Continuing on in Gregoriano Profano.

Here are Odysseus and Menelaus going to do some international relations in Troy. Youth with Sturgis
Symposium

In the Vatican, be sure to pause at the top of the stairs as you pass from Chiaramonti to Pio Clementino. The Laocoon will still be there. And while everyone else looks right to the view of the city. You look left at the Tomb of Scipio Barbaratus. Straight ahead is the "so-called Ennius." Here is a glimpse of people rushing to photograph the city and mostly ignore the tomb.

Hello Vatican. This is what I find to be the easiest way to access the classical collections. Start with room 17, Gregoriano Profano (turn right when you go through the entrance).

Here we have a nice unswept floor mosaic. Two great reliefs: one of Mendander (amazing to see his portraiture in miniature) and, even better the relief with Medea and the daughters of Pelias! (Cc @rmavirumquecano)

And the third reason I went to Rome was to see the Mausoleum of Augustus. The tour does a really great job of going through the phases of the site over history.

I breakfasted while looking at it. There is a lot happening outside. The entrance is monumental. In the outside ring, you can walk around and see the construction at various points (most of the marble and travertine casings had been stolen over the ages. Also lots of bricks.)

The third floor of the Palazzo Massimo houses the very famous Livia's Garden and the astonishing reconstruction of the floor plan of a domus and some other great examples of painting.

But first we start with this nice mosaic. The label doesn't say Medusa, but I see snakey coils. The Garden of Livia.

Three floors of careful layout await you at the Palazzo Massimo. (Also, no crowds).

The statement is clear from the entance: this is a museum interested in juxtaposed similarity, not contrast. We have an Athena with a gorgon looking at a Medusa mosaic.

This thread floors 1-2 The so called Tivoli General. A lovely instance of hybridity (veristic portraiture and heroic body).

October in Rome means that the Palatine / Forum is neither crowded nor too hot. The green pass check point seemed long, but once inside there were vast swaths of loneliness, particularly on the Palatine.

I liked this fallen tree and how it got a plaque of explanation. & Stadium Any reader of Augustan Poetry (well. Propertius and Ovid) knows that the temple of Apollo and portico of the danaids lived in their minds rent free. Well, I guess Ovid had to pay.

Oh, WOW, for the first time in my visits to Rome, the Braccio Nuovo in the Vatican was open. (Which, holy architecture, is gorgeous and a simulation of what the effect of the sculpture program in the Augustan Forum may have been like). So here are lots of Prima Porta pictures. More Augustus. This time of his ankles and drapery.

Montemartini. Where Ara Pacis makes it hard to see the top panels of its centerpiece, this museum has walkways galore, but only for the abled.

Peperino is such an interesting material. Here a mother nurses a child and holds another by the hand. Here is the "Togato Barberini" I got the image of the back to shoe how this wasn't meant to be seen from all sides. Also, I took a Screencast of my camera. Notice that it thought it was seeing three heads. Good job, sculptor!

If you know, you know. The best museum layout in Rome is Montemartini. Housed inside a powerstation, the antiquities juxtapose their construction with hat of massive iron machines.

Surprise! The Colori dei Romani exhibition was still on. I thought it had closed earlier. First the colors exhibition:

These were some of the best didadicts I can remember. Clearly, whoever wrote them has a passion and can tell interesting stories about stone patterns. Note the infixed shells in the second image and the sine waves in the fourth.

The second of three reasons I came to Rome was to see the newly reopened Domus Aurea. Since I TA'd for Tony Boyle and he described seeing it (using a slide projector, lol) I've longed toas well. But it has always been closed. Until now.

A lively animated history opens the visit. To note: it is cold inside. An obvious advantage in Rome. Second, more than I'd ever have guessed from a site diagram, the house LOVES angles and it is huge. There are so many polygonal spaces! And the decorations are superb. I'll mostly be just posting pictures in this thread.

A #Medusa resources thread!

These are some of the online resources I used in my Medusa lecture. The main idea was on reclamation vs exploitation of the myth.

I started with the Theogony and discussed Gorgons, M's location, and Perseus decapitating her. Then we looked at Ovid's version from Met. 4. Change in location, role of Minerva, debate about whether Minerva transforms Medusa "for her own protection."

My #Mythology class has a strong reception angle this semester. The premise is I give the primary sources and they engage. I don't tell them what others have said or what sources to use.

The reward? An amazing discussion about Cream's "Tales of Brave Ulysses"

Stay for #Buffy First two lines:

Students connected the idea of "leaden winter" to the ages of man and to Demeter's famine and to Thrinacia.

Violence of sun=eating the cattle

Trans: you thought the famine would kill you, and so you ate the cattle