A writer should not evaluate her self-worth based on how many “likes” her most recent status update collected on facebook. And yet, I felt satisfied with myself over an update that generated thirty-seven likes in the time it takes to finish a Guinness. I wrote:

Just ordered a Caesar salad in an Irish pub. Bartender says they’ve got chicken, steak, and shrimp. She says all the Caesars are good. I say, some were bad, in the old days. She pauses, looks at me–her eyes set between the upper rim of her glasses and a few stray hairs from her bouffant that are combed over her forehead–and says, I’ll be telling the jokes around here sonny.

I attributed the popularity of the post to it being funny and self-deprecating. The image of this unimpressed Irish woman looking down on me, a smug American punster, must have pleased the people that liked it. I haven’t mustered the courage to tell them the status update isn’t true. The bartender did tell me about the Caesars. I did make the bad joke. She did look down at me as if she could deliver a punch line. But she didn’t say anything.

The Roman historian Livy popularized the Western trope that along with modernism comes great moral decline. When American politicians speak of a golden age in which our Founding Fathers held fast to God and family, defending their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness with an unswerving passion for firearms, they’ve got Livy to thank. His 1^st Century AD history of Rome criticized the morals of his contemporaries. He wanted readers to believe that Roman wealth had been built on ancient virtue not modern skepticism. History was to serve as an example of moral virtue, as a warning to those who strayed too far from the righteous path of piety.

On the other hand, Livy ignored facts that didn’t fit his theme. In a scene from Robert Graves’s novel I, Claudius, Livy argues historical veracity with Asinius Pollio—an eyewitness to Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon. Livy’s eloquent but Pollio wins the moral battle, accusing Livy of fabricating his history. In a huff, Livy says, “Though it may not be true in factual detail, it is true in spirit.”

It’s too simple to say there are two kinds of historians, those who bore you to tears and those who make stuff up. The truth makes living today just as complicated as it was two thousand years ago, when Romans found themselves sitting on a pile of wealth known as The Roman Empire.

Like Livy, I used lying to my advantage in Rome. First, I lost my apartment keys at the church of San Clemente. There an 11^th century church sits above a 4^th century church sitting above a neighborhood from the 1^st century AD. On the bottom level, there’s archeological evidence of Nero’s fire. There’s a temple to Mithras, that messianic figure who lacked PR agents as effective as Peter, Paul, and Mary. There’s a spring that’s so mysterious nobody knows if it’s natural or the product of early Roman engineering. For nearly a thousand years everything below the 11^th century had been buried. Then an earthquake split the ground. An Irish monk shimmied down the hole and came face to face with a Byzantine fresco of the Virgin and the baby Jesus. Study proved the Jesus, who looks like an alien, had been added in the middle ages. The woman identified as Mary began life as Theodora, the Byzantine empress of the 6^th century AD. She may have had her portrait done in exchange for money she donated to the 4^th century church. So lie the layers of civilization in the Eternal City.

On the morning I was to take 26 creative writing students from the University of Washington to the Vatican Museum I had to jump in a cab during rush hour and retrieve my keys from San Clemente, then get to St. Peter’s Square in time to meet the students. We had a reservation at the Vatican Museum and missing it would ruin months of planning. To avoid setbacks, I wanted to look like an Italian on his way to a film set. I put on a dark, hand-made suit from a boutique near the Spanish Steps, one of those places where the proprietor promises you’re getting a deal “only for you.”

The concept of la bella figura—the beautiful figure—governs how well heeled Italians engage the world. You might mistake it for deception. You might say it encourages an obsession with appearance. You hone a look and actions to fit the occasion, yes, but honing the right look and actions also makes the occasion fit for you. The right look is just another kind of eloquence.

In a suit, I easily flagged a cab. As extra insurance, I told the cabbie I was on official church business. When we arrived at San Clemente he waited outside while I went into the gift shop. Gift shops in cathedrals may confuse American Protestants but I was determined not to confuse the woman I met inside. I introduced myself in Italian, saying: “Good morning, I’m the professor. I don’t remember my keys.” Long pause. Her face said, “Funny, he looks well-spoken in that suit.” I saw my keys sitting on the counter in front of her, and like many desperate Americans in Italy, I pointed. Her brown eyes lit up. She began explaining how and where she’d found the keys, how she’d been keeping them safe for 24 hours. A priest walked over. He listened patiently for a few minutes before sharing his own version of events. A third person—the custodian—had begun his side of the story when I remembered the meter on my cab was running. Running out during an Italian’s narrative does not cut a beautiful figure, but I accepted the custodian’s frown and made it back to the cab.

At St. Peter’s square, I lingered in the shade of Bernini’s baroque colonnade, leaning on a railing to write observations in my notebook. Soon, a pair of nuns approached. They wanted to know if Michelangelo’s Pieta lived up to the hype. Newlyweds from Ohio needed to know the Sistine Chapel was not in St. Peter’s. I told a Spaniard how the pope wore women’s clothes to escape the Sack of Rome. At last I found myself facing a man whose neck flesh flopped over his collar like a canned salmon. A crown of sweat had formed around the base of his ten-gallon straw hat. In a breathless Texas drawl, he said he was moments away from using one of Bernini’s columns like a tree. And there I was, as I pointed the man towards the facilities, conducting official church business. I began to wonder how often we’re in control of what we say. How many times do our lies turn out to be the truth?