caesar novus

Do you mean decades-old reconstruction maps of ancient Rome like http://catholic-resources.org/AncientRome/Platner.htm ? From fuzzy memory of watching a DVD course in a distracting environment, I gather many such layouts have recently been flipped around on very latest maps. "Experiencing Rome: A Visual Exploration of Antiquity's Greatest Empire" keeps apologizing for showing showing 3D layouts in conflicting ways - some apparently based on that old model in EUR that we always see in TV documentaries, and some corrected diagrams by the course artist. I believe most changes are a reversal of forum orientations, putting the temples and entrances(?) on opposite sides than previously thought. http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=3430

Pantheon is an obligatory 10 min stop any time you are in the tourist center of Rome. It is central, free, and lineless. I find the proportions and interior "upgrades" kind of awkward, but maybe take it too much for granted. Castel didn't leave much of an impression during a quick visit during the "free" week. Diocletians baths look better than I have experienced in http://www.flickr.com/search/show/?q=terme+Diocletian (turn on the "show info" button, and maybe pause the show and click forward at your own speed). It has a jumble of churches and a museum embedded in a confusing maze of pedestrian hostile streets and eternally abandoned construction barricades, so I don't think of it as "an attraction" so much as a variety pack you nibble at occasionally. Major parts seem off limits. It isn't directly across from the Termini; the epic Massimo sculpture museum slightly to the south is closer, although also surrounded by abandoned scaffolding blocking everything but an obscure side entrance. If you cross the sprawl of outdoor bus terminal from the Termini, and somehow survive the endless wide roads where exiting busses try to mow you down... you then have to cross a garbagy sun baked wasteland where out of work immigrants have drunken fights (maybe attracted by the watermelon kiosks where you should rehydrate too). From there, you can plan your assault on the fortress of the baths which gives every indication of not wanting anyone to enter. Just about the closest entrance is obscure, but turns out to be a dazzling church (the one with an endless name) fitted into the baths by Michelangelo in a way that celebrates the original architecture. Now I see from the slideshow there is another nice church in there I missed. There is a museum that bored me at the time, maybe due to jet lag and it's focus on Latin inscriptions. Clearly I haven't done this site justice, but I think it's hard to. The Massimo museum surely challenges it in importance, since like the Naples one it cherry picks items from archeo sites all over Rome and Italy (ground floor a bit eccentric, so elevator yourself to the top, then work downwards).

I think a key factor making Pompeii impressive is not only the horizontal sprawl, but the height. It isn't like most ruins with just some stubby blocks above foundations, but gives you the feeling of the original enclosed space. I think many Roman ruins in Africa and mid east are low (some used mud brick?). That is nice if Sagalassos is rising again. For a person not used to mentally translating low ruins to the original, Pompeii is mind blowing because it gives such 3D presence. The height is sort of a triumph against the ravages of time, and gives a boost to not only Pompeii but the Colosseum and Caracalla's baths (which you can also appreciate even outside the entrance gate). Maybe lack of height it is why Ostia Antica and Herculaneum leave me a bit cold. In the latter case the buildings are as high as Pompeii but you only perceive that by walking in the narrow trench nearby; mostly you view it from above at modern ground level as almost a maze of basements. With all the praise of sites outside Italy, it would still help to rate them relative to well known Italian ones. Exploratory travel can be expensive, wearing, and time consuming. I have little idea how to rate, say, Italica vs various sites in Turkey or Tunisia except for a few nonflattering photos. Need to be guided by prioritizing that stands up under scrutiny rather than just islolated report from an enthusiast. Personally I have already used up my 9 lives in adventure travel, for instance stranded in southern Algeria without money or plane tickets.

Maybe so, but I was of course considering day tripping logistics (with my own biases). Pompeii is the superstar, but a bit wearing to spend every hour of a day there. What aching void most needs to be filled with your remaining shreds of strength? See yet more ramshackle dwellings in Herculaneum, or the gems of artifacts that were cherry picked out of Pompeii into the museum? I would say add Naples museum. Of course if you don't know to request permission for the "sexy" room when you buy your ticket, your percentage of Pompeii related stuff will fall and it can almost seem like a stand alone museum to judge on it's own merits. On the other hand, don't some archeo sites have their own little museum, which muddies the distinctions? Basically the list was inspired by my regret at discovering quite late how important some of the lesser known items were, like Palazzo Massimo. But that point is made, and I guess a reformatted list could benefit from not assuming how you travel and for how long.

Right, that seems to be Seutonious talking about Caligula. I think the prof did throw in a few kudos for Nero, but since there is no exam I never activated my photographic memory.

One should never miss the outside of the Colosseum, but that comes automatically when touring around Palatine. I agree Colosseum INSIDE the entry gate tends toward the unrewarding and unpleasant - I even saw a tourism article advocate just seeing it from the outside as well. Thinking of yanking Colosseum from list and pulling in http://www.flickr.com/search/show/?q=ephesus last (due to logistics to get there). Vatican logistics are truely awful, although there are rumours of times of the week or year that are more bearable. A tourism article recently called on the church to pull this museum out of it's shameful state. But in comfort take look at the Vatican slideshow link I posted (or your own pictures?)... wow, what a Roman treasure trove!.

Like Caligula or Henry VIII, he started out really well. I heard he had some redeeming features even later, but one sticks in my mind from a lecture that said he was the last emperor who proposed a return to partial democracy. It wasn't put into effect, and the professor thought Nero might have been up to no good somehow. Anyway it would have allowed voting only for some something relatively minor, like city councils or the like.

1) Forum + Palatine http://www.flickr.com/search/show/?q=Palatine+forum 2) Pompeii + Naples museum http://www.flickr.com/search/show/?q=pompeii+museo 3) Palazzo Massimo http://www.flickr.com/search/show/?q=Palazzo+Massimo 4) Vatican museum http://www.flickr.com/search/show/?q=vatican+roman 5) Colosseum http://www.flickr.com/search/show/?q=colosseum 6) Capitoline museum http://www.flickr.com/search/show/?q=capitolini 7) Ostia Antica http://www.flickr.com/search/show/?q=ostia+antica 8) Hadrians Villa http://www.flickr.com/search/show/?q=hadrians+villa 9) Terme Caracalla http://www.flickr.com/search/show/?q=bath+caracalla 10) Herculeum http://www.flickr.com/search/show/?q=herculeum Honorable mention: Palazzo Altemps, Hadrians wall, Diocletians palace It has come to my royal attention that there is a lot of loose talk about Rome based on second hand naratives, and not enough attention to experiencing the actual artifacts first hand. Furthermore, wrong priorities are being applied as to which sites to visit first. So I have posted an official priority list for visitation. FAQs: Q: What if I do not agree with the list? A: Pray night and day for the wisdom of a Caesar. If you still cannot contain yourself, you're allowed to suggest one more honorable mention here. Q: What if I prefer to visit in a different order? A: You may be quizzed at the entrance at, say, the Colosseum about your Massimo visit. Any wrong answers, and you may be tossed into the pool of victim reenactors. Q: Why is X in front of Y? A: The order is based on a balance of substance, crowd logistics, and presentation style. So for example Vatican suffers by logistics and Museum of Rome Massimo is elevated by substance. Capitoline has style with less subtance, and so on. Anyway, this is strictly a royal matter that is none of your business - just go follow it!

Whew, I just made it to the ship before they just now closed down its display for a few years. The Telegraph shows an artifact that reminds how transmitted disease wasn't entirely a one way street from explorers to the new world. Syphilis is thought to originate in the new world, and the Mary Rose used this urethra syringe to treat it:

No objection, but it would be nice to eventually see a summary here. I guess I had the order reversed from the usual convention, such as http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-worst-popes-in-history.php which builds up to the #1 worst at the end. Maybe "worst" is a good term to put in front of "Roman atrocities" as well, in case someone wonders if you are for or against.

You seem to say punishment in order to make an example is nothing noteworthy for the time. Maybe a sort of hot-blooded knee-jerk variety was the norm, but I find the Roman style of cold blooded (staged) exemplary punishment beyond the pale. I really like Roman civilization as altruistic for the most part, so this selfish side of making potential innocents suffer sticks out as gangster-think. And it can even be counterproductive; think of how some bombings have rallied the victims or think of how many analysts today are saying the gov'ts exemplary punishment of Lehman (folding) greatly magnified todays financial crises. It's true I was going from summaries inferring the cripples were otherwise innocent and only there for the sick needs of a theatrical narrative. If they might in fact be guilty of something, then fine... I guess there were no jails, so offenders had to be sorted into extremes of very light or very harsh punishment. But it seems a stretch to project guilt, with no evidence. BTW, I'm a bit puzzled why some emperors pandered largely to populism, esp via cruelty. It's one thing where my "genius" emperors balance pandering to the army, elites, AND populace to kind of keep the peace, but wasn't it really mainly the army that you had to buy off in order to survive and thrive? For goodness sake, I was being metaphorical. If you require such tidiness to reach any conclusion, then no conclusion can be reached for Rome with it's incomplete evidence. One thing that is certain is archeological remains, and I think Roman architecture, engineering, and art just shout refinement for the most part. But the scraps of surviving narrative contrast so much from what we associate with refinement, that it's reasonable to assume where there is smoke there may be fire. So it's interesting to look at the contrast, and not get at all relativistically jelly spined about it. Romans are interesting precisely because when imposing TODAYs standards they look so good in many ways... and bad in others (with volumes of admittedly shakier evidence for the latter).

OK, let's try revising this idea for a deep pocket forum demographic. A final headcount please... anyone wishing to join a tour of Roman archeo sites normally closed to the public, send a signed blank check to http://www.romasotterranea.it/guided-tours.html and tell them since it was my idea, to let me tag along for free.

If you get the Smithsonian HiDef TV channel, they often repeat documentaries on Maurizio http://www.smithsonianchannel.com/site/smi...ci_detective.do which is a little less up to date, but full of behind the scenes gossip by him. I was especially hooked by his debunking of the "The Adoration of the Magi painting" because "none of the paint we see on the Adoration today was put there by Leonardo" (his quote from Wikipedia). I always thought that painting was vomitous crap and hated the reverence for it. His claims for it's lineage is funny and further reinforced my impression that the mafia did no serious wrong by blowing up part of the Ufizzi. But the BATTLE OF ANGHIARI documentary was even more wild, with him pointing out that it was considered superior to the Mona Lisa by contemporaries. Maurizio's early sensor machinery pointed to an incorrect location for the BATTLE picture, and he claims it was "guerilla" action unknown to him when unauthorized people started tearing open a wall with a famous mural on it in the search for it there. This event ruined his reputation for when he decided he found the real location of BATTLE, he couldn't get permission to open the wall. If I have this story right, it sounds that now he has permission?

I believe I found most of the Roman plays listed in Wikipedia available in http://www.archive.org/details/texts . Someone might enjoy adapting those plots and characters into more modernized scripts and selling them http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/eng/nowwhat2009

Let's see, quantity or quality of depravity? One account of a royal child's execution sticks in my mind due to the sick way they solved a certain legalistic snag about killing youngsters... I can't even type in the particulars. On the other extreme, the naumachia slaughters sound so wildly over the top. Put aside the technicalities of putting it on water, but to have tens of thousands of POW's hack each other to death for a cold blooded show!? Also I hear there may have had to be several "staff" for every prisoner of war, such as to row or guard; that must have been a scary profession done by Romans, like the poor sods who had to hold prisoners still while wild animals tore into them. It would be nice to come up with tidy top ten lists, but I guess it is too numbing of a sick subject for that...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVvDTN_gLxk...feature=related seems to capture it. If that doesn't work for you there are many other versions if you search for "engineering an empire" without rome, or with rome at the end. It's kind of disappointing for it's overly melodramatic approach. I was always puzzled why such an expensive palace would be destroyed rather than at least partly reused. But I gather from several sources that it was kind of a pointless non functional show palace. I'm thinking maybe like the more recent palace at Caserta near Naples, kind of a clone of Versailles but seeming monotonous and souless with a too obvious goal of just looking expensive and expansive.

I wonder if anyone would want to meet or at least "group think" plans for an excursion to the Rome area during the week when they open all state museums/archeo sites for free? You can stay cheaply such as at http://www.monasterystays.com/index.php and some can fly for just pennies on http://www.whichbudget.com/en/cheapflights.php?to=ROM . Daytrips from Rome sometimes can be made easier or cheaper with knowhow, such as public buses passing near Hadrian's Villa. Challenges where group-think or meeting in person might help: 1) Finding out the dates of "culture week" ahead of time. Usually notice pops up a couple months ahead of time on gov't web pages (in Italian). In the past it has been in March, April, May, or skipped a year. 2) Making travel / accom arrangements at last minute. 3) working out logistics of local excursions on the cheap (such as getting on/off busses apparently in the middle of nowhere with no language skills).

Here goes some impressions of Roman sites in Barcelona's gothic quarter. This maze of streets east of the famous Ramblas tourist epicenter isn't always accurately portrayed on maps or guidebooks, so here are some tips by the naive for the naive. Experts feel free to fill in. 1) http://www.barcelona.com/barcelona_directo...ona_city_museum has a fantastic network of walkways suspended over excavations of Roman Barcino. The excavations themselves can be on the mundane side (dyeing vats, wine fermenting tanks), but the quality of walkway logistics and labeling raises the experience to a higher level. Maybe this has a low profile because they forbid photography and you can hardly see a preview anywhere. Where: from the rear of the main cathedral nearby, continue walking a couple blocks away from the curved rear of the church, zigging a bit left when blocked. Costs money, but you get a/c, w.c., seating for it. 2) Big Roman Temple Columns: This is a room just off an L shaped alley behind that same cathedral with quite impressive columns. You are so close to them that they don't photograph well, so again hard to get a preview that does them justice. I believe the text says that they were relocated in the past, but now are somewhere near their original location? I think these are often mislocated on maps, so find an alley going rearward from the rear of the cathedral. There are two that are parallel to the churches centerline; take the one offset to the right which has an L to the right. Opposite the crotch of the L, look for a doorway to the left which should catch your breath pretty quick. Free with seating. 3) Cemetary with Roman tombstones. There is a plaza several blocks northwest of the cathedral that has a sunken area with grass (a rare sight in Gothic Quarter that first catches your eye) and tombstones that are labeled Roman (I have no independant source or verification of it). Maybe the inscriptions are interesting for Latin readers...

Thanks for the Baudy reference. I hadn't heard that before, but just spent a few minutes trying to find his theory on the web. The best I could come up with was the following from an old special on PBS: "He (Gaudy) has learned that in the poor districts of Rome, Christians were circulating vengeful texts predicting that a raging inferno would reduce the city to ashes. "In all of these oracles, the destruction of Rome by fire is prophesied," Baudy explains. "That is the constant theme: Rome must burn. This was the long-desired objective of all the people who felt subjugated by Rome." I think the Baudy theory was more than idle observations, but was fully spelled out in his scholarly book (in German). Many academic assertions about Rome seem to not be supported by just doing a google search... analysis of the ancients seems have a low profile on the internet other than here. Well, some is showing up in the Google books project, but I find their format virtually unreadible (fuzzy light grey font). So again, let's not overlook the cuddly side of Nero! I gather he was loved by a lot of lower classes because his antics basically made fun of upper class pretentions. I hear there were 3 pretenders to pop up that seriously claimed to be Nero and that his death had been misreported - at least one of which gathered support by army and other sympathizers before being proven a fraud. And wasn't it only later in Vespasian times when the upper class fully asserted their demonization of Nero and tore down his palace, whereas the previous 2 weak emperors pandered to the lower classes with praise of Nero and talk about completing the palace?

Detroit pastors packing heat (Christian soldiers?): http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/articl...POu_pwD9B2HVLO0 Is it protection from down and out desperados, or from the cream of society? (Detroit mayor charged with dozen felonies last year): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwame_Kilpatrick#Resignation

I thought a key piece of evidence were stone spheres which could be ball bearings for the rotating roof (or floor?). I got the impression these were found, although didn't notice them in the pictures. P.S. on the burning of Rome in Nero's time, wasn't it during the anniversary of a sacking of Rome by the Gauls... an infamous kind of 9/11 date that a dissenting group might target? At first I connected this with the anniversary where they crucify dogs for not warning of the Gauls sneaking into Rome, but I guess the first was in July and the second was in August.

The other part was only briefly open when it had to be reshut for emergency restoral, projected to last a couple years from now (anyone know more precisely?). http://www.flickr.com/search/show/?q=Domus+Aurea shows a bit of the old tour. In a couple hours from this post there will be a repeat of "rome: engineering an empire" on history intnl channel which shows a recreation of the palace at about the middle of it's two hour run. P.S. isn't the new Gerhard Baudy theory interesting, which presents circumstantial evidence that an extremest Christian sect really did set Rome ablaze, as Nero claimed? Not as likely as the accident or 3rd party theories, but equally as likely as Nero did it. How about petitioning the Pope to have Nero cannonized as a saint, to balance all these years of persecution

1) ? 2) Claudius Naumachia where 19,000 POWs fight and die. http://www.the-colosseum.net/games/navmachiae.htm 3) ? 4) ? 5) ? 6) ? 7) ? 8) ? 9) Commodus slaying groups of cripples http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodus#Commodus_the_gladiator 10) ? Your version? I started by focusing on over the top, gratuitious depravity even by primitive day standards. Just put yourself in the victims place, when they are about to make a show of pouring liquid lead down your throat or something you could never have dreamed of in your experience. It seems a bit less bad to be torched as a Christian if they had already given you a chance to simply show respect for pagan totems (not even to believe in them or disbelieve in your god; just don't jinx the community good luck totem). Or massacre of a city for not surrendering... very bad, but they did have a chance to save themselves and save the Roman legion from risking their lives.

What museum? Do they mean in the original collection of Villa San Michele. Only other museum there I can think of is the church with those weird pictorial tiles, or the little museum in the other town (Capri). And is that depth for real? Way past diving limits, and I question if the cave would be that bright if the reflective (sand/limestone) floor was so darn far down.