Where Would Vampires Hide Out in Italy?

 

Thursday, August 12, 2010

 

 Today we went to Baia and to two villas in Stabia: San Marco and Ariana (Ariadne). My favorite part of the day, however, was a stop at Misenum at the “Piscina Mirabile.” 

The "Piscina Mirabile" in Italian; "Piscina Mirabilis" in Latin

This is the remains of a huge cistern that was at the end of the Aqua Augusta, an aqueduct used to supply water to the Roman fleet at Misenum. Branches of it also supplied water to Pompeii and Herculaneum, but its original purpose was a military one. This isn't surprising, considering that Roman roads were originally built for military purposes, too. 

The “Piscina Mirabilis” is hauntingly beautiful. I can't explain why. Hopefully my pictures will do it some justice. Our guide said it could hold over twelve million liters of water. That's a little more than three million gallons.

Wow! 

Piscina Mirabilis: pretty? creepy? pretty creepy? YOU decide!

Even the algae and vines growing in it were beautiful in a creepy, Ann Rice kind of way. There was something about the whole place that fired the imagination. For more pictures of this and our previous day, visit this set on Flickr.

 Our group is starting to wind up its stay. One more night here after tonight, and then we will be heading back to Rome. I am hoping I will find time to get to the Pantheon so Matthew can see it before we depart for the U.S.

Want to tour Italy in the summer of 2018? Click for details.

Pompeii Revisited

Saturday, August 7, 2010

 

The goddess Venus with attendants. Her presence would have been felt in the Lupinarium!

 I was back at Pompeii for the third time this summer. This was the best visit of all. We got to see the Lupinarium, a brothel. Chris wrote his dissertation on Pompeii's prostitution, so he was very knowledgeable about the site and about the topic. The Lupinarium was well lit, and we didn't have to bribe a guard to get in. Things have certainly changed since I first visited the site in 1988. I bought a cute reproduction black-figure Greek vase to use for a classroom project. It shows a centaur dancing with a deer. It was fun to take Matthew around and share a little about what I'd learned this summer. For more pictures from this day, visit this set on Flickr.  Tomorrow we go to Naples for the Naples' Museum and to Boscoreale for a look at a villa rustica.

A wine press at the Villa of the Mysteries

Oplontis

Tuesday 7/13/10

View of Oplontis

 Sr. Therese and Sr. Theresa seem to realize they are running the participants ragged. Today we cut back on activities. We spent the morning in Oplontis visiting the villa there, perhaps the villa of Poppaea Sabina, the second wife of the Emperor Nero, or of one of her relatives. It is an example, like Pompeii's Villa of the Mysteries, of a Villa Suburbana. Not a working farmhouse, but a showcase of luxury, located outside of town. This villa was convenient to Pompeii, about 3 Roman miles outside of the more famous town. Its remains are luxurious enough that one could imagine a member of the imperial family owning it. Different parts of the house are decorated with frescoes in different styles, and the slaves' section is decorated with humble black and white stripes. It is easy to tell where the servants and where their masters were expected to hang out. The piscina or swimming pool is huge.  

Famous Frescoes

Slaves' Quarters

The Piscina or Swimming Pool

We have a translation session tonight. We will stay here for more sessions and lectures tomorrow. Thursday we head to the island of Ischia, where we will visit the Greek remains of the settlement beneath the church of St. Restituta. Ischia has nice hot springs and gardens, so we plan to bring our bathing suits for our free time there in the afternoon.

 On a personal note, I managed to get through all of my PT exercises today without any painkillers. It hurt, but I could do them, and got some good bend in the knee. My ankles are still swollen. It seems impossible to avoid salt and sugar in the diet around here; perhaps Rome will be better. I still have a rash on my legs, but it looks better than the rashes on the legs of the other women who mysteriously developed a skin condition around the same time I did. I honestly suspect the improvement is from the aqua s. ferrata I've been applying from the spring at Terme di Stabia. I may decide to go back and get more. I need a haircut and still can't figure out how to get one.

 I also have decided I want to order a pamphlet on graffiti from the American Classical League Teaching Materials and Resource Center to use with my students. Also, if I assign students to research houses, they may want to do it after their favorite television show home-show, like “Cribs”  or “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous”. Myths and graffiti could be tied in with the houses as well as architecture and figures from Roman history.

My eternal thanks go to the National Endowment for the Humanities for funding this portion of our trip.

Pompeii and Pliny II

Monday 7/12/10

With friends near the entrance to Pompeii

 We went for a second visit to Pompeii today. It was just a few stops away on the train but we were gone for a full day. Two highlights for me were seeing the house of L. Caecilius Iucundus, whose family is featured in the Cambridge Latin Course my classes use, and  seeing the Villa of the Mysteries again. We also saw the house of Julius Publius. That was cute: you needed a special ticket to get in, and there were sound effects and Disney-style ghosts of the residents who came and told the crowd about their final days. Their corpses were found in the house: an old man, supposedly Julius Publius, embracing a pregnant younger woman, perhaps his daughter. Her fetus lived for 7 seconds longer than the mother, and they all suffocated, according to the drama. I got most of the mother's story on video, but, unfortunately, the English version wasn't working, so it's in Italian. For more pictures from this trip, visit this set on Flickr.

 

At the house of Caecilius Iucundus from our Latin texts, the Cambridge Latin Course

Thermopolium with a lararium at the back of the room

 We had a rather long translation session when we got back, but we read both of Pliny's letters about the eruption, and that was rather fun. Teri also gave a great presentation about the bodies found at Pompeii and Herculaneum. I find I am a rather strong reader of Latin compared to some of the middle school teachers who do not regularly have to read as challenging a text. I guess that makes sense.

 Tomorrow we spend a half day in Oplontis and then either more Herculaneum or rest. I plan to rest. It looks like the pace will be less frantic the rest of the week. My swollen feet and ankles will be happy to slow down. My knee is feeling  better for the exercise, though.

I would like to thank the National Endowment for the Humanities for funding this portion of our trip.

Pompeii, First Visit 2010

One of the victims of Mt. Vesuvius' eruption in August of 79 A.D.

Monday 7/5/10

 

For readers who have just found this site, this is a travel-log of a Latin teacher's grant-funded summer study in Italy in 2010. Click here for more info.

Today our group took its first visit to Pompeii. The site is as hot and almost as crowded as I remember. One improvement is the fact that the ancient public water fountains have been fitted with spigots so we can refill our water bottles. Between that and the shade our group leaders tried to steer us toward, this was the most comfortable trip to Pompeii I've ever taken. It's my third or fourth trip over many years.

Ancient water fountain with modern spigot. The worn spot is from ancient pots being lifted up and rested on the lip.

 

There are two railway stations in Castellamare di Stabia. To get the site, we got to the proper train station and boarded the train  to get off at the third or fourth stop, Pompeii Scavi.

Exploring Pompeii's forum

The tour itself was excellent. Different members of the group had been assigned different houses, and they had done their research and were amazingly well prepared. We saw the House of the Faun, of Menander, of the Small Fountain, of the Ponza, of Sallust, and of the Tragic Poet. We also saw the Odeon, which is the smaller of the two theaters, the temple of Isis, and the Fullery where clothes were washed. Mid-day we met with Steve Ellis of the University of Cincinnati in Ohio. He is an archeologist in charge of a dig that is not open to tourists. He had invited our group to come to the site of his dig where he gave a fantastic presentation of the work his team is doing on the more “middle class” houses in Pompeii. I was excited to get pictures and video of archeologists at work for my students.

Steve Ellis comments on recent excavations

It was also interesting to learn that his team was excavating the drains of these houses, examining the food remains there to get a better idea of the diet of the residents. He said two houses looked the same, but the food remains in one showed that the inhabitants were probably much wealthier due to the wider variety of food and the fact it had been imported. Some was very exotic, like the knee of a giraffe, a unique find in Italy. A National Geographic special is coming out this year. It is a series and Steve's dig is in one part of the series. Its name will be “Rome Unwrapped” and this work will be featured in the Pompeii section.

 

I think I have walked around Castellamare di Stabia enough now that I can find my way during daylight into town and back. I have some errands to run while the stores are open, but now I need to find my own necessities around our group's schedule. Today on our way back the stores were still closed for the afternoon. They seem to reopen around 5 PM. To give you an idea of the intensity, the earliest we could get back into town was 4:30 PM, when we all desperately wanted a change of clothes and a shower to cool down. After taking care of our personal needs, our group will meet this evening at 6:30 for a discussion and Latin translation session before dinner at 8 PM. Tomorrow we go to visit the temple of Vedius Pollio, to Cuma (ancient Cumae) to visit the acropolis and the “Cave of the Sibyl” and then the site of the ancient remains at Baiae “with its luxurious accommodations for the very wealthy and its unusual baths along with the Museo di Castello di Baia to view artifacts taken from the sea and surrounding area,” according to our handout.

 Tonight's session is in less than 15 minutes and I still want to have a chance to upload pictures to my computer from today and yesterday, as well as the video clips I took. Wish me luck!

I wish to express my gratitude to the National Endowment for the Humanities for making this portion of my trip possible.

Tuesday and Wednesday in MD

The name of the N.E.H.-funded portion of our summer-study program was, "Houses of Gods and Mortals." Our group would be spending time in Italy studying temples as houses of the gods, the architectural remains of ancient houses, and tombs as houses of the dead. It made for a nice thematic unit.

Dr. Glenn R. Bugh, Virginia Tech

On Tuesday, June 29, 2010, Dr. Glenn R. Bugh of Virginia Tech presented a lecture on the archaeology of Roman Italy. The next day he lectured about the Etruscans, an ancient race to the north of Rome that declined in influence as Rome was coming to power. They eventually died out and their language along with them. We mostly know about them from their tombs and from what we can make out of their inscriptions. Dr. Bugh told us there are three types of these tombs:

• the Aedicula tomb, like a little house
• the Cassone tomb, like a box or coffin
• the Tumulus tomb, like a little hill with an entryway

In almost all cases, except Cassone, they were intended to be family tombs. There's a communal nature to the tombs and their use. The tombs are arranged in a necropolis, or city of the dead. There are whole streets of the dead in Etruria. I had visited these tombs in the 1980s. They were a favorite part of my summer study then, and I was looking forward to going back.

Mary Lou presents about graffitti

Although this was an N.E.H. Institute, the format was closer to an N.E.H. Summer Seminar. Participants were required to not only do research but to take on many of the lectures. I had the opportunity to be one of the first participant lecturers. My topic was about ancient Roman graffiti, which is mostly found in Pompeii. I gave an overview about what types of graffiti have been discovered and why we should study it. This presentation dovetailed nicely with Sr. Dougherty's, which followed. She had many more examples of graffiti for the group to study than I had in my rather brief but well-received presentation. To view it  on Google Docs, click here and download.

I would like to thank the folks at the National Endowmnent for the Humanities for making this portion of my trip possible.