Berlusconi's last days?
In ancient times the augurs would have been consulted. The ruins have been trembling. Chunks have fallen off the Colosseum. The House of the Gladiators at Pompeii has collapsed. The wall surrounding the House of the Moralist has buckled.
Everyone is searching for signs. Even the Italian President, Giorgio Napolitano, opined that you would need a crystal ball to know whether these are the last days of the great impresario, of Il Cavaliere, the self-styled knight who has come to dominate Italian politics.
Silvio Berlusconi will make a fight of it. Revelations are dismissed as "trash". Accusers are branded "traitors". On Tuesday he faces two votes. In the Senate they will vote on a motion of confidence that he will almost certainly win. A no-confidence vote in the Chamber of Deputies, however, will be much closer.The word is that it may come down to one vote. It's that close. If Berlusconi were to lose he would have to resign. The Italian president would explore whether anyone else could hold a working coalition together. If not there would be elections. Berlusconi could of course stand again, but a comeback would be much harder.
Rome is awash with intrigue - that MPs have been offered government jobs or even help with their mortgages to support the Italian leader. One opposition politician complained it was humiliating, like watching "a cattle market". Another, Pier Luigi Bersani, said "a crime is being committed in parliament". It is a world of deal-making and horse-trading in which Silvio Berlusconi excels and no-one is counting him out. If everyone who said they would vote against him did, he would be finished. But Roman politics isn't like that. Strange alliances emerge from late-night meetings.
As for Berlusconi, he relishes the fight. He lashes out at what he calls the lies and slander. One of his papers has shown pictures of what they call "traitors"; those who in recent times have deserted Il Cavaliere. "For several months," says Berlusconi, "public life has been paralysed by an irresponsible political crisis". He will begin this struggle to save his job with a speech to the Chamber of Deputies.
His opponents see it differently. They see a coalition that has cracked - weakened by defections, rivalries and in-fighting. A split with a former ally, Gianfranco Fini, cost him his parliamentary majority.
The Italian leader has survived countless scandals. But then came along Ruby the heartbreaker. She was a 17-year-old dancer who says she attended one of Berlusconi's parties. He apparently lavished her with gifts and money and when she got into trouble with the police he intervened, saying she was a relative of the Egyptian leader. This time it wasn't just the girls. The questions were about abuse of power. Other women like Nadia Macri have emerged, who said of one of the parties "the girls were young and it didn't sit easily with me".
And the gaffes continued. When questioned about the young women he quipped "at least I'm not gay". Everyone in Italy now knows what bunga-bunga means. According to girls who were at his parties, this was a nude ritual that involved the Italian leader. When, earlier, some Italian women got together and said all this offended them Berlusconi retorted "How can anyone say I don't love women?"
Many Italians, however, say they are uninterested in stories about their leader's private life.
And then came along Wikileaks, with messages questioning Berlusconi's close relationship with the Russian leader Vladimir Putin. An American diplomat described the two men as "tycoon oligarchs". Berlusconi's partying left him "feckless, vain and ineffective". And the American diplomatic cables raised suspicions that Berlusconi was personally profiting out of energy deals with Russia.
The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, tried to offer a helping hand by describing him as "one of America's best friends". But the polls suggest Italy is tiring of the leader who promised to reform the country.
So what is likely to happen? Berlusconi is helped by the opposition. Its leaders lack conviction or a programme at a time of economic crisis. It has enabled Berlusconi to play the stability card, to insist that "apres moi, le deluge". So with the bond dealers watching Italy closely Berlusconi's friends are saying this is the wrong time to change leaders. They say that Italy has escaped the worst of the financial crisis and an early election would be unsettling and unpopular. A budget of austerity cuts has just been passed, but needs to be implemented.
If on Tuesday, however, his majority is razor-thin it could still prompt early elections in April. Gianfranco Fini says that "if the no-confidence motion does not pass we will have a government that's just trying to survive. That's not stability. That's vegetating."
Whatever the outcome there are people predicting these are Berlusconi's last days. "The one-man show is over," said the powerful businessman Luca Cordero di Montezemolo. A leading commentator, Beppe Severgnini, said "it is an old Italian tradition that the tenor is idolised until people start booing him".
No-one should underestimate the extent to which Silvio Berlusconi dominates Italian politics. He owns three major commercial TV channels and a cluster of papers and magazines. When he is in power he has responsibility for the state broadcasting organisations. He has shaped prime-time TV with its parade of show-girls that are known as veline "scraps of paper". Women's groups say the television culture treats them as "sex objects". Without any sense of irony a former topless model, Mara Carfagna, was appointed as Minister for Equal Opportunities. Then the opposition claim he has evaded charges of corruption by undermining the judiciary.
More than any other current European leader Berlusconi has defined the culture of his country. If he goes Italy changes.
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