I am happier to be back at the Centro then I anticipated (even though we have been slammed with work). I feel renewed after a lovely fall break… I was slightly traumatized by the intensity of the Sicily trip and was apprehensive about returning to the Centro. Initially I was upset at the ridiculousness of having to read 40 pages in our dense History text books on the Sunday night that I returned from Amsterdam (we weren’t given the assignment before break), and having to recall for a photo Id quiz the next morning everything we saw in Sicily or studied in class the week before our trip. But, putting in the extra work and staying up until two in the morning studying was kind of necessary for me to get back into the swing of things at the Centro. We definitely do not have time to relax, the second half of the program has gone off with a bang just like the first. I even kind of feel at home, waking up for breakfast to the bell at 8 am, having my usual Centro breakfast of yogurt and coffee (its still as vile as ever), and then climbing up to the fourth floor for Monday’s 2.5-3 hour lecture.
We have finally begun our study of the Roman Empire! This week we focused on Julius Caesar and his adopted nephew/heir Octavian (later known as Augustus, me!). After surviving the photo quiz, amazingly I didn’t find myself tired, but rather very into the Head Professor Scott’s lecture on these two Roman celebrities and the other men contending for power at the time with whom they butted heads. Scott did a great job of laying out the historical background, and then Professor Chris gave us a nice taste of the artistic culture at the time, especially as it pertains to the men (most was done by their patronage). We spent time looking at busts. I particularly enjoyed putting names to faces. It helped consolidate my understanding of each persona, and I will use these images to supplement my brief interpretations of the men. Here is the catch - I’m going to do this in the style of my favorite column in Cosmopolitan magazine –
Sexy VS Skanky.
Sexy: Julius Caesar
Caesar was both a great general (he conquered all of Gaul) and smart politician. He had the fervent love of the entire Roman population, a Latin term called “auctoritas,” which is difficult to put into English words. It basically means clout. However, Caesar kind of sucked at communicating with the Senate (the old ruling party) and never asked for their permission. So they conspired against him and brutally murdered him. Despite his untimely death, Caesar’s boldness – in the sense that he rejected the traditional authority – and clout are kind of sexy.
Marcus Antonius, Caesar’s co-consul at that the time of his death, had a good shot at becoming ruler after the assassination. Antony initially worked with Octavian (Caesar’s nephew who was named as heir in Caesar’s will) to get rid of the Caesarian conspirators. But after Antony and Octavian did this successfully, the two were at odds with each other. Each wanted to rule the state alone. As a solution, they split up the empire into two equal parts and Antony went off to the eastern provinces to “deal with the Parthians.” Instead, he drank like a fish and screwed around with, and fought wars (he was whipped!) for, the Egyptian queen Cleopatra. Antony made the huge tactical error of cheating on his wife Fulvia, Octavian’s aunt! Octavian read Antony’s will to the Senate, thus proving that Antony wanted to rename Alexandria, Egypt as the new capital of Rome! This did not sit well with the public and gained Octavian, who had been assigned control of Italy and the West, major brownie points. Mark Antony, you are skanky.
Octavian was Caesar’s named heir, and despite being very young (he was only 19) and less experienced, the way in which he consolidated his allies throughout Italy while Antony frolicked in the eastern provinces reveals his aptitude for diplomacy and desire to rebuild the Roman Empire out of the ashes of civil war. At the end of the day, everything worked out well, Octavian defeated Antony and Cleopatra and became the princeps, or the first citizen by 27 BC. He was voted by both the SPQR (the Senate, and the Roman People!) to receive a number of duties that had previously belonged to high magistrates, such as the power of the tribunes and the right to declare war (a power called imperium, hence the name imperator). In this way he learned from his uncle’s mistakes, and set a precedent of peace and stability with the result that the population voted these rights for each of Octavian’s successors, and the position of emperor officially evolved.
Back in Roma
This week for field trips we stayed in Rome – revisiting the Forum and walking through the “remaining remains” of the other forums (of Imperial Rome), which unfortunately Mussolini leveled when he constructed the Via Imperiali running through them up to the Colosseum. For example, Mussolini aligned the “important” end part of the Forum of Augustus, containing the Temple of Mars Ultor, with the road. For a long time, people thought there were two “exhedrae” or gigantic semi circular niches at its side giving it a phallic connotation, but more recently there is a realization that there were really two exhedrae perside. The forum of Augustus was perpendicular to the Forum of Caesar, which intersected at the Curia Julia, or the new Senate House that Caesar built. A walk through these was intended to be a memory theater, a message of Roman dominance, a representation of the state’s wealth. Statutes of the summi viri – the highest men – were lined up through the forum of Augustus for people to view, and at one time all of the fora (plural for fourm) were decked out in colored marbles – pinks, yellows, purples, greens and reds, that hail from the countries the Romans conquered! You kind of have to use your imagination here – but after doing my pre-visit site readings I had a pretty good idea of what to envision and boy the fora would have been decadent.
The Italian word permesso – or permission – became a new part of my vocabulary this week. We pretty much crossed over every single rope and fence to enjoy a close look at the monuments because, as the Intercollegiate Study for Classical Center, we have the auctoritas to do stuff like that. I had amazing close-up views of the detailed features of each monument we studied. The highlight of the day – climbing up the hill and checking out the remaining fresco’s in Augustus’ home on the Palatine hill. The low point – doing a face plant as I stepped off the 75 bus in front of the Colosseum, 100 (literally 100) Italians and half of the centristi. We were already late due to a traffic jam, so this really messed up my sprint to catch the professors as I had two rolled ankles and a scraped knee. Another low point this week – Greek class. The author we translated, Cassius Dio, was freaking hard and made little sense until I read an English translation. I think everyone was in the same boat, but unfortunately I was called on in Serfass’ “nonoptional” volunteering scheme last. As last, I was left to deal with the hardest sentence in the entire passage. Luckily he helped me and nicely reassured me that he even had trouble with it. He hinted that Dio isn’t a great writer, and that we are only reading him to see what kind of thoughts were circulating about the new position of Imperator. This was insightful, but the experience was still painful. A third low point – I accidentally skipped over a whole week’s homework and did the wrong assignment, only to have to gun it for three hours before class to finish the right one.
I am looking forward to reading more Josephus, who wrote the Jewish War and Jewish Antiquities. We are reading his pieces about the revolt in Jerusalem and how the generals (who would become future emperors) Titus and Vespasian react to them. Vespasian, who thought Josephus was a prophet, captured Josephus in Galilee and brought him back to Rome, where Josephus became a part of Roman society and commenced to write in Greek and Aramaic his histories.
A special permesso came in hand again on Friday when I embarked on an all day Art History field trip to the Palace of the Cardinal Alessandro Farnese just north of Rome in a town called Caprarola. We spent the morning visiting each room of the palace (via the permesso), examining the Roman imperial style mythological frescoes on the ceilings of the upper class apartments and thereby determining the functions of the rooms, and hanging out in the ornate garden. Cool things I found intriguing.
1) Our teacher Paul showed us how the building’s architect, Vignola, cleverly incorporated secret service stairways and massive utilitarian rooms (kitchens, stables etc) among the grandiose chambers for the servants to run the place. The architect focused not only on ornate things such as with spiral staircases lined with intensely carved colonnades, but also the simple things that would make the palace run!
2) When we studied the differences in the wall frescoes between the two apartments occupying the different sides of the palace. There were two sets of symmetric rooms – one set used in summer and the other in winter due to the way the sun heated them (very genius way of keeping guests comfortable). The winter apartments, painted during the counter-reformation, contained frescoes with entirely Christian subjects that had the agenda of proving the church’s power to occupants. The walls of the public meeting room on this side were filled with equally sized, amazingly detailed maps of every major continent. These were a testament to the church’s duty to spread its message all over the world, and a display of the beauty of God’s creation. The summer apartments were frescoed in the mannerist time period before the counterreformation – and thus were in the neoclassical imperial style (scenes of very particular myths) that were intentioned for wealthy erudite guests to struggle to depict.
3) The fountain filled hill. I can’t even begin to describe the intricacy of this hill. Fountains, fountains and more fountains dotted the hillside from the top to bottom. One was even in the style of a giant long stone serpent, and water flowed through its curves. The cardinal and his guests would have feasts in this ‘natural’ (it was really man-manipulated) wonderland, which was full of devices that would shoot surprise beams of water from the most random places! This would make guests scream, and contribute to the delight of the afternoon. There were scattered grottoes, which the cardinal lined with perfectly evenly grafted stalagmites from local caves. In these he placed more fountains, mythological surprise squirting devises, and ancient or anciently influenced statues. I could definitely be a member of the papal retinue and hangout here on weekend afternoons. It was an especially unique experience because Paul arranged for our escort (because of the permesso) to turn on some water spouting devices for us to see. So cool!
And now it’s the beginning of another regular week of city centered field trips. I am sorry for the lack of exciting non-academic stories – I have been spending many late nights studying and pulling together oral reports in the library for my Art History and Ancient City classes. It is going to be a lot of work until we leave for the week-long excursion to Campagnia in two Saturdays.
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