Rome via Brooklyn

What comes to mind at the word HUGE, is of course the fragments of the statue of Constantine, and even the hugeness of those pieces paled in comparison to seeing the true to life recreation of it later during the trip. It was something that no photo can prepare you for, and really made me feel the sense of my own smallness in comparison.

I was also really struck by the fact that this is the smallest of the hills of Rome, because it still felt so large, even though we noted how much higher and vaster it looked in the architectural model than it did in person. I guess it’s a lesson in how art can distort things, make them look larger than life. Along those lines, when thinking of things that were “average,” I settled on the heads of the emperors. It’s not that I found them average in an artistic sense – they’re beautiful. But reflecting on a room full of average sized heads of average looking men makes the Constantine statue shift in my mind, and reminds me that such glorified depictions of emperors are depictions of their desire to catapult themselves above said averageness.

After the class concluded, my apartment stayed behind in search of a cafe, medieval art, and coins. After getting lost in a maze of contradicting signs and vague directions from security guards, and quenching our thirst and appetites, we finally made it to the room of coins. I wish we had gone there in class, but I understand why we didn’t. Their smallness makes them require such a specific degree of focus, but I love the individual details of each one, and it’s easy to get lost trying to make out the letters or pictures on them.

I like to think about the intimacy that comes with smallness, the way you can feel every detail on a coin between two fingers, and know that someone thousands of years ago did the same. Likewise, it feels special to pay so much attention to something that was so ordinary and unassuming in its time. It reminded me of a quote from the readings from Seneca the Elder, “nothing is more respected than the humble hut of Romulus, even though the Temple of Jupiter shines out above it.”

Personally, I’d take the coins over a 20 million foot tall Constantine any day.