Redux
Return To Rome
This is the start of our last week together. Most of you will be giving your solo presentation (except for the intrepid few who did so last week). Today is about regrouping after your three day weekend adventures and easing back into our earlier routine. To this end we visit a much under appreciated museum and consider how later generations adapted and re used earlier monumental buildings.
Readings
Claridge, p. 391-396, 481-483.
Solo Presentation Topics
(a) How does Michelangelo continue to shape our experience of Diocletian’s baths?
(b) Why put Euripides’ Medea on a sarcophagus?
(c) What was the cult of Mithras and with whom was it popular?
(d) Who used curse tablets and why?
(e) what was the “right” way to praise a dead woman?
Logistics
Today we meet in the later afternoon instead of the morning. I strongly encourage you to use the morning to catch up on laundry, overdue blog posts, and put the finishing touches on your presentations.
Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri
Museo Nazionale Romano delle Terme
THemes
Reuse, replication and display; the power of words: magic and beyond; revisiting lists and the protohistoric past (re-enforcing themes previously met at the Capitoline Museum and the Villa Guilia).
Blog Prompt
Focus your post on just one museum object or at most two (say a compare/contrast). What about it reminded you of things we’ve seen earlier on the trip and why? Does it speak to any of the following themes: militarism, the role of women, the role of religion, social hierarchies, other themes.
Gallery
Rome via Brooklyn 