Catholic history yesterday, Roman today. Most of what we saw today was built around 2000 years ago. Rome was in its heyday from 0AD to 200AD, after building for 500 years and before decaying for 300 years. After the collapse of the Empire, we enter the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, then the Renaissance as we picked it up in Florence a couple of days ago.
I will let the pictures do the talking. We put in long days of walking and discovering, then a couple of hours going through photos and trying to write a somewhat accurate and coherent blog. Nights are short, then we do it all over again! Needless to say, the Colosseum was even more than we expected. To realize where we stood was where 50,000 at a time would gather to watch what has been estimated to be, in total, 500,000 people and 1,00,000 animals die for entertainment is sobering.
Left, Constantine built this arch in 312AS to commemorate the new Roman religion—Christianity. Right, a few of the marble seats were reconstructed on the far end of the Collosseum. After Rome’s fall, the Collosseum was stripped of all its marble and iron brackets holding the marble on. Two earthquakes collapsed a good share of it as well. Indeed, only around 1/3 of it remains.
The Roman Forum was only rediscovered in the 15th century. It had all but silted in for the last 1000 years, but that indeed saved many of the huge buildings and temples that hadn’t been ransacked or destroyed as the Roman Empire collapsed. We were told that Rome had over 30,000 gods. Plenty of opportunity for temples. Also, as emperors came and went, more buildings were built, either to house them or to honor them. Also, as the Roman Empire grew, successful campaigns were celebrated with Arches. It goes on and on, then you do this for almost 1000 years and things get real busy. How the archeologists unpack all of this information is beyond me.
Left, this arch commemorates the defeat of Jerusalem and the Jews in 64AD. Note, in the middle of the arch, the Menorah symbolizing the destruction of the Jews. The Diaspora followed; the Jews did not have a country again for almost 2000 years. Right, this was a Roman temple, but when it was unearthed, they build a Catholic church on the inside!
The Pantheon is to architecture as the Sistine Chapel ceiling is to art. Here is a building built so perfectly by the Romans around 0AD; it has remained unchanged, undamaged and in use ever since. No building ever built, or ever will be built can and will claim this honor. Their understanding of construction engineering and the use of concrete was amazing. What we saw in the interior of the Pantheon is essentially what the Romans viewed after it was built. All anyone has done to it is give it a good scrubbing every few hundred years.
Ah, finally. In addition to all the tourists, (as I mentioned before, we are seeing probably 1/10th of the summer crowds), there are still people selling pashmina’s umbrellas, postcards, refrigerator magnets, etc. But, also you see the street performers. These guys tore the house down, huge crowd around them, everyone taking pictures and tossing coins in their basket. They weren’t moving and the lower guy wasn’t sweating. What do you think?
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