Day 67.

Well this has been an interesting day. I started off by walking to the “local” market, a claustrophobic place filled with people. Needless to say, I left very quickly. And why shouldn’t I? The Capitoline museum was way more fun. I also snuck down to the mithradeum at San Clemente – the labyrinth of rooms down there is amazing! Too see another mithradeum look here.
Things have been interesting back at the institute as well, I was called to a spontaneous Latin lecture in the middle of my very hasty dinner. However the power went down after about an hour, something that wasn’t very much to worry about back then – my food is slowly melting now however, six hours later. It’s also been very interesting to see how people get paralyzed by the loss of electricity. We always spend a few hours at the balcony drinking wine eating but now nobody knew what to talk about since we had no power…

Anyway that is why these pictures are a little bit late. I hope that you enjoy then none the less.



The dying Gaul is a classical motif. It is connected to the Guals being defeated by Pergamun in the 3rd century BC.



Didn’t anyone tell baby Hercules not to play with snakes?



Thanks God this is from late antiquity. The technique is called Opus sectilum and you find further examples of this here from day 24.



A mosaic from the villa of Hadrianus (now in the Capitoline museum).



A statue. I cannot quite remember how the museum interpreted it unfortunately. It could be an Amazon as one breast is left uncovered, but they normally have short dresses. Artemis would be a good guess, but she also wear a short dress and there are normally animals in the composition. Venus should be all naked so it's probably not her and it can't be either Athena nor Hera. Hygienia is possible, but it doesn't look like her and her attributes are missing (snake and a vessel). The nine muses are normally all covered up and carry the instruments of the arts. It could of course be a minor goddess or simply a mortal female, something that always make those interpretations very difficult.