Backposting

(I'm sort of doing this to help review for my final coming up!)

November’s First Week:

First, we visited the Temple of Divine Claudius (it became pretty common to deify emperors, or at least the ones you didn’t hate), or what was left of it. There’s not much. This is pretty close to the Colosseum, and it was a lovely day.

Foundations only

And there is even less left of the Temple of Peace, unfortunately.. so next we were lunching by the Arch of Titus, which is pretty awesome and well preserved. We fed the pigeons which became a horrifying spectacle. We saw that a lot of tourist groups stopped by the arch, but mostly they were getting information about the forum. Vinnie was helpful to some English speakers, pointing out some details. The arch is cool because it has Titus flying to heaven on an eagle’s back in the top of it. On the insides there are triumph scenes. This one is from the sacking of the Jerusalem Temple.

Titus and his father Vespasian took the Temple and had the triumph in 71AD

Our next stop was our official visit to the Circus Maximus (this time not filled with glowing balls, but instead with a woman whose dog was endlessly chasing a red ball and simultaneously making it roll).

Oldest sports arena. Ever.

After a brief race (no) we were off to the Montemartini museum, which is a converted power plant, so kind of interesting in its own right, having ancient sculpture alongside old generators.

Fortuna-On-This-Very-Day has Brookie by the leg!

I really liked this muse sculpture. She might have been placed with eight others in a garden or something

It was a long and tiring day! Happily, soon after that the leaves were falling golden in the courtyard.

I love it!

Our next field trip on Thursday also stayed within Rome. Our first stop was the often seen but not yet entered Colosseum, which I gratuitously overphotographed, but which was admittedly very, very cool. Some guys dressed as gladiators outside made a face at one of my friends, so she made a face back. He then apparently roared “King of KIIING!” at her as we hurried away. (This may be important later)

It doesn’t really look real, almost.

We proceeded next to the nearby Ludus Magnus, which is basically gladiator combat school. I loved it. I busted out some moves of my own.

I love this picture. That’s my roommate with a piece of wood she is about to use as a sword. And that’s the Colosseum behind her.

I fought a pokewar with Nick and I won, and would have loved to stay in combat school for longer, but we moved on to Domitian’s palace. It’s huge, even bigger than Augustus’s house and surrounding temples combined. He was the least well-loved of the Flavians and was actually the only emperor to suffer a true damnatio memoriae. Which means Nerva’s (small and pointy) face often appears on Domitian’s (big and wide) head to hilarious effect.

Oh man.

Anyway, we weren’t there very long before we were off to the house museum, which was cool but confusing since there were lots of layers of time in there. My favorite part was a room painted with scenes of Persephone. And, the museum in the back which reminded me of the game Myst because it was so modern and ancient all at once, and some of it was interactive (a tile set up so you could turn it). No photos allowed, though.

It was an easy week to make up for the fact that the one before had been a killer! And, we were preparing to go to Campania the following week… I tried to be a good kid and write my paper that weekend, to no avail.

Campania adventures to come. (Nov 10-16)