Just photos...

I have class in about twenty minutes, but luckily, I live two doors down from my classroom (my apartment, library, classroom, Rome Center Office, professor's and TAs' rooms are all in the same apartment building), so I can go in my socks and leave with fifteen seconds to go. With that in mind, here are a few highlights of the last week.

This is us walking on the original Via Appia two Sundays ago. Roman roads last a long time. The bushes, sidewalk, and street lamps are all new. It's a beautiful walk, though. Unfortunately, you're not on the real Via Appia the whole way.

View from the side of the Via Appia of Rome. You can see the remnants of an aqueduct in the photo.
The inside of the Colosseum.


View of the Arch of Constantine from the second story of the Colosseum. The grassy area in front was a huge fountain.

Greek temple at Paestum, I think. These were massive, and made Roman temples look a little cute and fancy, whereas these were all business.

Tomb art in the museum at Paestum. Romans and I liked to draw a lot of the same things.
Latin Word for the Day: moneo, monere, monui, monitum (verb, "to warn," second conj.)

Vale, amici.

"Occupation?" "Gladiator." "Did you kill last week? Did you try to kill last week?"

I think I have some catching up to do... Between homework, class, and how often our internet goes out it's been tough to find time to post. We were also out of Rome on a field trip from Thursday to Saturday, so there was no hope of posting until Sunday anyway, and we didn't have internet until this morning. But its Tuesday, and some of you probably need something to do while you're pretending to work, so I'll see how much I can get through.

Sunday (April 13th) Ashli decided to go to the Via Appia (and for the musically inclined, it is the "Appian Way," of "Pines of Rome" fame). It's an important road that leads out of the city, and, among other very important events, was where Laurence Olivier crucified 6,000 of the slaves that revolted with Kirk Douglas. That night there was a game of poker involving four undergrads (myself included) and both of our TAs for our language classes. I lost in the final round, earning half the winnings, but both our TAs lost long before...hopefully this doesn't come back to haunt us.

Monday we visited a church built on top of two temples from the late Republican era, and a guide took us down below to show us the foundations of the temples that could still be seen. We've been underneath several churches, now, and there is a definite Indiana Jones feeling when you walk down steps going underneath an altar, and into a cave-like chamber with big stones on all sides and Latin inscriptions everywhere. You get a little more of an Indiana Jones feeling, however, when the guide nonchalantly mentions that several full skeletons were found in the chamber you're standing in, and then points to a shelf were a couple of them are still kept to prove they were there. Because I'm sure no one would believe the guy if he didn't leave a few human bones on a shelf. So there were pieces of dead person on a shelf. Maybe I'm over thinking things, but I feel like that's a little weird... "So, yeah, here's my copy of 'Moby Dick,' and my soccer trophy from when I was nine, and Uncle Frank's tibia, and some baseball cards that I should probably get rid of. Now who wants to see the basement?"

Wednesday we went to the Ludus Magnus, across from the Colosseum, where gladiators would have trained and possibly lived. If you've seen "Gladiator" or "Spartacus," you probably have a pretty good idea of what it would have looked like. Rome is a lot of fun, and there are a lot of great things you can do on your own, but coming with a school group is great, especially a Classics group, because people aren't normally allowed into the site of the Ludus, it's just a sort of hole in the middle of a block in Rome that's fenced off at street level, and most people just get to walk by and look down into it (or, as we continually find at archaeological sites, through beer bottles and cigarette butts inside). But since we're a Classics group, our professor was able to call ahead of time and schedule an appointment for us to actually get inside; we met with a police officer at 10:00am and he unlocked the gates and let us in for about 45 minutes. There was apparently a tunnel that led from the Ludus to the Colosseum so gladiators could get there without having to walk through the crowds, but I don't know that we've found it yet. Then we went into the Colosseum, after Stephen gave his site report, which was very all-inclusive. The Colosseum had a retractable awning that could shade about 2/3 or 1/3 (I know that's a bit of a difference, but I don't remember which third it was) of the seated audience. It's crazy that anyone can go in and walk around on the upper levels. It's not quite as big as I had been expecting, but people usually talk it up a little much. I think the makers of "Gladiator" made it look a little larger than life, too. It was more squat than I had anticipated, and not as tall, but ridiculously impressive nonetheless. I'm still fascinated by the whole awning concept. It was manned by sailors, because it was made of large sales and operated by ropes that went through holes in the top and connected to pillars on the ground outside its walls a ways off, and manned by sailors because, obviously, who better to work with ropes and sail?

We left early Thursday morning for our overnight field trip extravaganza, and drove for about five hours out to a bed and breakfast on a farm where the owners also happen to be the manufacturers of some of the best water buffalo mozzarella in the world. We went to a site, first, sort of on the way, and saw some immense Greek temples, as well as a fairly well preserved and heavily excavated Greek settlement. There were some really weird, tiny little fly-things that kept landing on us and sort of biting or something, and they were annoying. But nothing could have prepared us for the food when we got back to the bed and breakfast farm place. Our lunch (all of this being covered by the program) started with appetizers of roasted artichoke hearts with olive oil, fried mozzarella, smoked mozzarella on bruschetta, and large balls of mozzarella cheese to be cut and eaten by themselves. I'm not going to bother saying whether anything was good or not, because it was all amazing, and the redundancy of everything on this trip as either being amazing to behold or absolutely delicious is starting to get to me (and I'm sure the rest of you). Our first course was a pasta with tomato sauce, the pasta noodles were obviously homemade; no mozzarella in this course. The "secondi" was a meat dish, but we couldn't quite figure out what meat it was. It was really dark and oily, and probably duck, but we're still not sure. Then they served dessert, which was a strawberry-cream filled cake thing. Most of us swore we wouldn't be hungry for dinner, but by 9:00pm we were somehow starving again. The highlights of dinner were the mozzarella and artichoke lasagna, and the water buffalo veal. The next morning, I joked that I would laugh if for breakfast we were served cornflakes. Breakfast was cornflakes. They had a self-serve sort of breakfast buffet table, consisting of toast, bread, bread spreads (which according to Dr. Seuss, you should keep away your bed spreads), orange juice, coffee, and cornflakes.

Friday morning after breakfast he headed out to the water buffalo farm to see what we ate, and make nice. All the girls thought the water buffalo were really cute, but instead of wasting pictures on a card that I could be using for buildings that have been around for 2,000 years, I'll let you know that the water buffalo on Google Images are probably just as cute, if you want to see what they look like. Then we were off to Oplontis, a suburb of Pompeii that was also really well preserved thanks to the eruption in 79 C.E. of Vesuvius. Most of Oplotis is still under excavation, but what we saw was a large portion of the villa attributed to Poppea, the wife of Nero. I think if I'm ever rich (dream on, little classicist...), instead of a mansion, I'm going to build a villa. They look like a lot more fun. Then we sallied forth to Pompeii (because people seriously don't sally enough anymore), and explored much of the city. The people that were preserved are pretty creepy, especially the children. I didn't take pictures of them mostly because they're all in books and on the internet, so you don't have to go too far to get that. Friday night we stayed at a really nice hotel on the site of an ancient bath. On the drive up, we spotted a castle on the coast, and kept getting closer. I started to get really excited when we were driving up the road that obviously went right to the castle, when our bus driver turned completely around. Luckily, it was because the hotel was only a little way down the road, he'd just missed it. Arianna and I walked up to the castle, but it was already closed, so we didn't get to go in. We went into the castle as a group the next day, but it wasn't terribly impressive, and by not terribly impressive, I of course mean there was an amazing view of the Italian coast, it was a gorgeous day, there were Roman artifacts and a really great little museum in a couple of the rooms of the castle with Roman era statues and temple remnants, but no swords. Back to Friday night--we had dinner and played another ridiculous poker game, of which I was the first one out. At dinner our driver Vittorio and I became pretty good buddies, despite the fact that he speaks virtually no English, and I no Italian. I found out, however, that he's been a tour bus driver for fifteen years, he's driven Italian, American, Bulgarian, German, French, and Turkish tourists, has twin daughters, likes his job, likes fish, loves steak, likes some wine, his favorite beer is Beck's, and he can't remember the name of a great Belgian beer that he's had that was yellow and a little sweet, believe it or not, among others things. Translators are totally overrated.

Saturday morning we went to the castle first, as I said, and then drove several hours to another amphitheater that was the (insert superlative) one that I've seen, mostly because you could walk down stairs underneath it and explore the passageways, that are kind of like a Roman sewer now, where there would have been gladiators running around getting ready, and animals being prepared to be raised up on platforms onto the stage, etc.. After about an hour of walking around, we drove about another four hours back to Rome. People hurried to get groceries (because almost nothing is open on Sunday here), and pretty much crashed.

Sunday I woke up and went for a run at the Circus Maximus that was supposed to take about half an hour, when I was interrupted by a parade. It was Rome's birthday yesterday, so there were celebrations all weekend, and I had no idea. I was at the Circus Maximus, and out of nowhere there appeared tons of mini-legions of Roman centurions and soldiers, senators, vestals, and gladiators. People were everywhere to watch, and I was the happiest person alive. It was also a little surreal realizing how much the Circus Maximus is still used by Romans, considering how important it was to Ancient Rome (very much so), and how they still gather here to perform. One of the "legions" was from England, and they sounded kind of funny when they yelled Latin commands in English accents, but they were totally the best dressed regiment present (vowel repetition can be fun!). While I was standing on the hill watching, most of the groups weren't marching yet, they were just standing around getting ready (putting on armor, fixing equipment, etc.), some little old Italian lady walked past me yelling "Stefano...Stefano...Stefano!" holding a camera. It was obvious she knew someone in the legion ahead of us, and she turned to me and said something really fast in Italian that I didn't get, so I told her I spoke English (thusly: "Parlo l'anglese"), and she nodded, and said "Mi filio, Stefano, [more Italian while pointing at the legion]." Which of course means that her son was in the legion, and she was trying to get his attention to take his picture, and I cracked up, because they were all obviously grown men. Also because my mom would have been doing exactly the same thing...and I would be in exactly the same position if we had legions in Vancouver... The rest of Sunday was homework.

Yesterday I went for a run at the Circus again, and there was a small church service going on, and a school group of little kids in paper centurion costumes they'd made and little vestal gowns on the girls, playing obviously fictional "Roman Games," like hopscotch, but with Roman numerals. For running I'm developing my own workout lingo here, since I'm not exactly sure how long the Circus Maximus is, but I know it's just over a half mile around, so instead of trying to figure out miles exactly I'm just using what I call circuits (from Circus...ahh, etymology), a full circuit being two laps (I was really tempted to call them Roman miles). But this way, I figure, I have to think less about the workout, and when I get home I'll be in better shape than I think I am, because all of my splits will be about a minute faster than they are here. Super.

Today we visited a couple of temples around the city, Dan gave a presentation on the Pantheon, one of the best preserved and most architecturally astounding buildings in Rome, followed by Pamela who had to give a presentation on the Baths of Nero, for which none of the building remains above ground except for a few columns that are next to a church about a block away from where the Baths would actually have been. She pretty much had to walk us around busy streets and say things like "So the north wall would have gone pretty much down this street, but a little bit inside those buildings." Luckily, as classicists, we all have fantastic imaginations (like imagining paychecks for reading Latin). I made sausage and pasta bianca for dinner, and later tonight we're all going over to the girls' apartment for "Crepe-fest III." There will be crepes, there will be fruit, there will be Nutella, and the people will be satisfied. I just typed a lot, so I'm going to post pictures/video tomorrow.

Latin Word for the Day: Stultus, Stulti; m. (trans: fool)

Vale, amici.

It's like Disneyland for classicists, minus the people dressed as your favorite characters.

Thursday we went to Ostia. And it was awestiome. Ostia was Rome's port, and practically the entire city has been preserved and excavated, some buildings up to the second floor. It was so much fun to walk around the city and see so much of it still in tact, thousands of years later. I ended up taking too many pictures again, but hopefully I haven't been overloading my blog with them. After Ostia we took a train back to into Rome. We had yesterday off, and I took the day to do most of my homework, which was pretty much all I did yesterday. Ovid was a funny guy. Last night we had dinner with the TAs; Ashli is a really good cook, and luckily enjoys cooking for lots other people every so often.
A bit of bad news, however, is that we (the guys' apartment) received an e-mail from the head of the UW Rome Center saying that she had a complaint from the restaurant owner whose restaurant is directly below our room that we had dropped lit cigarettes onto his brand new dining umbrellas and burnt two large holes in the top. The problem with this, however, is that none of us smoke on a regular basis. One of the guys has smoked a couple cigarettes, and one of the TAs smokes, but no one in our program has ever smoked inside the building, let alone in our room. There's no way it could have been us; there is a whole row of windows and rooms above and below ours, not to mention the fact that the Campo we live in is known for being really busy all night long with tourists and Italians, and it could easily have been a person walking by who threw their butt up on the canvas. It's just frustrating that we have to deal with it. Hopefully it is resolved soon. But enough of that, on to pictures of Ostia, my happy place. I'll post my videos later.

This is where the members of the Ostian fire department were housed.
I'm not sure if this was an actual sewer, or just a really cool underground passageway, but there was one part where some of the paint on the roof of the underground passage was still present.
Inside the passageway. There was absolutely no light, and we didn't have one, so Stephen turned on some setting on the flash for his expensive camera and it strobe-lighted our way a little. We got a little wet, and couldn't go too far in any direction because the water started to get deeper. Pretty awesome, notwithstanding.

Cool room that still had the paint on the walls. We actually got yelled at for taking pictures, because this probably hasn't been published yet or something, so putting it on the internet is probably not terribly prudent; archaeological faux pas number two.
Ostian theater, mostly in tact. There were tours of French kids everywhere, so anytime you see a large crowd of children in my pictures of this trip, they're French.
Ostian Forum (and French kids). Ironically, the Forum was a place where people would have assembled like this, and just hang out on the steps, so I hadn't really thought about it before, but this is a pretty neat photo in that respect.

Temple of Love and Psyche. The floors here are ridiculously in tact. The wall was great, too.
This lady made the nastiest face as she walked into my picture, also at the Temple of Love and Psyche.
Ostian restaurant. It was incredible how modern it felt when you could see the whole thing. I was standing in the back, where dishes were washed, and what you see is the actual kitchen, to the right is the outside dining and the other side of the chimney is the inside dining. Fantastic.
Row of businesses. On the floor in front of where each shop would have been is a mosaic of what the shop is, like business signs hanging from the tops, but on the ground. There was a second row just like this one, but it was on the other side of the temple in the middle toward which both rows face.
Atop a two thousand year old third story of a building. View from the top of a building onto the top of another building. I wanted to jump over so many railings and go walking on the other floors that you can see.

Arianna, Stephen, and Chris in a building with yet another preserved floor mosaic.
Roman latrine. Notice the partitions? Exactly. "Doing your business" in Rome was often where they actually did business. Going to the bathroom was a social event, practically, and many business transactions, etc., were done right here. You can see below where there is a small channel cut into the floor, where there would have been running water to rinse off the sponges on sticks that were used as toilet paper.
Roman Synagogue. This is the altar(?), and to the left are some awesome columns. You might not be able to see it, but on the capitals (tops) of the columns on either side of the altar have menorahs carved into them.
Bakery for baking the choly bread.
Chris and Stephen sitting in a building next to the synagogue (I forget what it was...). Directly behind them under the modern roof is the mikveh (spelling...) where Jews then would have (and I believe some Orthadox Jews still do) descended seven steps into a bath of water and dunked under before entering the synagogue, the practice from which Christian baptism is derived.
Floor mosaic at a mythraeum.

Tunnel that if we had more time and a flashlight we would have totally crawled along the dirt that still covered most of it...there was a gate before we could get in here. Archaeological faux pas number three.
You can see the wheel-wear in the cobblestone here. Pretty sweet.
Then it was time to go. But there's always time for one more archaeological faux pas.


Latin Word for the Day: vir, viri (tr: man)

Vale, amici.

It's lonely at the top of Olympus.

Except we were on the Capitoline, so it wasn't lonely at all. In fact, we had four hours in a museums surrounded by more than sufficient marble friends to keep us company. After the museum (this is all happening on Wednesday), everyone pretty much went home and had a nap. We had class again from 4-5:30, and at 6:30pm Professor Stroup walked us over to a local wine shop and bar, where a second or third generation wine seller and connoisseur, Massimo, gave a two hour wine tasting/education. It was really fun; the guy had a total Godfather voice, and used Italian grammar with English words, not to mention repeating phrases like "shemical proshess," and "modificated." He had us taste three very different wines, all within the 7 to 12 euro range (about $12-18), and they were all really good. He talked to us about how to look at wine, smell wine, drink it, and think about it. He explained a lot about the history of wine and the proshess through which it is made, very little of which I'm sure I'm going to retain for very long, but all of which was really interesting.

Colossus of Constantine; cult statue from the 4th or 5th century C.E.. Photo also featuring Chris, who is not so colossal. I commented on one of the first days about how I was glad the tallest person in our apartment was 5'8", which was promptly followed by someone in the next room shouting "five-ten!"

Part of a building, possibly a keystone. Weeping women dressed in ethnic or traditional clothing of a conquered land were often used by Romans to represent the entire country they had conquered. It is not clear where this woman is from, but I think, personally, that the long curved thing in the back is a Gallic war horn, which would make sense with the large oval shield, making this a Gallic conquest portrayal. The women were often pictured bound, but not in this particular depiction. The pattern lining the top is a really common Roman pattern called "egg and dart," for pretty obvious reasons.
Now we're actually inside the museum (the first two are in the courtyard). This is part of a wall listing all of the consoles of Rome for a certain period. I can only make out so much that I can read, because A. it's mostly names, B. they use a lot of abbreviations, and C. it's incomplete.
B.C.E. Greek pottery (several thousand years old, for sure). I only took pictures of the pots with people fighting...
Greek reclining sculpture. I look oddly superimposed in this photo, but I'm actually right next to the sculpture, I was just taking the photo of myself by myself, so it's kind of a weird angle.
My newfound preferred means of transportation. Now all I need is a horse...and a gate.
Sculpture of someone's dog. This is for dad, and Dunc. No, I didn't bark at it, no, there are no Roman sculptures of pugs, and no, I don't think any Romans probably had pugs.
Sarcophagus depicting the "great hunt," unfinished.
Some Romans just hanging out (some more so than others, if you want to get punny).
Roman drop spindles.
Roman tavern sign. This is interesting because it's of low quality, and would have been a common thing. This particular sign is from the late empire, and you can tell that the language is already going through changes from Latin to early Italian, because the "habemus (we have)" does not have an H at the beginning, and is just "Abemus," meaning there was already confusion on how the word was pronounced (Romans breathed on Hs like we do, Italians don't pronounce any Hs). Also at the bottom, it says "Bena," instead of "Vena," denoting the confusion between B and V. Also common in Romance languages.
Not only is it okay to run in museums in Italy, but they actually prefer that you do (as long as it's in the appropriate direction).
Hebrew inscription. Rome had a pretty sizeable Jewish population for a long time, and it still does. We weren't allowed to use flash in the museum, and the stone was not in a greatly lit place, so I'm sorry if the Hebrew is a little tough to make out. The translation the museum provided reads: "How great was my fortune the day I was quarried from the mountain! Thus, here I am, I am the crown upon the head of an honest man and I confer grace to every exhausted soul. It is for this reason his name is inscribed upon the door, the honorable Mr. Shabbetal Cammeo, who died the fourth day of the week (Wednesday), the sixteenth of the month Fammus (30 July), in the year 320 (c. 560)." If any of that is wrong (dates don't line up, the month is spelled wrong) it's because I took a picture of the translation so I could remember it, but without the flash and in the dark area it got a little fuzzy and I couldn't make out every number/letter/word, so correct me at will.

Busting a move.

Busting out.
Dust busting.
Spontaneous comBUSTion (...okay...). But this photo makes me kind of angry, really. I gave these guys plenty of warning, and only Caracalla looked at the camera.Roman copy of a Greek statue, the "Dying Gaul." This is my favorite sculpture of all time. I'm a little biased, as one of my personal favorite historical figures is Vercingetorix, the Arverni chieftain who led a Gallic revolt against Caesar during his campaign in Gaul, and was the only general to ever defeat Caesar in battle (although Caesar's own account says he wasn't even there, and some other general lost to Vercingetorix, plenty of other sources say Caesar was there). The original Greek statue (I think in bronze) predates the Gallic Wars by several hundred years, however, so by the time Caesar was fighting I'm pretty sure the Gauls were at least clothed in battle (many Celts were not, however, for a long time; machismo's a drag).


Latin Word for the Day: donum, doni (n., tr: gift)

Vale, amici.

"Boy, when you die at the palace, you really die at the palace!"

I've been really tired from walking all over Rome and doing Latin translations and researching Roman building types, materials, and techniques, so posting got put on a back burner for a while. Hopefully no one was too worried. Sunday to today have been fairly eventful, however, and the only thing they were more full of than events, were pictures. I'm taking entirely too many. If I'm going to be here for another two months, I need not to average over 100 photos per trip. This post will cover Sunday and Monday, and the next two will cover yesterday and today (Thursday). Hopefully I'll finish all the posts by tonight, but I'm trying to sort through pictures and make sure I'm only posting the pictures and video that the most people would find valuable and worth their time. Uploading photos and videos also takes a while, so if you really want to sit through a program where I show all the pictures I took of minute, ridiculous details in buildings, let me know and we can schedule a private slideshow when I get home. That having been said, I move on.

Sunday Ashli, one of the grad students and my Latin seminar teacher, took about seven of us to the Jewish Ghetto (which is a holdover name from the Roman area; it's not much of a ghetto anymore) for the famous fried artichokes. We came, we saw, I paid entirely too much, even for food that good. The artichokes were really good (forgot the camera), and I also ate two other courses of fettucini with porcini mushrooms (excellent) and bone marrow (very excellent). It was an expensive meal, but all in all, I think it was definitely worth the experience. The restaurant sits right outside, and by right outside I mean we sat outside and nearly ten feet away from, the Theater of Marcellus, which is huge and Roman and awesome. Julius Caesar started building it, and Augustus finished it around 11 C.E.. You can't beat 2,000 year old ruins at dusk for atmosphere at a restaurant. Oh, and the food alone is definitely worth the trip.

Monday we ventured again to the Forum, this time focusing on the Arch of Septimius Severus and the Arch of Titus for the grad students doing their site reports (which we will all have to do later this quarter; my site report assignment is the Circus Maximus). The reports were good, although it was the general consensus of the undergrads that Robin and Ashli may have set the bar a little high for the rest of us, but I'm sure we'll deal with it just fine. After the site reports we moved up onto the Palatine, and after our initial introduction to much of the area and visiting the actual house of Augustus, Professor Stroup broke class and the rest of us were left to wander the hills. I took too many pictures, but the following are I hope the most interesting.

The Arch of Titus, commemorating Titus, his father Vespasian, and his brother's conquest in Judea, putting down the Jewish revolt. This is the war when the Temple was finally destroyed, around 70 C.E., and Rome marched home "triumphant" with all the gold from the Temple. It's one of, if not the, oldest triumphal arch in Rome; it's supposed to be bad luck for Jews to walk under the arch (but it's roped off, so it's hard to get close to anyway).


On top of the Palatine, where most of the emperors chose to build their palaces, this is the entrance to I believe the palace that was built by Hadrian. Nero's palace apparently spread all the way from the Palatine past the Colosseum, but was torn down after his rule.

This is a room in the house of Augustus, the successor of Julius Caesar. The paint is entirely original, but we weren't allowed to use flash inside, so the picture is a little fuzzy. The house was built in the late 1st century B.C.E. The outside of the house.A different area of the house.

View of the Forum from the Palatine (far left is the Senate house, immediately in front is the Temple of Antoninus and Faustus, and the small white building in the bottom left is the Aedes Vestae).
Cool corridor under the Palatine.

Ceiling art in the cool corridor.
Close-up.This is video of a waterfall, which possibly used to be a fountain, in one of the later buildings blocked off by an iron gate. I'm not sure how old it is.


Archaeological faux pas number one. I don't think it hurt anything but my reputation. P.S., mom, I'm getting another hole in my pants if you didn't notice here...

More of the palace ruins on the Palatine.
Excavation in the ruins of the palace on the Palatine.
View of the city from the Palatine...I think the dome in the distant right is St. Peter's.
Latin Word for the Day: lux, lucis (tr: light)

Vale, amici.