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SPQR - News Thursday, 08 May 2008 |
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SPQR News
Archaeology news on Ancient Rome and the Roman Empire _______________
Archeology news from around the world |
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Plague' killed Roman grave dead
A study into a mass Roman grave excavated in Gloucester appears to show the dead had been killed by smallpox. The remains of around 91 individuals uncovered in 2005 are in part of Wooton Cemetery, which was the burial ground for the fortress at nearby Kingsholm. The bodies appear to have been thrown in the grave haphazardly during the second half of the 2nd Century. Oxford Archaeology who analysed the remains say they are the victims of an epidemic, perhaps the Antonine Plague. This outbreak of smallpox swept across the Roman Empire between AD 165 and 189.
"The skeletons of adult males, females, and children were lying in a very haphazard fashion, their bones completely entangled, reflecting the fact that they had been dumped, unceremoniously in a hurried manner," said Louise Loe, Head of Burial Archaeology.
Inscribed tombstones
"When we studied the skeletons we were looking for evidence, such as trauma, that would explain why they had been buried in such a way. "In fact, very little trauma was found on the skeletons...this led us to conclude that the individuals were the victims of an epidemic that did not discriminate against age or sex," she said. Such outbreaks of disease killed quickly and tended not to leave marks on bone, she said. Future DNA tests will be carried out on the skeletons in the hope of confirming the theory.
Also unearthed on the site on London Road were two 1st Century sculptured and inscribed tombstones which helped the team make a direct connection between documentary evidence and the archaeological record of the site. One tombstone was for a 14-year-old slave, the other for a soldier of the 20th legion, Lucius Octavius Martialis, son of Lucius, of the Pollian voting tribe from Eporedia. The legion was stationed at Gloucester until the late 1st Century with soldiers from Sporedia, modern Ivrea north of Turin.
Stolen Roman bath found
Wed, 07 May 2008 09:42
Italian police recovered a valuable Roman-era marble bathtub stolen from Italy after spotting it by chance in a Barcelona antique dealership, Spanish police said on Tuesday.
The officers, specialists in stolen artwork, were in the Spanish Mediterranean port city on other business when they stumbled across their find, which had been stolen from the garden of a villa in Rome in 2005.
The owner of the antique dealership said he thought the oval-shaped bathtub, was a modern copy of an antique.
He said he had bought it at the end of 2005 for €3000 from another dealer and had it on sale for a mere €6000.
In fact the bathtub, which dates back to the era of the Roman emperor Hadrian, in the second century anno domini, is worth a cool €300 000.
The only other surviving example is on display at the Vatican Museum. Spanish police believe the bathtub, which weights half a ton, was transported to Spain by sea, most likely hidden in a shipping container. It was handed over to the Italian authorities on Tuesday, they said.
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Metamorphosis of ethnic Roman costumes History permeates every corner of the ancient city of Rome known as the eternal city. Their culture is the basis for todays society, culture and fashion.
Nero's gate unearthed in Cologne A two thousand year old Roman gate thought to have been built by Emperor Nero has been discovered in the western German city of Cologne.
A Roman holiday in Libya Leptis Magna, a well-preserved outpost of an ancient empire, is slowly emerging from the desert sands alongside some of the Mediterranean's best - and emptiest - beaches.
Cave May Hold Secrets to Legend of Ancient Rome Italian archaeologists have inched closer to unearthing the secrets behind one of Western civilization’s most enduring legends.
Tomb of Cleopatra and lover to be uncovered Cairo, 24 April(AKI) - Archaeologists have revealed plans to uncover the 2000 year-old tomb of ancient Egypt's most famous lovers, Cleopatra and the Roman general Mark Antony later this year.
New findings around the Colosseum The work to repave the area around the base of the Colosseum on its western side has brought to light new archaeological findings.
Ancient marble staircase found in Rome ROME, April 20 (UPI) -- Italian archeologists said an ancient staircase made of marble was uncovered during excavations beneath Rome's Piazza Venezia.
Rome celebrates jubilee Ancient Rome enthusiasts have paraded in front of the Coliseum as part of celebrations to mark Rome's jubilee. Several hundred people from Italy, Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom marched through ancient Rome's centre dressed as centurions and legionnaires.
Ostia Antica is a ruin, but it once buzzed with commercial activity When in Rome, many travelers focus only on the blockbusters. Such as the Colosseum, where so many men and beasts gave their lives for a bit of jolly fun for a bloodthirsty audience.
The Complete Guide To: Hadrian's Empire With a domain stretching from the Sahara to Cumbria, this Roman emperor was always on the move – and he left a legacy that remains to this day.
Rare Statue of Roman Emperor Found ROME (AP) — Italian police have recovered a rare statue of a Roman emperor who co-ruled alongside Marcus Aurelius and was known for his reluctance to sit for portraits.
Subway Dig Unearths Rome's Ancient Past It's been centuries since archaeologists excavated Rome's central Piazza Venezia, but just a few hundred yards from the Roman Forum, skeletons of the city's past are surfacing.
Ancient Love Stars at Rome's Eros Exhibit An exhibit in Rome aims to explain the role of Eros, the most powerful and most elusive of the ancient gods. The show at the Colosseum seeks to illustrate the huge gap between contemporary attitudes to erotic love and how the subject was treated in antiquity.
Wife-beating in Ancient Rome For all the glory and glamour of its art and literature, classical antiquity produces household statistics that make the heart sink. Greek and Roman girls were normally married in their mid-teens to men twice their age.
Bound to repeat it: The late American empire? If a present-day American suddenly warped backwards in time, he would likely find the streets of ancient Rome, during the city's cosmopolitan zenith, a comfortable enough place to visit.
Light Beams to Color Rome Column April 10, 2008 -- The Trajan Column, one of Rome's most famous monuments, will be shown next year under a totally new light.
Ancient statue discovered in Rome Rome, 9 April (AKI) - A fragment of an ancient Roman equestrian statue that once adorned the Colosseum has been found during excavations near the world famous Italian landmark.
Lifestyles of the Rich and Imperious in Rome April 10, 2008 · Lovers of ancient Rome have another treasure to behold as the home where future Roman Emperor Augustus lived in about 30 BC is now open to the public.
Limit the number of tourists to Pompeii, says expert 17 March (AKI) - Pompeii, one of Italy's most popular ancient attractions, should limit the number of visitors and be used for special events, according to a proposal from a leading tourism official.
Battle of Actium in 31 B.C. changed the world Washington, March 31: The Battle of Actium in 31 B.C. between Mark Antony and Cleopatra against spurned former ally Octavian, led to the eventual end of the Roman Republic, thus changing the world.
Houston museum shows latest Pompeii relics - Thursday, March 20, 2008 "The worst disaster of the ancient world preserved such amazing art." So says Frances Marzio, strolling among remains from one of history's most famous volcanic eruptions.
After 1,500 years as a ruin,Circus Maximus to be restored It still bears its thrilling ancient name, and the antique ruins on the Palatine Hill, the heart of ancient Rome and home of the Caesars, still gaze down upon it.
Ancient Roman Emperor Augustus first house opens in Rome Italian experts believe the rooms, found in the 1970s below the ruins of Augustus's sprawling imperial palace, were part of a smaller house where he lived when he was still just Julius Caesar's adoptive son Octavian and not Rome's first emperor.
Ancient Roman Temple Reconstructed Experts have digitally reconstructed one of Rome's earliest major temples, the Temple of Apollo, built by the first Roman emperor, Augustus. The temple dates to 28 B.C., and its ruins stand adjacent to the emperor's imperial palaces on the city's famous Palatine Hill.
The overlooked wonders of Italy's Ostia Antica Sitting on the top row of the ancient arena, I scan the ruins of Ostia Antica, letting my imagination take me back 2,000 years to the days when this was ancient Rome's seaport, a thriving commercial center of 60,00 people.
Appian Way blighted by voracious property developers It was the first modern road in the world, shooting like an arrow from the Porta Capena in Rome's city walls all the way to Brindisi on the Adriatic coast, more than 500km away.
Tourists 'stripping ancient Rome bare' Archaeologists said that Trajan's Forum, in the heart of the city's classical ruins, had been stripped of all the fragments of statues and shards of amphorae that adorned the site until recently. |
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Correcting a Colorblind View of the Treasures of Antiquity
By Blake Gopnik Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, May 4, 2008; M01
The statues of ancient Greece and Rome are masterpieces.
Here's an idea for making them better: We should equip every gallery of ancient art with paints, in red and green and even gold, then set museum-goers loose on all their sculptures. How else are we going to convince ourselves that those pure-white marbles of Venus and Caesar, or those dark-green bronzes of athletes and Apollo, look better when their surfaces are tarted up?
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For nearly two centuries, some scholars have been arguing that white-on-white and green-on-green were not the true tints of antiquity. The Parthenon in Athens and the Forum in Rome might have been almost gaudy. But such ideas have never trickled down, or even sideways: In Hollywood today, but also in many experts' talk, the ancient world comes off as monochrome. In Ridley Scott's "Gladiator," when Russell Crowe strides down the streets of ancient Rome, circa A.D. 180, he's backed up by the proper complement of bronzes and marbles. All of them are green or white.
A flood of recent exhibitions has set out to put their color back. Over the past five years, audiences in Amsterdam, Athens, Basel, Boston, Copenhagen, Istanbul, Munich and Rome have been treated to a bright new image of Greek and Roman art. Now, with an exhibition called "The Color of Life" at the Getty Villa in Malibu, it's Californians' turn.
One of the greatest statues of Augustus, first emperor of Rome, has come down to us in marble. His carved armor and rippling robe meld into the symphony of cream on cream we all expect. At the Getty, a reconstruction of the piece, retouched with colors based on tints that still cling here and there to the original, has the great Augustus togaed in a cherry red that matches his lips. His tunic's touched with blue. What he's lost in elegance he's regained in verve.
A carved portrait of Caligula, the mad Roman emperor who died in the year 41, looks blank-eyed and remote in the marble that's survived. His reconstruction, computer-carved into another block of marble and then painted, now has nice pink cheeks, red lips and brown eyes and hair. The insane leader who declared himself a god now comes across as the Roman next door.
More than anyone else, German scholar Vinzenz Brinkmann has led the way in putting color back into our view of ancient statues. After 25 years of scientific study, he says he finds it "very hard to imagine" that they could have ever started life as monochromes. Lifelike sculptures were the pride and joy of Greek and Roman art, so why would artists have missed out on using paint to liven them up further?
* * * Fade to White
We haven't always thought of classical antiquity as dull and dingy. In the later Middle Ages, artists naturally depicted the rich culture of ancient Rome as full of gold and lavish ornament. Aesthetic fancy filled in for a lack of evidence of what ancient artists had actually made.
It was the evidence that screwed things up, once it came along. In the years to either side of 1500, more and more ancient sculpture began to be recovered. Centuries of burial or neglect had bleached the marbles, and greened the bronzes, beyond their makers' recognition. But it was those altered colors that became the model for how the ancient world had looked, and for what all new sculpture ought to look like.
By 1764, Johann Joachim Winckelmann, often named as the founder of art history, could look at the classical marbles that had come down to him and definitively pronounce that "the whiter a body is, the more beautiful it is as well."
That view went on to dominate. It led Lincoln in his Memorial to come out white on white.
It also touched the modernist opponents of historic styles. The stripped-down Getty Center in Los Angeles -- head office for the organizers of the Malibu color show -- is faced in gleaming travertine. Richard Meier, its designer, once declared that "white is the most wonderful color of all, because within it one can find every color of the rainbow."
Tell that to Praxiteles.
* * * Color Values
"Oh Praxiteles, which are your greatest marbles?" a fan once asked that famous sculptor, who pioneered the art of female nudes in Athens around 350 B.C. The artist -- or so the story went in ancient times -- answered that he preferred those works whose stone had been colored over by Nicias, a leader in the art of realistic panel painting. So much for the ancients' taste for sculpture's white perfection.
"For the Greeks it was all about mimesis," says Getty curator Kenneth Lapatin, using the Greek word for realistic imitation. Beauty depended on it.
"If only I could shed my beauty and assume an uglier aspect/The way you would wipe color off a statue," says Helen of Troy, in lines written by Euripides in 412 B.C. For Greeks of that era, not only were sculptures assumed to be painted, but also if you stripped their paint you stripped their good looks, too.
Nineteenth-century experts took a new look at such texts, and at newly unearthed colored objects and murals, and rethought their image of ancient art. Some artists followed suit: They sculpted neoclassical nudes, then tinted them in living color, or painted scenes of what a bright-hued antiquity might have looked like.
And then, for most of the 20th century, nothing.
Most artists, more interested in modern life than dead antiquity, simply lost interest in the issue. Those who stuck with classical figures often came to cater to a Fascist taste for white triumphalism.
In academia, not much new evidence emerged to keep the topic hot. Some of the earlier evidence actually faded away: Colors that had once been seen on newly excavated objects were bleached by exposure and overzealous cleaning. On top of that, classicists came to prefer issues of social history to questions of aesthetics and taste -- which meant that what an artwork had originally looked like came to matter less and less.
That was how things stood in 1981 when Brinkmann was a graduate student working on toolmarks in Greek marbles. He realized that the special lighting used to spot where a chisel had once passed could also reveal where ancient colors had been. Even where the paint itself had absolutely vanished, it had left behind patterns of "weathering relief" -- areas of marble that the elements had etched more or less deeply, depending on the kind of pigments that had once protected them.
If you looked closely enough, with scientific equipment and rigor, many sculptures started to look like a coloring book just waiting to be painted in. Lab analysis of the microscopic grains of pigment that had survived here or there on many sculptures, along with close examination of the faded tints that had survived intact on another few, supplied the colors of the paint. Coupling that research with other information about statues' vanished hues -- classical vases and murals that depict sculptures being painted; new readings of ancient texts and the color notes of early archaeologists -- led experts to achieve a larger picture of the coloring of ancient art.
Painted reconstructions of that art, commissioned by Brinkmann and others, are meant to start to bring that image home to all the rest of us.
There are signs it's working.
The Boston show called "Gods in Color: Painted Sculpture of Classical Antiquity," which closed a few months ago, had visitors "lining up on the stairs" to get in, according to curator Susanne Ebbinghaus -- not a situation they're particularly used to at Harvard's Arthur M. Sackler Museum of classical and Asian art.
All of us "need help visualizing colored antiquity," Ebbinghaus says, as well as help in fighting the cliches of an all-white classical world. The Sackler show provided that. Its reconstructions depend almost as much on conjecture as on science, she admits. But they still get us closer to the ancient masterpieces than gleaming marble ever could. |
