Rome

The Roman empire is the most intriguing part of history to me. While we know a lot about Rome and its culture, there is so much we do not know. The unknown and the possibilites of what you may learn is what is so intriguing about it. When most people think of Rome, they instantly go to the gladiators and the fights. While this is all so interesting, why don’t we hear more of the art that surrounds Rome?

Looking at artifacts, statues, and art from Ancient Rome, we see grey colorless statues. In this module I learned that many of these amazing art forms were once filled with color. One scientist thought to use a black light, and uncovered a great amount of details in statues that you can’t see with the naked eye. The level of details placed in these artifacts is astonishing. Learning about Rome in high school, we were never told about the details that laid underneath the age of these items. In the Antefix with head of Silenus we see many details that we would never see today. Such as animal paws tied to his throat and his greatly detailed face just shows one example of how Roman art is different from today’s.

The first thing I think about when I hear gladiators and beasts is the movie Troy. The fighting to their death for the amusement of others is utterly disturbing yet so interesting at the same time. In Beard’s pod cast she explained that although sometimes they did have lions and elephants to fight, they mostly stuck with bulls and less treacherous animals. She also explained that gladiators were worshiped members of society and were hardly used for fighting because they were valuable.

I am left with some empty thoughts from this module and Ancient Rome. If this is true what Beard says, why is it pushed so heavily on us to learn about the battling and killing of these beasts? Is it to try to draw attention to the Roman empires so that we learn more about it? Or is it just a simple misconception that has stuck throughout the years? I unfortunatley was unable to watch the videos that were in step 4 of this module, as they kept coming up as an error. The spectacles of Blood article was very interesting. Although hard to read I believe I understood most of what was there. However, I did take the time to Alison Futrell’s chapter 3, and did learn a bit more.