THE LARGEST MOSAIC OF THE ENTIRE ROMAN CIVILIZATION

When the Romans entered in contact with the Greeks after the Punic wars, they became attracted also by the mosaic art. The first mosaics of antiquity were created at the time of Alexander the Great and were made out of river stones. They had an irregular but polished appearance and normally represented hunting scenes.Once Rome conquered Greece, in the slave market of Delos, where thousands of slaves were traded every day, many slaves found their way towards Rome and were employed by the Romans as mosaicists.Rome and Ostia with their huge thermal baths complexes displayed once very sophisticated mosaic scenes in the floors of their public buildings.However, an example of private use of mosaic is the Mosaic of Alexander, found in the House of the Faun in Pompei in the 1800s during the excavations of the city buried under the ashes of the Vesuvius in 79 AD.
The mosaic depicts a battle between the armies of Alexander the Great and Darius III of Persia and measures 5.82 x 3.13m (19 ft x 10 ft 3in): a total of around 1,5 million tesserae form the composition of what is still considered the larged mosaic coming from the ancient world.The work may be considered the copy of lost panel painting depicting the battle Of Issos and attributed to the painter Philoxenos of Eretria.
The portrait of Alexander is one of his most famous. Alexander's breastplate depicts Medusa, the famous Gorgon. He is portrayed swooping into battle at the left, on his famous horse, Bucephalos, and focusing his gaze on the Persian leader.Darius is shown frightened, riding on a chariot and stretching his hand as a gesture of asking help or because he may have thrown a javelin.What makes the mosaic an almost three dimensional work is the cast of the shadow on the main subjects of the mosaics and on the horses as well. Shadows are rendered with sophistication and account for the advanced knowledge of space that the artists who made this work had.Furthermore, the idea of space is enhanced by the foreshortened representation of the battling warriors.Alexander's eyes are made bigger to express his ferocity and to convey fear on his enemies. Worth noticing the dramatic intensity of the battle that shows horses and riders falling at the clashing of the armors. It really seems to be part of the battle when looking at this masterpiece and it's worth a visit at the Arcaheological Museum of Naples where it is permanently exhibited or at the House of the Faun in Pompei where since 2005 a copy made by the National laboratory of Italian Mosaics of Ravenna has been set up on the floor to show how that room looked like two thousand years ago.

AN EXAMPLE OD INTEGRATION OF THE ETRUSCANS INTO THE ROMAN CIVILIZATION

With the conquest of Vei in 396 BC, Rome begins to incorporate into his power the Etruscan lands and people.Romans have been always in contact with the Etruscans who lived on the other side of the Tiber river and in the North of Rome. The history of Rome has been characterized by almost 200 years in which Etruscan rulers such as the Tarquins imposed Etruscan customs in Rome.On the other hand, an example on the progressive assimilation of Roman customs by the Etruscans is the famous bronzed statue called "The Orator" which is dated second century BCE. The statue is indeed a mix of Etruscan and Roman instances. First of all, the material used to create the statue, bronze, is a peculiar example of Etruscan craftmanship. Suffice it to say that Etruscans used two main materials for their free standing statues: the terracotta and the bronze. Secondly, the toga in which he is dressed recalls the toga of the Apollo of Veii and is another Etruscan component that the Romans got from the Etruscans.In addition, the boots worn by this man, who seems to have been a magistrate in ancient Rome, are Etruscan and were adopted by the Romans under the name of Calcei. The hem of the toga presents a carved inscription that reveals the idenntity of the magistrate: the Etruscan inscription says:"For Aulus Metellus, son of Vel and Vesia. Statue dedicated in recognition of his service to the public". What is indeed Roman in this almost entirely Etruscan work is the gesture of the adlocutio which refers to the act of speaking in public by a magistrate and the veristic expression of the man's face.Aulus Metellus is represented in his mid 40s with wrinkles on his face and with his hairs well trimmed.The portrait is a commemorative work and is in line with the Roman habit of displaying funerary portraits made out of wax masks in their houses ( Ius Imaginum) and brought in procession during public funerals as well. His expression conveys the idea of Metellus coming from an old and illustrious family that was in that period subject to the process of Romanization. In conclusion, the statue shows a sort of "new Roman citizen" who is not coming directly from Rome but has been naturalized during this process of integration of the Italic families into the new rules set up by Rome.

THE POWER OF THE CONSULS IN THE ROMAN CONSTITUTION

After having expelled the Etruscan kings, Rome underwent a revolution in the organization of its political power.Roman never tolerated to have the supreme power in the hands of only one person, and split the supreme prerogative among two officials: the consuls. Rome's government had features deriving from other forms of government: it seems to me that the two consuls do not only recall the monarchy but, more specifically, the Spartan dyarchy. The senate reminds the aristocratic assemblies and the assemblies of the comitia centuriata, are the expression of the will of the people gathered to form an army.Consuls had extensive capacities in peacetime (administrative, legislative and judicial), and in wartime often held the highest military command. Consuls also read auguries, an essential step before leading armies into the field.Two consuls were elected each year, serving together, each with veto power over the other's actions. Consuls were elected by the Comitia Centuriata in the campus Martius and reflected their election based on the people organized in centuriae, that is to say on the basis of their contribution to the army.To be a consul was considered the highest level of the Roman magistracy and of the cursus honorum that started with the Quaestura and the Praetura.The consuls were also the leaders of the legions and had the imperium which is the military command exercised on the army outside the pomerium.However, to contain the risk of dying in battle, normally only one consul led the legions in battle , while the other remained in power in rome. If one of the consul died or was removed from his office, it was replaced by another magistrate called consul suffectus who served for the remainder of the term.

HOW THE GEOGRAPHY OF ROME INFLUENCED ITS HISTORY

The city of Rome was built on the left bank of the Tiber river during the iron age for a number of important reasons. First of all the left side of the Tiber was more developed than the right side, in that it contains two important roads: the Via Salaria, that allowed the transportation of the salt to the North of the Italian peninsula. As a matter of fact the salt was used to preserve food and, in the republican age to pay the soldiers, practice that gave birth to the word " salary" that is still used today in English.Furthermore,the left side was flanked by another important road, the Via Campana and allowed the Romans to be in contact with the Greeks of the south of Italy, long time before that the Appian way was built.
The geography of Rome was also influenced by its island, the Tiberinian Island that allowed the Romans to connect it to both sides of the Tiber by two bridges during the Republican age,the Cestius and the Fabricius bridge.On the other hand, a little bit at the south of the Island, the water bed of the Tiber was very low and people and animals could cross the other side of the river without the need of a bridge.
The first inhabitants of Rome settled on the left side of the river because from the Palatine and the Capitol hill they could control the traffic of goods and ships.the First city dwellers used these hills also to defend themselves from the attacks coming from other hills and from the river itself.For all this reasons in antiquity Rome's geographical position was better than the geographical position of Athens. In fact, Rome was not too exposed to the attacks from the sea, since it is far from the mouth of the Tiber 18 miles.Moreover, the major filter of Rome was the creation of its first colony, the castrum of Ostia, that was founded in the fourth century BCE to stop eventual attacks coming from the sea. Athens, instead, faces directly the sea; its port, the Piraeus, was connected by walls to the city, elements that instead of making Athens safer, made it more exposed to the attacks of the Persians first and of the Spartans later.

ROME SIGHTING: DO WE KNOW WHERE THE ENGLISH WORD MISTER COMES FROM?

Every language in the world has a number of such popular words that they are used several time a day. One of this word is the word "Mister".This word before belonging to the latin it was an Etruscan expression and is connected with Servius Tullius.Outside of Rome there is the tomb Francois of Vulci that belonged to an Etruscan aristocratic family:its frescoes, however, are preserved in Rome in the residence of the cardinal Albani, who detached the frescoes from the tomb in the 1700s and wanted to have them inside his mansion. The frescoes show the epic war between some Etruscan aristocrats. The panels show Caele and Aule Vibenna who murder a man called Tarchna (maybe identified as Tarquinius Priscus) and help Macstarna march to conquer Rome.The fresco episodes are confimed by Livy who in the first book describes the assassination of Lucumo, that is to say the first Etruscan king of Rome, Tarquinius Priscus. Scholars have identified as Macstarna the figure of Servius Tullius, sixth king of Rome. The name Macstarna is a very interesting one because it gave birth to the word Magister (whose root is the word Magis) and developed into the English word Master and Mister,and it means a "person who has authority". Another source that can confirm that Mastarna can be identified as Servius Tullius was the famous speech of the emperor Claudius who in the year 51 AD spoke in the Senate on the importance of the Etruscan traditions that Macstarna was a nickname of Servius. His speech is still preserved in the bronzed tablets of Lyon (Tabulae Lionensis).

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE AUGURS IN ROME

The writer Livy, at the moment of introducing the second king of Rome Numa Pompilius in I. 18, describes the ceremony of appointment of Numa as new king after the ritual performed by an augur. The augurs were important in ancient Rome because they were an inheritance from the Etruscan civilization and had the role of interpreting the will of gods by studying the flight of birds. An episode in which the Romans used birdwatching to derive good or bad omens was when Romulus and Remus observed the flight of the vultures from the Palatine and from the Aventine.As it happened with the Pontifical college, at the beginning of the republican age the patricians held the office fo themselves only; by 300 BC the office of augur was open top the plebeians too. Augurs are often represented in the Etruscan tombs and in some Roman reliefs with their typical curved staff called lituus. With the lituus they used to delimit the area in which a temple could be built but also they could see if the omen was good or not. Taking auspices and asking the gods about good or bad signs was part of the broader idea of the Pax deorum, in which the ancient community asked the favors of the Gods for its daily activity, from sailing to trade in a foreign land to the choice of the right moment to begin a war.And again Livy describes the role of a famous augur who lived under Tarquinius Priscus: when Tarquinius wanted to increase the number of the equestrian centuries, Navius opposed him declaring that the king should have not taken this decision, because the omens were not propitious. As Tarquinius did not believe in Navius divination powers, he asked the augur, as a proof of his powers, to cut a stone with a razor. Navius did cut the stone with the razors and after this event the power of this priesthood dramatically raised in Rome.

THE PONTIFICAL COLLEGE IN ANCIENT ROME

Like Livy, I am fascinated by the etymology of some Latin words and by their semantic development. I have chosen to analyze the term " Pontifex" to have an idea of the most important religious priest in ancient Rome. In the kings' age the King was at the same time Pontifex Maximus but in the republican age this religious component of the Roman civilization was mostly assigned to the Patricians.The Pontifex maximus lived in the Domus Publica and was the main expert of the Religious rituals.At the beginning of the Roman empire Augustus merged within his attributes this function and the famous statue called " Augustus of Via Labicana" located in the Vatican museum, shows him with a long toga and with the veiled head performing religious duties. What is however interesting is that the name pontifex is connected with the Sublican bridge, that was the oldest bridge built in early Rome to connect the Etruscan and the Roman territories. The etymology of Pontifex really means " Bridge maker " and probably stands as an original duty of the Pontifex to be the guardian of the bridge.One of the religious functions of the Sublican bridge (whose etymology is Oscan and means "bridge made of beams") was the throwing into the the Tiber of puppets called "Argei" who were the memory of the human sacrifices made at the beginning of the iron age. In addition, the name "Pontifex" is today one of the nine attributes of the Pope of the Roman Catholic church and this testifies the desire of the Church to be considered the heir of the Roman civilization.

DO WE HAVE ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE OF ROMULEAN ROME?

Livy in the first book of his History (I,7) writes that Romulus, after having killed Remus "fortified the Palatine Hill". The act of securing a hill was provided in the ancient world through the construction of a wall. Until the 1990s all the scholars knew that Rome had originally two walls: the so called " Servian Walls", that were built after the sack of the Gauls in the year 384 BC using the Tufa from the already conquered Veii, and the Aurelian walls built in the year 270 AD, almost at the end of the Roman civilization. Excavations carried out by the Professor Andrea Carandini ( Who was also my Professor at the University of Rome) revealed that also the Romulean Rome had a wall. As a matter of fact Carandini discovered remains of a wall between the Roman tabernae located in the Via Nova of the Roman Forum, and the Arch of Titus.The wall was built in ashlar masonry and was composed of Cappellaccio tufa blocks,which is a stone that comes from the quarries of the Alban Hills.
Moreover, as common in Livy though,the Patavinian author describes two versions of the death of Romulus: the first king of Rome may have been taken away up to heaven by a cloud while parading his troops in the Campus Martius or he may have been killed by the Roman senators.Ancient writers such as Festus and Dionisius of Halicarnassus used to refer to the Lapis Niger as the place where Romulus may have been executed by the Senators he had just created. The Lapis Niger is indeed a fascinating monument shrouded by mystery.It is located in front of the steps of the Curia Julia in the Forum and is marked by a fenced area that has a grayer and darker colored pavement. It is also composed by an underground section with a three sided altar; a stone is part of the Lapis and contains the earliest know inscription in Rome. The inscription is carved with a zig zag path recalling the way in which the oxen plows the land and it is called a bustrofedic inscription.The inscription is a lex sacra and warns everybody to not violate that place,under penalty of being sacrificed to the Gods. During the excavation of the Forum in the early 1900s by Giacomo Boni, also a fragment of a cup with the name "rex" inscribed was found. But all this does not tell us much about Romulus at all and in this second piece of evidence, the literary tradition can not be confirmed by the archaeological discoveries.