Anthony Majanlahti

They're lovely!

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TOMBSTONE OF M. ULPIUS IANUARIUS, 130-150 CE. S. CATERINA DEI FUNARI This rather lovely tombstone was turned face-down and reused as a paver in the C16 church of S. Caterina dei Funari in Rome. The top part, trimmed off, shows the deceased on a kline, banqueting. His epitaph is purely military: "Marcus Ulpius Ianuarius, sesquiplicarius [an offer who received pay-and-a-half] of the Emperor's horse guard, from the squadron of Valerius Bassus, a Pannonian by birth, lived 45 years and served 23 years. Marcus Ulpius Primus, from the same squadron, his heir, took care to have this set up for his well-deserving friend". Ianuarius was from the turbulent province of Pannonia in the Balkans, and took the family name of Trajan, along with Primus, his heir. Based on the epitaphs we have of these guards, many came from the Balkans: skilled cavalrymen, they were not from old Roman settlements sponsored by members of the court, but owed loyalty only to the emperor.

The #tombstone of an imperial guard for #EpigraphyTuesday tells us quite a lot about the changing composition of the #Roman #empire in the C2 CE, and provides another splendid example of #Antonine #epigraphy. This slab was used as a paver for the church of S. Caterina dei Funari. #AncientBluesky 🏺

elmo from sesame street looks out a window with a vase of flowers ALT: elmo from sesame street looks out a window with a vase of flowers

The Beaker Groups are already at your door!

Davis had a good relationship with the new Bey, and of course behind every official English request lay an unspoken realm of promises and threats. Davis' agreement with the Foreign Office lasted for three years, and by 1859 the last crates he sent had arrived at the British Museum.

Why indeed! It's in London because Nathan Davis, a convert from Judaism to Presbyterianism, tired of preaching in North Africa for pennies, proposed to the Foreign Office that he, totally inexperienced as he was, should dig up ancient Carthage before the French did! They gave him £1000/year for it.

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FLOOR MOSAIC WITH ANTELOPES, C4-C5 CE. THE BRITISH MUSEUM This is another piece of British imperial spolia, dug up by Nathan Davis in 1858 and received by the British Museum the following year. It comes from a late antique domus in Roman Carthage and was probably a threshold mosaic between two rooms. Against a white background, two horned animals drink from a cantharos fountain whose waters shoot up and divide into two cascades which overflow the cantharos and fall into a square basin below. Usually the animals in similar scenes are deer, and they represent the spirit's thirst for God. In this case they're Bohor Reedbuck antelopes, which might have been found in North Africa when this mosaic was made, though now they do not appear north of the Sahara. Plants with red flowers dot the ground, perhaps poppies. Two fancy fowl, gallinules with their characteristic arched heads, fill the space over the antelopes' backs.

#MosaicMonday at the #BritishMuseum presents us with a floor #mosaic from C4-C5 CE #Carthage, where two antelopes drink from a #fountain, a #Christian metaphor for the soul's thirst for God, while a pair of #gallinules look on. #AncientBluesky 🏺

That's what I thought too.

These are the steps you're thinking of. One bizarre superstition in the C18 was that if you climbed these steps on your knees while reciting the Ave Maria and the De Profundis, and praying to the Three Wise Men, you would be rewarded with the winning numbers in the state lottery.

Wow. The news just gets worse and worse.

Full fathom five thy father lies;
His aqualung was the wrong size.

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STAIRCASE OF THE ARACOELI, 1347-1349. The short-lived rule of the "Tribune" Cola di Rienzo was popular insofar as it was practical. During the period of the papacy's long residence at Avignon, Cola's revolutionary and anti-aristocratic city government passed a new set of city ordinances which sent the barons out of the city and subjected them to severe legal punishments if they committed violence. The barons pushed back, but were devastated in a battle at Porta S. Lorenzo in November 1347. The powerful Colonna family, whose fortress was built into the ruins of a vast Severan terrace containing a stepped ramp leading from the Campus Martius up to the summit of the Quirinal, lost its leaders and withdrew to their fiefdom of Palestrina. Cola, planning for the Jubilee of 1350, had the marble steps stripped out of the Colonna stronghold, but by December 1347 he had fallen from power and fled. The Comune carried on with the project, assigning it an architect in 1348. It was completed in 1349, and paid for by a Colonna, but it was Cola's project and also served as a thank you to the Virgin for ending the Black Death in the city. It was the most important public work of Trecento Rome, and remains today a silent but eloquent tribute to what the people can achieve even against their overlords.

#SpoliaSunday takes us to the long #staircase of the #Aracoeli, which were once the steps of a huge covered ramp leading to the #Severan temple of #Serapis on the #Quirinal in #Rome. They are also the product of a successful war by the Comune on the #Colonna barons. #AncientBluesky 🏺

"What we expected is, of course, true" is an excellent one-line summary of the Trump presidency.

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SARCOPHAGUS OF HELENA, C. 320 CE. VATICAN MUSEUMS The empress Helena, mother of Constantine, died in 329. Her colossal mausoleum still partially stands as Tor Pignattara, and was moved to the Lateran in 1154 so pope Anastasius II could be buried in it. It's an amazingly beautiful huge block of Egyptian porphyry carved in high relief, showing military scenes of Roman soldiers with captured barbarians, and is a masterpiece of realism, difficult to achieve in such a hard stone. Two busts on the front might be of Helena and her husband Constantius Chlorus. The lid, still intact, shows garlands held by cherubs. The military theme, inappropriate for a famously pious (and sanctified) lady, suggests that this might have been made for her husband or son. But chroniclers of the eastern empire are unanimous that she was buried along with her son in his own porphyry sarcophagus in the church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. This sarcophagus might not have been made for her, and perhaps she was never laid in it. The presence of Helena recedes like a ghost, the closer you come to it.

#SarcophagusSaturday at the #VaticanMuseums gives us this masterpiece of #relief sculpture, the #sarcophagus of #Helena, mother of #Constantine, from about 320 CE. The female portrait on the front corner nearest us is probably Helena's. But was she ever buried in it? #AncientBluesky 🏺

There is a street in Toronto called Bishop Tutu Boulevard and I remember an alarming headline "SEXUAL ASSAULT ON BISHOP TUTU".

Not enough know generofity.

Tell me about the global south Christianities that are not bigoted against LGBTQ+ people. Or women as archbishops.

Because they're Anglicans. If they want to split off into a different denomination, they can. This is how the Anglican church came into existence in the first place, by not acknowledging the primacy of a bishop that didn't share their views.

You caught me!

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FRESCO OF S. ABBACIRO, 757-767 CE. ATRIUM OF S. MARIA ANTIQUA This open-air space was covered with frescoes by the C7, when a hall and rooms behind it, probably a guardhouse protecting the entrance to the Domitianic ramp that gave access to the imperial palace of the Domus Tiberiana, was converted into a church in the mid C6. This monastic saint, Abbot Cyrus or Abbaciro, under the rule of pope Paul I in the mid C8, was painted in the linear, hieratic style of Byzantine art. Paul I welcomed many refugees from the East who were fleeing the iconoclastic persecution then underway. We see the elderly, bearded saint, his brow furrowed, looking out at us frontally. In one of his hands he holds a small case with a surgeon's instruments in it. Inside the church was a chapel dedicated to the doctor saints, like Abbaciro, Cosmas, and Damian. The ill faithful could sleep overnight in the chapel, hoping to get a healing dream from these "anargyroi", "those who cure without payment".

A warm orange halo illuminates this #fresco from the atrium of #SantaMariaAntiqua in the #Forum in #Rome. The series of #Domitian's halls at the base of the #DomusTiberiana were converted into a church in the C6. For #FrescoFriday we're looking at this doctor saint from 757-767. #AncientBluesky 🏺

It looks like a Roman villa, like the one at Fishb... I mean, Chedworth

You've got Aion on your mind! So do I.

Definitely spolia reuse, but carefully curated to evoke a link with the happy age (happy in retrospect) of Trajan and Hadrian. Self-consciously antiquarian.

Those S-scrolls are very memorable.

The Danube!

The turnstiles are not a solution for overtourism, just a way for the Comune to profit from it.