Daily Updates
Week Six: Oct. 31
31 October. Myung-Hee reporting: We took the train out to Rome’s port city of Ostia for the day. The city was abandoned and many of its structures remain today, with lots of wild vegetation around. The site was really pleasant to walk around, and would have been more so if it had been warmer and drier. We started out in the cemetery, where bay trees grow—apparently these particular bay leaves are excellent for seasoning. We saw the Baths of Neptune, theater complex, and an ancient warehouse before Joanna showed us around the Forum Baths. In the afternoon Courtney presented the Temple of Magna Mater, which had a lot of interesting rites associated with it involving castration and getting showered with bulls’ blood. Also interesting were the depictions of famous Greek philosophers on the walls of the latrine in an apartment house with irreverent sayings beneath them. We went down into one of the Mithrea, a cavelike area used to worship Mithras, located under a bath house. We went exploring in the passageways with our flashlights—it was dark and spooky and appropriate for Halloween. We held our Halloween party in the evening on the roof of the Albergo Sole. Costumes: Adam was dolled up as Narcissus with a handmirror and Echo (me) as his constant companion; Brian was Professor Ulrich complete with travel vest, large umbrella, and mannerisms; Matt was Julius Seizure with shaving cream around the mouth; Tori was a drunken Maenad with torn clothing and wild hair; Joanna was the Italian flag; Courtney was an Ionic column with a hair roller on either side of her head and a vertically striped shirt; Sarah had a paper vault over her head and a cross expression—she was a crossvault; Sophia wrapped herself in toilet paper and strips of cloth to be a technicolor Zagreb mummy with Etruscan writing; Katherine was Daphne with leaves around her head; Cordelia was a cinghiali boar with an amazing fur costume she’d made; Maya was a velarium (amphitheater awning) made of a bedsheet; Ariel was a hut urn of cardboard; and Karen was Sfortuna with an unlucky black cat and black shawl. Elizabeth and Professor Ulrich stopped by as Pyramus and Thisbe, carrying a cardboard wall between them. Fun was had by all.
31 October. The day begins in the ancient town of Ostia
31 October. A cremation burial tomb
31 October. Fearless Matt lies down in a massive inhumation burial chamber
31 October. Archaeologists clean the Neptune Mosaic from one of the bath complexes
31 October. A black and white style mosaic
31 October. The theater
31 October. Sarah
31 October. Courtney
31 October. Dramatic masks mounted in marble in the theater
31 October. An elephant mosaic
31 October. A ship and lighthouse mosaic in front of a shipping shop
31 October. Walking through an old grain warehouse
31 October. A tufa column and an overgrown one
31 October. An ornate capital and cornice from the Forum Baths
31 October. Joanna presents the Forum Baths
31 October. The heated wall system: hollow bricks which allow hot air to circulate through the walls; walls reveted in marble
31 October. A close up of the hollow bricks in the wall
31 October. Joanna presents the Forum Baths
31 October. The group demonstrates how an ancient latrine might have worked...
31 October. The Capitolium of Ostia
31 October. Courtney presents the Temple of Magna Mater
31 October. A statue of a Pan playing his pipes outside the shrine to Attis
31 October. In honor of Halloween...
31 October. Mithras about to sacrifice a bull
31 October. The students try out an ancient bar
31 October. A well preserved aedicula facade
31 October. Note the intricate brickwork
31 October. An opus sectile, or inlaid marble floor
31 October. Another lovely floor of opus sectile
31 October. Ariel, always thinking
31 October. Tori: diehard Red Sox fan, even after the recent tragedy
31 October. Inside the pit of the Mithraeum
31 October. Myung-Hee: law breaker extraordinaire, wanted in three European countries
31 October. The female atlases take on the world
31 October. The group dressed up for Halloween
31 October. Narcissus and Echo
31 October. The resident Wild Boar
31 October. Julius Caesar himself: don't be fooled by his angelic face
31 October. An Ionic column even made an appearance
31 October. The Zagreb mummy
31 October. "Are you a barrell vault?" "No, I'm a cross vault"
31 October. Happy Halloween!