Ah, amore!

Roman-era couple held hands for 1,500 years: Archaeologists believe the pair was buried in a position of mutual adoration

The skeletal remains of a Roman-era couple reveal the pair has been holding hands for 1,500 years.

Italian archaeologists say the man and woman were buried at the same time between the 5th and 6th century A.D. in central-northern Italy. Wearing a bronze ring, the woman is positioned so she appears to be gazing at her male partner.

"We believe that they were originally buried with their faces staring into each other. The position of the man's vertebrae suggests that his head rolled after death," Donato Labate, the director of the excavation at the archaeological superintendency of Emilia-Romagna, told Discovery News.

An ancient, enduring triumph

Rome's Pantheon may have been built as a massive sundial researchers reveal: It is one of the best preserved buildings from the Roman world, a 2,000-year-old testament to the immense power and wealth of the empire

But mystery has always surrounded what lies behind the unusual design of the Pantheon, a giant temple in the heart of Rome that was built by the Emperor Hadrian.

Now experts have come up with an intriguing theory – that the temple acted as a colossal sun dial, with a beam of light illuminating its enormous entrance at the precise moment that the emperor entered the building.

The use of the term sundial seems a bit imprecise. It isn't built to mark the hours, etc., but rather to illuminate the entrance on certain occasions. However, it's an achievement in dramatic lighting worthy of the famed Roman engineering. What can I say, they may have had to go conquer people for their culture, but they did engineering better than just about anyone in the ancient world.

Via Medieval News.

Interesting puzzle

Forma Urbis Romae fragments drawn by
Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778)

and I'd love to at least metaphorically wring the necks of the mediaeval Romans who destroyed it....

Shattered Marble Map Mystifies Puzzlers

An unintentional jigsaw puzzle made of marble, over two millennia old, and missing most of its pieces has defied scholars and puzzle-solvers for centuries. Measuring 60 x 43 feet and carved in the 3rd century CE, the Severan Marble Plan of Rome captured the groundplan of Roman architecture in minute detail, even down to staircases, but only 10 to 15 percent of the intricately carved map has been found. Excavations for Rome’s new subway line this year may soon unearth further pieces to the puzzle, according to an article from Discovery News.

Roughly on a scale of 1:240, the Severan Marble Plan consisted of 150 slabs mounted on what was once the interior wall of the Temple of Peace (now the exterior wall of the Church of Saints Cosmas and Damian). During the Middle Ages, the Plan was slowly destroyed, parts of it ground up and repurposed into building materials, pieces broken and re-broken over centuries. Some pieces just fell to the base of the wall and were buried by time. The holes where the slabs were once anchored to the wall are still visible.

And so, began the end

24 August 410: the date it all went wrong for Rome?

Tuesday marks the 1,600th anniversary of one of the turning points of European history - the first sack of Imperial Rome by an army of Visigoths, northern European barbarian tribesmen, led by a general called Alaric.

It was the first time in 800 years that Rome had been successfully invaded. The event had reverberations around the Mediterranean.

Jerome, an early Christian Church Father, in a letter to a friend from Bethlehem - where he happened to be living - wrote that he burst into tears upon hearing the news.

"My voice sticks in my throat, and, as I dictate, sobs choke me. The city which had taken the whole world was itself taken," he said.

Although Alaric was a Christian ransacking a Christian city, there was an ominous feeling that the world structure built by pagan Rome was disintegrating.

The Roman Empire survived for a few more decades, and later other armies sacked the city again, but this was the date which marked the beginning of the end of Rome's grandeur.

Centuries later, the city which had at the height of its power boasted a population of more than a million people, was reduced to a lawless, ruined village of no more than 30,000 residents

It's a grim reminder that even superpowers have their weaknesses, and a limit to their glory. [But don't tell that to the Tea Party.]

I am Spartacus!

If you enjoy classic movies and ancient history, you'll like this Pepsi commercial:



[Spartacus being one of my favourite classic movies...]

Thanks to M over at the World History Blog for this one.

Hmmm...

Gladiators to ‘fight’ again at Rome’s Colosseum: Fights will be serious and historical — not a ‘Disneyland-like attraction’

I don't think they'll be able to capture the brutality of the games, much like a Civil War or mediaeval re-enactment just can't quite capture death, plague, and the general tendency for life through much of our history to be 'nasty, brutish, and short' as Thomas Hobbes asserted man's natural state to be.