The Feast of Rome harkens back to a time when the empire, bloated on its own might, was at its brutal peak. Its aristocrats wallowed in a savage splendor, their hands stained with the spoils of conquest. Legend whispered that Nero strummed the harp atop the Palatine, his eyes gleefully drinking in the spectacle of his city being devoured by flames. The sight of the feast, punctuated by a golden memento mori, screams of the vicious toll of war and the ever-looming specter of death, even amidst a feast that drips with decadence. The ominous glow of distant fires, the cruel harbingers of destruction, serve as a stark reminder of the price of short-sightedness and utter contempt for the nurturing earth from which we spring. These merciless infernos stand poised to obliterate all that is worthy and pure.