Roman Festivals - "Roman Holidays" As Trope

"Roman Holidays" As Trope

By the outset of the nineteenth century and particularly in response to the carnage of the latter years of the French revolution, the term Roman holiday had taken on sinister aspects, implying an event that occasions enjoyment or profit at the expense, or derived from the suffering, of others, as in this passage from Childe Harold's Pilgramage (1812–18) by George Gordon, Lord Byron:

There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother—he their sire,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday."