Links for Exam III

Links for Exam III Art History I

The Tombaroli (tomb robbers) are as great a problem in Italy today as they've ever been. Here's a story on the ongoing battles between the Italian government and these lawless folks. Euphronios's Death of Sarpedon krater [since returned to Italy, as we've seen] is discussed as likely being an example of loot taken from an Etruscan tomb. When it's mentioned, see if you can spot the glaring error that's made! E-mail me if you think you've found it.

Along the same lines, here's a witty commentary from 2005 by Thomas Hoving (the man in charge of the Metropolitan Museum when the Euphronios krater was purchased; he died in December of 2009) in which he offers his advice to the Getty Museum in Malibu that is currently enmeshed in its own controversies regarding improper purchases.

A new way to make an arch. For more on this effort, click here.

Here are some direct Google Maps links to some of the famous sites from this section. In several cases (e.g., Pompeii, the Baths of Caracalla), the interior parts of these sites have been mapped with the non-invasive Google Earth person-on-a-tricycle approach. Drag the yellow guy onto the map and put him in any area that becomes outlined in blue.

Pompeii Forum [10-12]: (See it).

-many of the ancient streets are now available in Street View (drag and drop the yellow guy)

-zoom out and look northwest about 8 miles to see the ominous Mt. Vesuvius

The Colosseum [10-36]: (See it)

The "Arounder" website has several nice 360° VRML images of the Colosseum, such as this one.

The Basilica Ulpia and the Column of Trajan [10-43 and 10-44] (See it)

The Pantheon [10-49]: N 41° 53' 55" E 12° 28' 36" (See it)

Hadrian's Villa - Canopus [10-52]: N 41° 56' 18" E 12° 46' 32" (See it)

Baths of Caracalla [10-66]: N 41° 52' 45" E 12° 29' 35" (See it)

And, Google's satellite imagery is even good for seeing Roman sites no one even knew about. Apparently an entire Roman villa went unnoticed for 2,000 years until someone messing around with Google Earth stumbled upon it, as this 2005 story reveals. To see the oval (a natural phenomenon) mentioned in the story, click here. The rectangular forms that are the villa itself are just to the north of that, apparently, although it's hard for any untrained eye to spot it.

Pompeii Forum Project - Here's a fine example of funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities going to a worthy cause. Although it's mostly filled with technical details beyond the scope of our course, see how the University of Virginia is using their endowment to learn more about this important and unique site. There are some nice uses of VRML within, too (requires Quicktime to play .mov files).

Roman House - This page has a useful interactive floor plan of a typical Roman domus. Click on a room and a description of it appears along with example images.

Here are a few (and not-so-smutty) examples of ephemeral writings (a.k.a. graffiti) from Pompeii. This site also offers some authentic Pompeian recipes at the end of the page.

For a price, visitors at Pompeii are now able to wear backpacks and goggles with special virtual-reality capabilities so that when they stroll about the city, they can see it digitally recreated. I'm not sure about this, as you can trip easily enough on the cobblestones throughout the site even when you can look down and see what's there.

"Was he afraid? It seems not...." Here's a link to a letter by Pliny the Younger that describes the death of his famous and curious-to-the-end uncle, Pliny the Elder, during the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius on an August day over 1,925 years ago (that's not a picture of either Pliny in a red safety helmet).

Note that Pliny the Younger's decision to stay at home and study wound up saving his life...make of that what you will.

Apparently people haven't learned from the past. As this recent story makes clear, far too many people still live on the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius, and it will erupt again one day...in fact, it's already overdue to do so.

Nero's tremendous Domus Aurea ("Golden House") in the heart of Rome is now open to visitors once again. Read more about it at this official site. Unfortunately, less than two years after it was reopened, more damage to it occurred during the spring of 2001. This was followed by two more damaging floods in the last decade which have caused structural damage and forced the site to be closed to the public once again, at least for the near future.

Still, it's safe enough for trained archaeologists to work in it, and in late 2009 they made a very interesting discovery that provides evidence for one of the more exotic parts of the building that the historian Suetonious described.

Quandiu stabit coliseus, stabit et Roma;
Quando cadit coliseus, cadet et Roma
Quando cadet Roma, cadet et mundus.

[While stands the Colosseum,* Rome shall stand;

When falls the Colosseum, Rome shall fall

When Rome falls the world shall fall.]

-the Venerable Bede, 8th century (listen to it here)

*Actually, it seems that the Venerable Bede actually meant the Colossus of Nero/Helios, which did fall down a long time ago, so I guess we're in overtime and it doesn't matter if the cats help the Colosseum stay up.

Nova's great "Secrets of Lost Empires" series included an episode in 1997 that tried to figure out exactly how the ancient Romans configured and manipulated the giant moveable canopy (or velarium) for the Colosseum in Rome. The most substantial information within this site is in the "Questions and Answers" section.

And finally for the Colosseum, there's the nagging issue of whether or not Christians were martyred there..."thrown to the lions" as is legendarily the case. But, according to even the Catholic Church, there is no historical evidence of this happening (see the summary in the last paragraph of this link, "Thus in the Middle Ages no tradition existed..."). There were several sites that were venerated in the Middle Ages as martyrdom sites in Rome, but not the Colosseum. This legend started only a few centuries ago, and quite unexpectedly.

Here's a page that confirms that there are quite a few surviving (and idealized) portraits of Hadrian's beloved, the teenage Antinous, including one in the Vatican Museum.

Here's another Nova "Secrets of Lost Empires" page of relevance, this time their Roman Bath site, where you get lots of fun facts and images to help you appreciate what a day at the baths was like for a plebian Roman. Go to the "A Day at the Baths" options for these details, although there's a lot of other stuff beyond that, including a discussion of Roman Recipes, where you can learn how to make your own tasty Lucanian Sausage.

The Christian Catacombs of Rome - This extensive site from Italy has both written and pictorial information about most of the major catacombs of Rome.

The Saints and Angels Page - Self-billed as "the largest collection of facts and information concerning Saints and Angels on the Internet," this service from Catholic Online is sure to have at least some factoids about the each of the thousands of names it lists. In particular, check out the full story of the life and death of St. Lawrence the Martyr, seen here in his lunette mosaic in the Mausoluem of Galla Placidia in Ravenna. You'll see he was a good one for famous last lines...

And here's an interesting discovery made in 2005: an Early Christian church that was found in Israel (beneath a modern day prison, oddly enough) . There was a rush to judgment in declaring this to be a 3rd century (therefore a Period Persecution) church, as this story notes, but it still shows signs of being a very early church. Shown here is one of the simple black and white floor mosaics.

Like Caesar Augustus' Res Gestae, the Secret History of Procopius is also available online in its entirety due to the expiration of copyright restrictions. Reading all of it will of course take some determination, but you can at least check out the juicy chapter 9 dealing with Empress Theodora's dubious past.