egyptians to some sort of mutant “pizza people.”  Instead, he said, “If this is where that road left Rome . . . then that means we must be in Rome now, right?”

“Yes,” said Matthew, “this is actually part of Rome.”

“Hey!”  Jack smiled broadly and slapped a friendly arm around Matthew’s shoulder.  “Welcome to Rome.”

As they argued, Tifa came
And said, “Good morning boys
I came because I heard the shouts
What’s up with all this noise?”

Tifa scowled.  “You’re just trying
To keep me away
Besides, this is a bar, you know
Who’d come during the day?”

This week’s puzzle:

A former lawyer travels the land for the sake of love, rescuing a young man from a horrible death and helping to reunite a family.  Meanwhile, two criminals looking for a big score act as accessories to the defrauding of a blind man, participate in a bank robbery, and infiltrate a political event.

New! See an image clue. ▼

Last week’s puzzle:

Three guys run into difficulty when their ride breaks down in the middle of a big trip. They get their co-workers to help out and go through an awful lot of trouble to fix it, but in the end they just pass by their destination without even getting out.

And the answer is . . . ▼