Gabii was an important city while Rome was developing in the Republican period, though, oddly enough, it lost it's importance as Rome grew. There are some impressive ruins there, including a temple, some rectangular rooms (shops?), and some other buildings that we didn't learn about. Cool. My favorite part was the "shops" surrounding the temple because they had been carved out of the Gabinus tufa outcrop. The back wall was beautiful- one continuous rock. Anyway. The temple was also situated on a hill overlooking a valley, so one can imagine how impressive the temple would have been. There was also a theater right in front of the temple, though sadly, the slope is the only remaining part of it.
Temple to Juno
The Theater?
Shops? Tufa!
Current Excavations
There's a summer excavation there with a field school, though they're working further down the road in another temple area. Should be interesting to see what they can uncover. Gabii is a beautiful place, and it's story isn't typical of cities...usually cities get bigger as time goes by, especially if they're connected to a growing empire.
The next stop was Praenestre. It has a modern name, but sadly, I don't know it and I don't feel like looking it up. Basically it had a tough go during ancient times because it had this bad habit of picking the wrong side in wars. It was the "leader" of the cities that fought against Rome in the early republic, and then chose to get on Sulla's bad side around the 2nd century BCE (which resulted in enslavement and death for many of its citizens). Finally, it had to be quelled when Marc Antony's crazy first wife, Fulvia, and this other guy decided to start a war from Perugia with Rome. She ended up fleeing to Praenestre, pretty much screwing it over again.
Interestingly, it was also heavily bombed during world war II. You think they would have figured out how to pick the right side, right? Luckily, because Roman concrete is so badass, most of the ancient stuff survived (can't say the same for the medieval stuff). Here are some pictures. The place we visited is a museum on top of a hill...
The courtyard (formerly a theater)
Russian nesting dolls? Actually weights for merchants
AHH!
The nile Mosaic is beautiful, though it's kind of an enigma because it was found in the 18th century and haphazardly reassembled, so some parts of it are probably in the wrong place. Believe it or not, this can skew the way we can interpret it and what its purpose was. There are all kinds of animals, ships, and even hunting scenes throughout.
The museum used to be a temple. This was built into the hill in a fine example of manipulative architecture. Basically, the architect controls what the visitor sees and when they see it. You start at the bottom, and because the hill is so steep, you can't see what's at the top. After climbing one level, you get a nice rest, then a glimpse of the ultimate goal. Ultimately, there was a round temple at the top, hidden by a square temple. Kind of neat.
The next stop was to Lake Nemi, which I think is my favorite place that we've visited. The city is so beautiful...I could definitely see myself living there! We went to visit the Ship Museum (or something like that) as well as some temple ruins a little past the lake. The lake is in a volcanic crater, so there are steep hills that form around it, creating a pool. The ship museum used to house the remains of two ENORMOUS ships built by emperor Caracalla, mainly for entertainment. They survived all the way until world war II, until the Germans set fire to the museum, completely destroying the ships :( Here are the shots from around the museum...
Funerary altar relief
I didn't realize how creepy this was till now (head of Aphrodite)
Lovely Athena statue
Model of the original ship (1/10 the size)
All that survives of the original ships...The next part involved a short "hike" to the Temple of Diana, which was only recently discovered (and I mean recent as in last fall). There were already some ruins there though, so that's what these pictures are. Notice the amazing viewww
Painted Wall
Now, you may be wondering why the title of this obscenely long post is about latin. Well, the Thursday after this trip, we went to the National Museum to do inscription assignments. Fun! Except we were doing latin inscriptions. Guess who hasn't taken a latin class? Yep. That was interesting. Basically I was put with two really good latin students and helped do the other stuff (material of the inscription, size of the stone, etc). It was a WHOLE week of latin inscriptions. Can't a girl get a little Greek here? Geesh. Still really good practice though...I feel like I could apply the same principles in Greek as we learned in latin inscription.So that was last week. Now I find myself at the end of another week, behind once again. Oh well. I do what I can. Midterms are coming up...eeek!
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