Just to put the boot in on the historical analogies…
The Evening Standard of Londinium, AD 2011:
Silvio Berlusconi’s political career may have been going into meltdown but that did not stop him seemingly spending the night before a crucial parliamentary vote in the company of an attractive young woman.
Former TV presenter Francesca Pascale, 25, who has been linked romantically with Mr Berlusconi, 75, was seen driving into his official residence late on Monday night…
Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus’ De Vita Caesarum, on Nero during the Great Fire of Rome, AD 64:
For six days and seven nights destruction raged, while the people were driven for shelter to monuments and tombs. At that time, besides an immense number of dwellings, the houses of leaders of old were burned, still adorned with trophies of victory, and the temples of the gods vowed and dedicated by the kings and later in the Punic and Gallic wars, and whatever else interesting and noteworthy had survived from antiquity. Viewing the conflagration from the tower of Maecenas and exulting, as he said, in “the beauty of the flames,” he sang the whole of the “Sack of Ilium,” in his regular stage costume.
Support for the emperor’s latest affliction — hanging around for early elections — was dying away within his coalition allies at pixel time, in preference of Italy’s president appointing a technocratic or possible new centre-right government.
Related links:
Exit Berlusconi – LRB blog
Italian bonds yields through 7 per cent – FT Alphaville