Roamin’ through Ancient Rome and Roman Athens, with a visit to Florence and Siena

It’s a sunny golden October morning and the park near our apartment in the Rome neighborhood of  Monti  is full of joggers and dog walkers.  As we pass Domus Aureas (Nero’s golden house), suddenly there it is, ahead of us through the cypress trees, symbol of ancient Rome, enormous, forbidding but forlorn in its emptiness.

As you get a little closer, although it’s the end of October, you can see the endless lines of visitors (those getting tickets, those already with tickets, those with the Rome pass), many snapping photos of the Arch of Constantine. The selfie sticks being sold in 10 different colors would actually fit in well with the rowdy crowd that used to attend Colosseum events.  The plebeians were a wild bunch after all, bringing in their wine (no security control) their lunch, munching on pumpkin seeds (that have been found in drains), throwing whatever they could find at whatever displeased them.

Entering the Colosseum, the audience would receive a shard of broken pottery with their row and seat number.  The events were always free (this was a successful ploy the emperors used to ingratiate themselves to the people) but there was a rigid hierarchy.  The emperor had his box, senators and other nobility were up a little higher, and a little above, the plebeians (commoners) …. And those with no status, women and slaves, sat way up, kind of hidden without a good view of the action.

So you would settle in for the day’s events:  maybe a couple of prisoners battling it out, or gladiators, or a few lions or tigers sacrificed.   You would enter one of the 80 arches, the entrances or exits, that enabled you to leave the theater in record time, around 10 minutes. (Compare that with the Herod Atticus (Herodion) theater in Athens where it can take easily over 20 minutes to exit the upper tier.) Today is hot and sunny and you wonder how the audience could stand all those hours with the sun beating down on the stone and the sand.  But the Romans had an answer for that, a giant canvas called a velarium (meaning “sail”), that stretched over the top.  This prestigious job was in fact given to sailors to do.  How it was done, using an intricate system of ropes, is still a mystery . And the roof was not only used for practical reasons but for effect:  the audience might be in shadow while the main bloody events were in bright light.

The Colosseum was originally known as the Flavian amphitheater as it was built under three emperors of the Flavian family: Vespasian, Titus and Domitian.  (How many emperors can you name?  In the film “The Emperor’s Club,” Kevin Kline makes his students learn all the emperor names, which they manage to do.  How do they do it? But why? It seems like a pointless exercise…)

 Amazingly, building the Colosseum took less than 10 years to finish, built by thousands and thousands of slaves, and was inaugurated in 80 A.D. when Rome was at its peak.  To build it, first they had to drain the artificial lake that the emperor Nero had made as part of his huge palace. The emperors wanted to get rid of the memory of this hated insane egomaniac who had died in 68 A.D. and to create entertainment, Roman style.

When the Colosseum was completed, all the stops were pulled out with the inauguration, according to Latin writers: 100 days where 2,000 men and 9,000 animals were killed.  Perfumes were squirted periodically around the stadium to try to minimize the stench of blood…  as for the blood on the floor, it was absorbed by sand – in fact the word “arena” comes from Latin “harena” meaning sand. In Gladiator, you can see Russell Crowe picking up sand at various times from the floor.

As I wait in line, I read some of the rules (don’t  disturb the cats, as they’re part of a feline colony, and no dressing up in costume! ) This I suppose is to give the silly looking gladiators and Roman soldiers a chance to shout “Ave Caesar” and  make a euro or two with photos. 

When you go in, you try to imagine how they got the animals and the gladiators up to the main floor for combat.  There were all sorts of underground passages and trap doors. Remember the scene in Gladiator while Maximus is fighting another gladiator and the tiger is released; that is how it was done by trap doors, ropes and pulleys up to main floor.

By 435 A.D. gladiator contests were banned and the last animals died there about a century afterward. For 1,000 years the Colosseum lay abandoned to fire, earthquake and vandalism. The site was used as a quarry, since all over the city, marble was needed to convert ancient temples and basilicas into churches.  Marble and travertine (a marble-like material the Romans liked to use) were carried off and used even in the piazza of St. Peter’s.  That’s why today what’s left is mostly bricks. In the 1500’s with the birth of the Renaissance, interest in classical times was reborn and work began to “clean it up.” By the 1600’s popes wanted to stress that the Colosseum was a sacred place with blood spilled from early Christian martyrs, but sources say this might not be completely accurate. And in the 1700’s, maybe even Edward Gibbon looked out on the Colosseum and the ruins of the Roman Forum and pondered the rise and fall of the Roman Empire.

From the 2^nd floor everyone is looking down and taking pictures of  the beautiful Arch of Constantine. It dates from 315 A.D, around the time he was putting forth Christianity as the main religion of Rome. This arch, which is actually made of three arches, has very beautiful reliefs but most of the material was pillaged from other monuments dedicated to earlier emperors, which was a common practice at the time.

It’s a shorter line to enter the Roman Forum, but it’s getting hotter… The Forum was originally a swamp — we’re talking of the 8^th century B.C. when legend (and history) says Rome was founded with the myth of orphaned Romulus and Remus suckled by a she-wolf on top of the Palatine Hill. The marshy area of the Forum was used as a graveyard and people settled in the Palatine above.  The swamp was drained and the first buildings on the forum were built around this time, where it developed gradually over the centuries, temple by temple. 

In the early years of Rome’s history, olive oil and wine were exported as the main source of income, but  later war became the main business –they concentrated on getting rich from booty from captured countries and slaves, and this is celebrated very much in another victory arch, the Arch of Titus, which shows the victory over the province of Judea (or Israel) in 70 A.D.

It was a short but bitter war, the Romans defeated the rebels, took Jerusalem, sacked the temple and brought over 50,000 Jewish slaves, who were forced to build this very arch and no doubt the Colosseum as well.  I remember this picture in my Janson History of Art textbook of the spoils of Jerusalem – it looked so clear – but here it is on the arch, weathered by time and the elements.

The Roman Forum was used for triumphal processions, public speeches, criminal trials and business dealings.  It was THE place to be. But now, surrounded by rubble, you need to assemble all your powers of imagination to see how it was then.

You walk along “Via Sacra” (sacred way) which then had chariots racing by, fast food vendors, merchants and courtesans. “Via Sacra” is undoubtedly based on the Greek “Iera Odos” (holy road) which went from Athens to Elefsina to the site of the Elefsinian mysteries.

What’s the holiest spot in the forum? It’s the temple of Vesta where the sacred fire had to keep burning, a fire symbolic of the home, the family, the hearth.  Who tended this sacred fire – six priestesses known as the Vestal Virgins.  On one hand, it was a great honor to be chosen for this duty; from a free family, girls 6 to 10 years old were selected. They had a certain status in society, and they were the only women that could own land. They were also given special seats at the Colosseum, next to the emperors. Sounds great, but there was a downside, they had to work for 30 years, after which they were free to marry. If they didn’t uphold their vow of chastity until then, the punishment was brutal: buried alive with a little bit of food…

Near their temple and house are the ruins of  the temple of Julius Caesar , where people still leave flowers and notes on the “tomb,” but he was actually cremated.

Now it’s time to ascend the Palatine hill (included on one ticket along with the Colosseum and Roman Forum) where there’s a great view of the Forum below. Note the 3rd triumphal arch, Septimus Severus, various temple remains like Castor & Pollux (the 3 famous corinthian columns) and in the distance the Piazza del Campidoglio at the top of the Capitoline Hill.

On the Palatine, settlements date back from the iron age. Then roman aristocrats built there and you can see a rubble of houses  — with bricks and cement, that didn’t last as opposed to marble.  It’s a little quieter up here, since you have to walk up – generally Rome, like most great cities, is a city for walkers.  As the signs tell us, this was Flavian’s house, this was Livia and Augustus’ house but again you need your imagination to fill in the gaps — as you struggle to piece together their residences, you note how peaceful it is with olive and other trees.

Later, some emperors built their own forums that you can see along Via dei Fori Imperiali – Caesar, Vespasian — this road, built by Mussolini in the 1930’s to show off military parades, actually cut into some of the ancient forums.

Time to take a brief detour & pay a visit to one of the Roman provinces,  Athens –

Athens was under Roman rule from 86 B.C. to 267 A.D.  The city was lucky to have the emperor Hadrian in its corner .. he was a great admirer of the Greeks, maybe the first philhellene — he was in fact nicknamed “Graecula,” (little Greek). He was certainly not the only Grecophile, as the Romans in general emulated the Greeks in many areas, even to the point of the aristocratic Romans sending their children to be educated at one of the many schools in Athens. Hadrian enjoyed traveling and was a bit of an architect himself. Hadrian’s Arch was built in 131 B.C. to commemorate his rule and to separate the old from the new city – on one side an inscription said “This is Athens the old city of Thisseus” and the other side was inscribed “this is the city of Hadrian not Thisseus.”

In Hadrian’s new city, he finished building the Temple of Olympian Zeus, which had been started in the 6^th century B.C. under Athens dictators who wanted to make it the biggest temple of the ancient world. However, it was left unfinished for 700 years until it was completed under Hadrian. Before Hadrian began his project, the Roman general Sylla had decided to help himself to two columns (a common practice through the ages) in order to decorate the temple of Jupiter in the Campidgolio in Rome. Hadrian commissioned two huge gold and marble statues at the entrance, one of Zeus and one of himself. Today, 15 statues are left of the original 100 or so. It’s still pretty imposing.

Across the road on Leoforos Amalias between the National Gardens and the Zappeion, during metro excavations in 2002, remains of a roman bath were found that had been used by the surrounding community (More on impressive Athens metro excavations in a later blog…)

Inside the National Gardens, tucked away in the northwest corner is a little known overlooked sight  (first time I’ve ever seen this!), a Roman mosaic floor in pretty good condition.

Hadrian was an active builder. Near Monastiraki station and the Roman forum, he also built a library to house his vast papyrus collection, where there were also reading rooms and lecture halls.

By coincidence, the Athens National Archaeological Museum, together with the Italian Archaeological School in Athens, is running an exhibit “Hadrian and Athens: Conversing with an Ideal World” until the end of November, which we fortunately catch. The ideal world refers to the Greek world in Athens during Hadrian’s rule when the gymnasiums were at their peak, where students trained their minds and bodies. The exhibit imagines Hadrian rubbing shoulders with the intellectuals of the time, including the kosmites (kosmetai) the leaders of the gymnasiums (the modern Greek word kosmitoras or dean of a university derives from this).

Let’s enter the Athens Roman Forum, or Roman Agora, known at the time as the Forum of Cesar and Augustus and during Ottoman times as the “Wheat Bazaar.” During Augustus’ reign (27 B.C. to 14 A.D.) commercial activity was taken out of the Ancient Agora — that became a cult center — and moved to the Roman Agora, which was used throughout Byzantine and Ottoman times. Today this open space of temple and basilica remains, amidst the broken columns of the past, has occasionally been used for musical events — I remember in the 1980’s two concerts by the great composers Manos Hatzidakis and Mikis Theodorakis.

Inside, your attention is drawn to the Tower of the Winds, or “aerides” (winds) as they’re known. You can see that it’s an octagon shape and it had little sculptures showing each wind direction (southeast for example). It was a kind of combination wind/weather vane, sundial and water clock where time was revealed from a hydraulic clock in the interior that was destroyed so we don’t know exactly how it worked.  It was probably built before the Roman forum started to be used.  It’s said that market tradesmen could see and estimate the time needed for merchandise to reach the port of Piraeus!

As with so many monuments, it had an interesting history through the years, including during Ottoman times it was used as a “tekke” or place for whirling dervishes.

Fun fact:  Near the “aerides” are the ruins of the so-called  vespasianae, or public latrines. The book 111 Places in Athens that You shouldn’t Miss tells us a little more. There used to be 68 seats in this walled structure that had an entrance lobby and an atrium for ventilation and light, as well as continuing running water. Not only did the Romans bring public toilets to all of their cities, but in Athens, the emperor Vespasian also taxed their use. The first pay toilets! Leave it to the Romans…

Time to briefly enter the Ancient Agora on Adrianou Street (actually Hadrian gave his name to one of the longest streets in Athens, that winds through the plaka to Monastiraki and down to Thiseion) This area took the name from what they thought was the nearby temple to Thiseus, mythical founder of Athens. Later it was discovered that the temple was really dedicated to Hephaistos, the god of fire, but the name of Thiseion kept. (So much more to say! Ancient classical Athens will be explored more in a later blog…)

Near Hephaistos temple (which is actually the best preserved Doric temple in Greece) is a headless statue of Hadrian.

Look closely at Hadrian’s statue — he’s dressed in the typical Roman military uniform with breastplate and leather skirt — and around his belly button you can see an insignia of the she-wolf with Romulus & Remus, the legend of Rome’s founding) That makes sense he would have that, but look, what’s that statue on top, it’s Athena! Again we see a wish to blend Roman and Greek cultures…. 

Before we return to Rome, one last building that I know I’ve referred to often in previous blogs, but it deserves another mention as it was built in this period (161 A.D.) — the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, an Athenian orator, philosopher and wealthy benefactor not to mention a Roman senator, who built this theater under the Acropolis in memory of his wife.

So, let’s go back to Rome: this Romulus & Remus legend creeps up everywhere  — here it is in one of the Quattro Fontane, one of four Baroque fountains near the Piazza della Quirinale. Look in the lower right of Neptune (Poseidon) you can see the she-wolf clearly.

A word about the gods in Ancient Rome — they had around 30,000 of them, that meant a god for everything you could imagine, a baby’s first teeth, bread making, olive picking, even a sewer god, and they were constantly trying to appease them. Enter now the Pantheon, the monument to all those gods (!) 

As everywhere in Rome is crowded this weekend, so is the line for the Pantheon.  The piazza della Rotonda usually has a lot of people hanging out around the obelisk, sitting and eating pizza slices or licking gelato cones (at the risk of sounding heretical and chauvinistic, I must say that Greek pizza and gelato is as good if not better…)

As you’re waiting, you look up at the inscription – built under emperor Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucco, three times consul, made this”  but after a couple of fires, it had to be rebuilt, and who did it, but Hadrian (this guy was into everything!)  who may have actually helped design it as well.

It looks like a Greek temple with the huge columns and the pediment, but it’s really different, it’s not made of marble blocks, but of bricks and concrete, as so many Roman buildings are.

You’ve got to stand under the dome, which was the largest until the renaissance. Michelangelo and Brunelleschi studied this before building their own domes of St. Peter’s Basilica and the Duomo in Florence.  The oculus, the eye-in-the-sky is the  only source of light.

The floor was designed with holes in it and slants toward the edges to let the rain-water drain — another ingenious example of Roman engineering.  Wait a moment, inside as you look toward the opposite wall, what’s that tiny picture in a frame of Mary holding baby Jesus? Well, this is the story of so many classical buildings that became churches, and this is actually how the Pantheon was preserved so well, that it was used throughout the years.

The blending of pagan and Christian can be seen in many of the Egyptian obelisks that have a cross at the top (this was probably done some centuries later)

Paganism and Christianity were not two separate elements, but one blended into the other.  One of the most interesting churches in Rome is San Clemente, not far from the Colosseum and the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano.  The main church dates from the beginning of the 12^th c. church but was built on top of the foundation of a 4^th century church. Over the years the earlier church was forgotten until  in the 19^th century the underground church was discovered, but that isn’t all, under the 4^th century church is another level, with all sorts of labyrinthine passageways where a 1^st century A.D. community living there, worshipping a Persian deity called Mithra.

It’s hard to escape ancient Rome – here you can see the ruins of Teatro of Marcellus built before the Colosseum.  This area was used as the Jewish Ghetto for 300 years until the mid 19^th century. Still known as the Jewish Ghetto, this street (via del Portico d’Ottavia) is lined with restaurants featuring “Carciofi alla guidaica” artichokes cooked in the Jewish manner. (With 2,000 years, the Jewish community in Rome is one of the oldest in Europe, today numbering around 16,000.)

Wait, the ruins are getting to us!  How can we escape? Let’s visit the Vatican museum and St. Peter’s Basilica. At the end of the street leading from St. Peter’s near one of the Tiber bridges, Hadrian left his footprint with the mausoleum where he and his family are buried.  Later the popes used it as a fortress and prison and today it’s a museum, Castel Saint-Angelo.

Back inside the Vatican museum, you see how masterpieces of the ancient world inspired Renaissance artists, like this magnificent statue of Laocoon by an unknown artist, which was lost after the fall of Rome for a thousand years until unearthed by chance one day in 1506 near the Colosseum)

In the museum you can see everywhere a blend of classical and religious. On one wall is Raphael’s well known School of Athens. As travel guru Rick Steves puts it, all the lines in the painting draw our attention to Plato and Aristotle in the middle and the small arch over their heads. As he says, “it’s almost like a halo over these two secular saints.” In other words their pursuit of knowledge is here on earth, while on the opposite wall in another of Raphael’s paintings (La Disputa) the saints and Christ float on top of heavenly clouds, in a kind of “school of heaven.”

We join the line to get into St. Peter’s Basilica, an hour wait in the unrelenting sun. A group of nuns passes in front of me.

Let’s escape from the classical and religious to something more secular: two piazzas with gorgeous Baroque fountains: the Piazza Navona

and the Fontana di Trevi, which you probably need to visit at 6 a.m. not to find any crowds. I notice no one is really looking at the beautiful sculptures but trying to get close to the edge of the fountain to get a good photo of their tossing a coin over their shoulder.

Arrivederci Roma! Now I’m entering the “not only” part of the title in our journey to Renaissance Florence and medieval Siena, beyond the scope of the blog… Now, less text and more photos!

Siena is a medieval city frozen in time. Once one of the major cities of Tuscany, after the plague, the infamous “black death” that hit Siena particularly hard in 1348, the city never recovered and medieval buildings and streets were kept for centuries the way they had been. In fact it is under UNESCO protection and any changes are carefully reviewed.

The inside of Siena’s Duomo (the Cathedral), from 1348, is like nothing I’ve ever seen with the black and white marble and the gold.

We saw beautiful ceiling and wall frescoes everywhere in the Vatican and in churches but I had never seen such a floor as in the Siena Duomo with its marble mosaics. Here’s a detail from the Massacre of the Innocents, a popular theme.

In Florence we are staying right off the Piazza del Duomo. Nothing quite prepares you for the beauty of this huge complex: cathedral, baptistery, campanile and museum in its pink, green and white marble. The Florence Duomo is the opposite of Siena’s in that it is much more impressive outside than in.

Walking around Florence even in the rain is a treat. The city streets are like a big museum.

You can look down at the river to find a little solace from the crowds.

Every hour of the day and night there are street performers.

Wait, something is definitely missing. Ancient monuments and Renaissance art are all very well, but what about food? In an admittedly subjective ranking of cuisine in European countries, Italy is ranked #1 and most would agree. When it comes to pasta, you can’t go wrong anywhere and it’s a bit of a waste of time as I learned, to search the internet, because every little ristorante, trattoria or osteria makes its own pasta, uses the freshest of ingredients, tomato, cheese, extra virgin olive oil, and you can’t believe how delicious a dish of tortellini or linguini can be.

Although I didn’t take any pasta photos (inexplicably!) here’s one of Elias looking for all the world like a taster for tira misu.

In Florence I sampled pennes with mushrooms and tartufo (truffles), a Tuscan specialty. If only that dish could have lasted a little longer… it was at an unassuming untouristy place called “Zio (Uncle) Gigi” not far from the duomo.

Besides the delicious pasta, Gigi entertains his customers by bursting into song and making you feel that he’s known you for years. On the second night we went, I joined Gigi in a duet of “Volare.”

Buona serata! The sun is setting over St. Peter’s Basilica. After two months of planning, our travels are at an end. Now it’s the time of year when Italy, Spain and Greece are busy with the olive oil industry. Olive oil produced in Greece — that’s the subject of my next blog, stay tuned …

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Sherri Moshman Paganos is a writer and former educator, inspired by her life in Athens, where she and her husband are happily retired and enjoying their travels in Greece and abroad. You can check out her writing — fiction, non-fiction, poetry and articles here.