The Land
A small piece of the Campagna, set aside in your name.
Every enrollment comes with a souvenir plot in the Ager Romanus, the farmed country ringing the city, which fed Rome for a thousand years and which the consular roads run out through on their way to everywhere else. It is a keepsake, given in the spirit of the country itself: dry, patient, and in no hurry at all.
It is one of the most painted landscapes in Europe and one of the least changed: umbrella pines, dry grass, sheep, broken travertine, aqueduct arches walking in across the fields, and the tombs Romans built along the roadside because burial inside the walls was forbidden. Somewhere out there a corner of it carries your name, and from today you belong to it as surely as it belongs to you.
Your certificate carries your rank and its own number, under the seal of the eagle. The rest belongs to the imagination, and that is the loveliest part of it.
