Polybius, Praeneste and Pleasure Barges

As part of my application to ICCS, I wrote a personal statement about my classics career thus far and future aspirations. I began this statement with the following paragraph:

“When I tell people that I am a Classics major, they usually respond in one of three ways. Some immediately recount for me their recent trip to Italy or Greece and the sites they visited. Others test my knowledge of ancient history by making references to facts they are familiar with. In most cases however, people question what I am intending to do for the rest of my life with a degree in Classics, and why have I chosen to invest in this study.”

For the rest of the essay, I attempted with my most persuasive rhetoric and concise examples to answer the question. Obviously the ICCS application committee liked my answer, but I still feel rather put off when asked to explain myself this way. Why do I bring this up? Well, in history class bright and early last Monday morning, Professor Serfass began his lecture by posing the exact same question “Why pursue the study of Classics?”

When he said these words I thought to myself oh god, the haunting question that makes my blood boil every time I am asked it. I think Serfass was just trying to be funny to get us into the lecture topic for the day (the Roman subjugation of the eastern Mediterranean world… namely Africa, Greece and Asia), when he said that we should respond to anyone who asks us this by quoting a rhetorical question of Polybius (one of the Greek authors we have been reading). He proceeded in a highly energetic tone:

“Can anyone be so indifferent or idle as to not care to know by what means and under what kind of polity almost the whole inhabited world was conquered and brought under the dominion of the single city of Rome!!!!??? And that too within a period of fifty-three years!!!!???”

Ok, so I added the explanation points, question marks, and broke the sentence into two instead of one rhetorical question to make clear how Serfass said it, but it was at this minute I had an epiphany: I AM A HUGE NERD! That is why I study classics, simply because I think the Romans are freaking awesome like Polybius does, and who the heck wouldn’t want to know about how much ass they kicked and how they did it. I have to wonder what the ICCS application committee would have thought if I sent the sentence I just wrote in as my personal statement.

It has been a brutal week. I am mentally and physically exhausted and have a runny nose like usual. Here’s a brief synopsis of what the week entailed:

-7:30 a.m. or earlier wakeups EVERY single day
-a 12 hour field trip on Tuesday
-5 hours at the Italian Quaestura on Wednesday morning to sort out my permesso ad soggiouro (permission to live in Rome) and have my fingerprints taken (with everyone else from the Centro), brief side story:

The taking of the finger prints itself, never mind happening finally after four hours of waiting, was rather unpleasant. After my name was called, I was escorted to a small office where there were three Italian military men and a massive scanning machine. I learned that I don’t have strong contours on my fingertips, because the scanning machine would not pick anything up when I placed my hand palm down on it. This problem really ticked them off, and the soldier in charge of manning the scanner decided to resolve my apparent biological deficiency by shoving each of my fingers and my palm upon the scanning machine and trying again and again. He managed to break three of my gorgeously manicured nails. Awesome.

-a 5 hour field trip that included a brutal inscription project and subsequent afternoon research, an art history lecture, and a lovely envelope-sealed Greek take home test that I studied for every minute of my spare time in the week leading up to this point and eventually ripped open and conquered circa 7:30PM on Thursday
-a 4 hour Art History lecture in Castel San Angelo and the Capidolium Square/Museum.

Monday’s lecture was standard (besides my epiphany), and on Tuesday we loaded onto the bus bright and early for a long day of traveling and site visits. In the morning we visited Gabii (which was not interesting at all…) and then journeyed to Praeneste, another Roman colony in the Apennine foothills. I looked forward to the Praeneste trip, for the museum on the city’s famous citadel houses my favorite piece of ancient art in the entire world: the Nile Mosaic. The hilltop Praeneste Museum is located within the remains of an amazing piece of architecture: a colossal sanctuary to the Roman Goddess Fortuna. It consists of six levels constructed on the slope of an Apennine foothill, the top most of which forms a plateau upon the mountain’s peak with a flat space and a theatre. The bus dropped us off at the bottom of sanctuary’s staircase, and we began our long ascent, – as if we were ancient pilgrims coming to worship the goddess –to the modern day museum located at the top. The shrine is across from two adjacent mountains, and I can imagine the pilgrims, after climbing flight upon flight of stairs, turning around and looking at the menacing dark blue outlines of the mountains in the distant hazy atmosphere, feeling just as awestruck as I. I can appreciate how being so high would have made their journey to Praeneste and ascent to the top worthwhile, as they were climbing to the heavenly realm. Our Professor Chris explained that the Romans purposely set it up this way, so as to have the sanctuary angled towards the two adjacent, symmetric mountains. He calls it “manipulative architecture.”

View out from the top of the sanctuary

Sitting on the steps of the theater

A reconstruction of the ancient sanctuary

Modern day view of the santuary

The Nile Mosaic, located in the topmost story of the museum, fulfilled my expectations. The top half of the massive mosaic (the mosaic has the diameter of a small out of ground pool) contains a scene of a hunt with mythical animals that have labels in Greek, and the lower half, a scene of the Nile flooding over a mixture of Greek and Egyptian buildings and icons (soldiers, statues of gods, etc). In my studies on the portrayal of animals in ancient iconography in my graduate level Classical Art History seminar last semester at Cornell, we spent a long time discussing the animals and the meaning behind this rare synthesis. Before being restored and displayed in a grand room in the museum with all white walls and brilliant lighting, this mosaic was the wall of a grotto in a niche of a small building beside the base of the sanctuary. Water poured over the rocks and on top of the mosaic tiles, and a statue of the Nile river goddess stood in front of it. I can picture mellow torches lighting the grotto and revealing the spectacular scene to on lookers.

The Nile Mosaic

After finishing up at Praeneste, we gobbled down lunch and headed to a sight I had never heard of before called Nemi. We first visited remains that are thought to be a temple… this also was rather anti climatic… and then jumped back on the bus and drove around a lake (which we later learned was in a volcanic crater). I had no idea what to expect when we arrived at what looked like a massive airplane hangar in the middle of the woods. My visit began with a traumatizing experience in the bathroom (I ripped the door handle off the inside of the bathroom stall and was stuck alone for 10 minutes before figuring out how to put it back together – you can imagine what the entirety of ICCS Fall 10’ was thinking (and said) when I finally emerged from the bathroom after taking way too long).

Why had we come to this strange, massive, nearly empty place? Apparently in the 1920s, during dictatorship of the fascist Mussolini, two ships that dated to the reign of the emperor Caligula were found in the lake we had just driven around. . These were not warships, much to the contrary, they were colossal pontoons upon which the Romans partied (the remains found in the lake make this clear) during the imperial period, i.e. pleasure barges. I can’t wait until we get to study that era of the imperial period in more detail!!

Mussolini took an interest in these ships, which had been perfectly preserved in an anaerobic environment at the bottom of the lake, and that turned out to be very unfortunate. He drained the lake to remove the ships, and then realized he had to create an air-tight museum to keep their wood from rotting. Sadly, just before the end of World War II, a German troop burnt them down (or so the story goes). The museum we visited thus contained only remnants of the ships, a picture display taken during the draining and moving of the ships out of the lake, and some luxury items they found in the lake (most were looted).

Fast forward two days as Wednesday consisted of the Quaestura and hours of studying for my first Greek test. At the end of Thursday’s field trip, in which we hit up the Terme Museum in the city proper, our assignment was to work with a new partner to find an inscription within the institution’s garden of stones, translate it, find out what it is, date it, etc. Stellar star award of the week goes out to my partner, Gavin. Gavin and I came upon a rather ugly block of travertine and decided it was the one. We spent about an hour translating it accurately and arranging a report in accordance with the provided example.

After lunch, further research helped us determine that our monument must have been a milestone that emperor Augustus installed to mark out the neighborhoods of the empire. I was rather frustrated because the date I was getting from the monument was not aligning with the date our research showed Augustus divided the quattordecim vici (fourteen neighborhoods). Basically you date the reign of an emperor by how many years he held tribunal power (which is every year of his reign)– and it was stated that this piece of stone was set in the seventeenth year of Augustus’ tribunal power… so it would mean that it was in 10 BC because Augustus started his rule in 27 BC. BUT – and this is why he gets the stellar star award this week – Gavin figured out that Augustus, being the first emperor, did actually not start his true tribunician power until 3 years into his reign in 24 BC, and therefore the 17th year of his tribunician power would have been in fact in 7BC, the year in which I found out in my research he divided the neighborhoods. All I’m saying is that we better get a check plus on this assignment!

Friday’s Art History marathon consisted of two hours in Castel San Angelo and two hours in the Capidolium. After a week of studying ancient civilization, a trip to the sixteenth century was well received. We have finally reached the point in the Italian History of Art at which my prior studies end – the High Renaissance, and doesn’t pick up again until after the Baroque period with the neoclassical artists of the eighteenth century. We have begun to study the mannerists, i.e. the generation of painters that succeeded Raphael. Although Raphael will always have the largest place in my heart, I have certainly enjoyed learning about and viewing the mannerist works. The ugliness of the outside Castel San Angelo – the cold circular fortress that lies close to St. Peters on the edge of Vatican city and was once the emperor Hadrians mauseleum – does not at all signal what is to be found inside its uppermost floor. An absolutely stunning papal throne room facing towards the river with a tripartite window for the Pope to look out is within the walls. But why is it here, in this ugly monument? We learned that the Pope Clement VII embarrassingly fled from his Vatican palace into Castel San Angelo, the city’s fortress, due to the German sacking of Rome, and he lived there in gloom for an extended period of time. His successor, Paul III, god forbid this should ever happen again, decided to deck the place out and make it suitable to inhabit. The papal throne room in the fortress contains a breath taking fresco cycle of the accomplishments of Alexander the Great. The fresco cycle is particularly amazing. The artist creates an illusion by painting royal columns into the wall with gold capitals, making them seem as though they are an architectural sculpture of the room. He uses deep pastels and illustrates the bodies of his figures in advanced poses of Michelangelo-esque controposto. I found most interesting how the artist rendered in paint 6 bronze tondi (marked off circular areas) evenly spaced around the room upon which he showed snippets of the intellectual accomplishments of Alexander the Great. I couldn’t believe how the artist made the tondi look like real bronze reliefs even though they were actually paintings. He made every figure stand out so much through differences between light and shadow, although only using variations of a single tone! Other mannerist pieces we studied, particularly one in which the artist renders a Madonna and Child in a purely icy blue tone, made me think of my favorite Picasso blue period pieces.

In the Capidolium Museum at the end of lecture, we again encountered paintings of my new love Caravaggio. Two figures, a young beautiful gypsy girl, and a boy of royalty and extremely fashionable garb, interact as she reads his palm. They gaze at each other, the boy clearly being mesmerized by her beauty and possibly having one of his first experiences out in the real world on his won and away from his courtly childhood. Looking below one can see she is sneakily pulling a golden ring from his finger. Caravaggio depicted such a focused and interesting interaction. I cannot wait to see more of his works.

Caravaggio's mesmerizing "The Gypsy"

I have been in Rome now four weeks, and I am finally starting to love it here and even know my way around. I have my coffee shop that I go to every other afternoon to order a cafe Americano and chat with the friendly barista, am up to speed with all my classes, am starting to recognize items on the weekly centro dinner menu (although the surprises can be fun) and am at the same time having a lot of fun. It feels good to be settled.

Next Friday, we leave for a week of studying in Sicily. The week before we leave will be devoted primarily to preparatory work for our adventure, and hopefully things will be much more relaxed than last week. After Sicily it is finally fall break! Alex and I are travelling to London for the week, and then going to Amsterdam before we return to Rome.

**** i am having some issues with this website so i can't add pictures right now but i will put them up asap!!