O Tempora, O Mores!

Hugh Trevor-Roper (1914-2003), The Wartime Journals (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012), p. 46: Though our modern dictators entertain us by their bombast and vulgarity, and maintain the high traditions of their class in other less engaging vices, they fall short, alas!, of the exorbitant pleasures, the outrageous, shameless orgies of debauchery, which are so endearing a feature of the more ancient and authentic tyrants. Hitler and Mussolini neither smoke nor drink, and although Musso sometimes allows himself a mild infusion of lime-flowers, for his stomach’s sake, tea and coffee (those poisonous drugs!) he rigorously eschews. As for Hitler, cream-éclairs are said to be the limit of his indulgence; but of these, it is whispered, he has sometimes, when in convivial mood, been known to take one over the eight. When these two miserable creatures met in Venice, that city of ancient and exotic debauchery, did they feast with Lucullus and romp with Cleopatra? No: two plates of scrambled eggs, and…