Gaius Acerbus

Gaius Acerbus has been filing from the decline of Rome for longer than Rome has been declining, which is saying something. A patrician of exquisite taste and terminal pessimism, he regards the fall of civilisation as the one entertainment his age reliably provides.

The Long Decline is his standing dispatch on luxury, celebrity, moral panic, and the eternal lie that things were better before. They were not. They were merely earlier.

“Rome has been falling since before I was born. We have made an entire civilisation out of the falling.”

“They have opened another bathhouse. We will bathe ourselves to death before the barbarians get the chance.”