From an Empress' to a Martyr's Palace

Thursday, 7/22/10

Wall Painting from the the Empress Livia's House

 The internet is back, and I had a nice, long Skype-call with my mom back in the states. I missed Matthew, though, who went to the beach with his dad. I hear he is very excited about  meeting me in a little over a week in Rome for his portion of the trip.

Antinous as Silvanus

 Today the group went to Rome's National Archeological Museum at the Palazzo Massimo. It is a new museum, and it is wonderful! Highlights were frescoes from Livia's house where the Primaporta Augustus was found, the Diskobolos statue, mosaics, and a magnificent coin collection that I very much want to revisit. 

There is a statue of Antinous, Emperor Hadrian's favorite, in the form of the god Silvanus, that caught my interest. The sign said nobody knows what he was carrying in his left arm. The statue looked a lot like one I had seen and taken a picture of in Capua, so I got the director of the museum's email address so I could email the picture and suggest that the missing item was a cornucopia. I later found out it might have been a branch or other object when I found more information online about this rustic Roman deity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvanus_(mythology) .

 After lunch on our own, the group met at St. Peter's Square to take a tour of its Necropolis, or city of the dead, beneath the basilica itself. We got to see St. Peter's Tomb and St. Peter's ashes. When I get a chance I want to study up a little about the martyrdom of St. Peter. It doesn't sound as though he had an easy death. Something about being crucified upside-down. We returned at 6:30 for another translation session with presentations, so it has been a very, very long day. I skipped the PT exercises and hope the extra stair-climbing we did suffices for today.

 I am finally getting comfortable with the bus and metro system from this end of town and wish we could stay here in stead of moving to the Villa Rosa on Sunday. For more pictures and some video from this day of the trip, see below and visit this set on Flickr.

A Hippo-Hunt on the Nile

Inside St. Peter's

An Interior View of St. Peter's Dome

My eternal thanks to the National Endowment for the Humanities for making this portion of my trip possible.