#ColosseoForiImperiali station has something rare for #EpigraphyTuesday: a wine #amphora with a painted #inscription, a "titulus pictus" in faint red paint (here artificially clarified). It says "A CL P SER COS", or "Appius #Claudius (Pulcher) and P. Servilius consuls", 79 BCE. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#MosaicMonday takes us deep under the #Velia in #Rome, into the #ColosseoForiImperiali subway station, to find a #mosaic pavement from the late #Republic with black tesseræ, once on the floor of the changeroom of a balneum or private bathhouse destroyed in the fire of 64 CE. #AncientBluesky 🏺

A composite capital from the temple of #Venus and #Rome now in the subway station #ColosseoForiImperiali, c. 125-130 CE, for #SpoliaSunday. We can see how marble was broken up for the kilns: the acanthus leaves knocked off, then the corners. The capital itself has burn marks. #AncientBluesky 🏺

Be careful: these lethal predators hunt in pairs. For #SarcophagusSaturday we have a box on display in the new #subway station #ColosseoForiImperiali in #Rome, which shows three groups of two men hunting three lions. It comes from the #Palatine, where it was used as a #fountain. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#FrescoFriday gives us a startled #Dionysus and a far from gruntled #Silenus. The god is pouring out some wine for his panther, and Silenus seems to be commenting "Waste of good wine, if you ask me". From the #BritishMuseum and originally in a villa at #Boscoreale, 30 BCE. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#PhallusThursday is making a solid appearance today. From the brand-new #Rome subway station Colosseo-Fori Imperiali comes this terracotta oil lamp (C1-C2 CE) from an ancient well in the #Velia hill. This #ithyphallic chap had that painful burning sensation. #AncientBluesky 🏺

For #ReliefWednesday we're looking at perhaps the most celebrated piece of ancient #Roman #cameo #glass, the #PortlandVase in the #BritishMuseum. Made in #Rome between 15 BCE and 25 CE, it shows two scenes, whose meaning is still obscure, but whose beauty is undisputed. #AncientBluesky 🏺

This #EpigraphyTuesday offers us a simple funerary inscription now in the #CapitolineMuseums, identifying the occupants of a tomb outside the Porta Tiburtina of #Rome as a married couple, freed slaves, Maritimus and Quinta, from the household of #AntoniaMinor, wife of #Drusus. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#Livia as #Ceres, in the #CapitolineMuseums. Nothing could be clearer than the plan of #Augustus to divinise his family, for all his false modesty. Livia's mean little face with her beautiful eyes can't compete with her splendid diadem of ears of grain and poppies.

#MosaicMonday brings us a detail from a breathtaking #mosaic from #Roman #Carthage, c. 375 CE, which has a complex design showing the months and the seasons in dazzling #acanthus and ribbon #frames. #LateAntiquity in North Africa was prosperous, as this floor from a #domus shows. #AncientBluesky 🏺

For #SpoliaSunday, not a piece of #spolia but a frightening terracotta Medusa from 1485-1495. It once decorated a house in the area of the #Calcararia in #Rome, and its blackened patina derives from the smoke from the constant burning of ancient marble in the #lime kilns nearby. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#SarcophagusSaturday takes us to #palazzoMattei di #Giove in #Rome, where an unusual #relief shows the rape of #Hylas, an episode from the myth of the #Argonauts, from c. 250 CE. There's something odd about the nymphs: one has the face of a little boy, another of an old woman. #AncientBluesky 🏺+ALT!

"The English take their pleasures sadly," observed the French duke of Sully. If so, this #fresco for #FrescoFriday is ideal for the #BritishMuseum, though it comes from #Stabiae. Against a red background, a #Naiad reclines on a couch, raising a horn to us with a melancholy smile. #AncientBluesky 🏺

For #ReliefWednesday, a detail or two from an enormous fluted marble basin from a #fountain in the #Horti #Mæcenatiani on the Oppian hill in #Rome, from c. 10 BCE. G. Cilnius #Mæcenas was the last important #Etruscan, a close friend of #Augustus to whom he left his gardens. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#MosaicMonday takes us back to the #Lateran quarter in #Rome, where the remains of a shattered #opussectile floor from the C4 CE show the longevity of the huge #domus of L. #Licinius #Sura, a general of #Tiberius in the early C1 CE. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#SpoliaSunday gives us an example of human remains as #spolia. This is a #cross made of the skulls of the poor dead, collected by a pious confraternity in the C18-C19 to give them #Christian burial in the #crypt of S. Maria della #Morte in #Rome. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#SarcophagusSaturday at the #BritishMuseum surprises us with quite the little collection of #Minoan funerary furniture, like this terracotta #larnax or #ossuary from 1400-1200 BCE, found at Palaikastro in northeastern #Crete. This one has traces of painted decoration. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#FrescoFriday offers us a #fresco fragment probably from #Pompeii and now in the #BritishMuseum. A well-dressed crowned woman, likely #Phaedra, sits on a lavish couch, a female attendant at her side. There is a psychological intensity about Phaedra which is riveting. 20-60 CE. #AncientBluesky 🏺

This #ReliefWednesday at the exhibition "La Grecia a Roma" at the #CapitolineMuseums, we're admiring an #Attic #relief of dancing #nymphs from 390-380 BCE, borrowed from the #VaticanMuseums. Perhaps from a funeral stela, this dance might be a reminder of how quickly time passes. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#EpigraphyTuesday brings us to a tombstone from the C2 CE, found just outside the #PortaSalaria. It's a sad #inscription with odd spelling, commemorating Gaius Pomponius Heracon, an architect and ship-builder, dead at 25. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#MosaicMonday takes us into the chapel of S. Giovanni Evangelista in the #Lateran #baptistery in #Rome, which preserves intact its ceiling #mosaic from 461-468 CE, a glorious trellis enclosing the Lamb of God within a wreath, and birds with kantharoi - #syncretic #LateAntiquity. #AncientBluesky 🏺

For #SpoliaSunday, this #relief of an acanthus plant is carved into #Pentelic marble from #Athens, a prestige marble for a major public building, perhaps the Porticus Minucia. It was cut into a rectangular panel and used as a paver in the C9 church of S. Nicola de Calcarario. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#SarcophagusSaturday at the #BritishMuseum offers us this splendid stone #sarcophagus in #nenfro, a volcanic #tufo, with a lid like a pitched roof with a #sphinx at each end. The box itself has two figures on each side, male and female. It was once stuccoed and painted all over. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#FrescoFriday brings us back to #Pompeii via the #BritishMuseum, where a fragmentary #fresco roundel shows us a very vivid couple, painted rapidly and realistically with a skill that gets more striking the more one looks. 20 BCE-20 CE. #AncientBluesky 🏺

It's #PhallusThursday and time to party! I'm wearing my party outfit of a cloak, a wreath crown, and absolutely nothing else; I'm bringing an #amphora and an enormous #Roman sausage! From c. 50 BCE, in a fresco possibly from the #necropolis of #VillaPamphili. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#ReliefWednesday this week focuses on this lovely little #terracotta roundel with an #Eros emerging from the centre of a flower, his hair braided in the centre. He holds a folding mirror in his surviving hand and shows traces of #polychromy. From #Centuripe in #Sicily, C2 BCE.

For #EpigraphyTuesday we find a damaged C1 CE #cippus from along the #viaPortuensis west of central #Rome that records a probable road repair by the sixth #Prætorian Cohort, but using unfamiliar #Roman numerals cut with elegant precision into the yellow tufo. #AncientBluesky 🏺

For #MosaicMonday we are on the #Lateran estate of the #domusAnniorum in #Rome. The enterprising noblewoman Domitia Lucilla, mother of #MarcusAurelius, built a #fullonica or washhouse on the edge of the property, and had it paved with this huge black and white geometric #mosaic. #AncientBluesky 🏺

For #SarcophagusSaturday we're looking at a strange but coherent #pastiche in the #BritishMuseum in #London. This sad little C3 CE child's #sarcophagus with a #Dionysiac #thiasos and two lion heads has a modern lid, into which the C1 CE figure of a sleeping #Silenus has been set. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#FrescoFriday brings us back to the C4 CE, where around the new basilica built by #Constantine at the #Lateran in #Rome in 313, a borgo developed, including the Hospitium Angeli, whose oratory had this #fresco of a certain Genovius, putting his hand on the head of a youth. #AncientBluesky 🏺

For #EpigraphyTuesday, we're in the #domusAnniorum, the house of the Annii Veri near the #Lateran in #Rome, to see a lead pipe stamped clearly with the name of Domitia Lucilla, mother of the emperor #MarcusAurelius, noblewoman and entrepreneur.

For #MosaicMonday we're underground to discover the aristocratic district of #domus around the #Lateran in #Rome, including this C3-C4 CE #mosaic in a small house next to the #DomusAnniorum. The human bust emerging from an #acanthus plant is a Season, probably Winter. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#SpoliaSunday shows the ruthlessness of #spolia reuse and today is no different. Here under the "new ward" of the Ospedale S. Giovanni in #Rome, from the C18, we find a C2 CE marble #pilaster built into the foundation, probably from the family #domus of #MarcusAurelius. #AncientBluesky 🏺

For #SarcophagusSaturday we're back at #PalazzoMattei di #Giove in #Rome, where a #sarcophagus front from 200 CE shows five arches with scenes related to #Mars and #Cupid, a strange duo. The man buried in this box wanted us to know he was a lover *and* a fighter. #AncientBluesky 🏺

This #FrescoFriday, why not add some spice to your relationship by holding the head of #Medusa just out of sight of your girlfriend? This #fresco, now in #Naples, was found in 1760 in #Pompeii, purportedly in the same room as the famous so-called "Sappho". #AncientBluesky 🏺

For #ReliefWednesday we're at an Iron Age #palace or #anaktoron in #Lucania to look at the #frieze on the façade, with battling hoplites in terracotta from 560-550 BCE. This is contemporary with the late regal period in archaic #Rome. #AncientBluesky 🏺

Putting the #pig into #EpigraphyTuesday with this altar from 140 CE dedicated to Hercules by one Lucius Antonius Caricus. Lovely #Antonine formal script and on both sides, a high #relief showing a splendid pig, the unfortunate sacrifice. From the #BathsofDiocletian. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#MosaicMonday takes us into a corridor with linear #fresco decoration and an intact geometric #mosaic floor, c. 150 CE, in the stupendous #VilladeiQuintili along the #Appia south of #Rome. The villa was the cause of its builders' death: #Commodus had them killed and took it. #AncientBluesky 🏺

For a belated #SpoliaSunday, this wall holds the collection of antiquities owned by #AntonioCanova, the great C18-C19 sculptor of #neoclassicism, now set into the wall of his studio. Many pieces of sarcophagi, and part of a C1 CE #funerary #statue found in and around #Rome. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#SarcophagusSaturday returns us to the #BathsofDiocletian in #Rome with this box from #OstiaAntica of the earlier C2 CE, made for a Greek shoemaker from #Ephesus. At left we see him at work, seated with a shoe in his hands, next to a ropemaker. At right, two musicians play. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#FrescoFriday at the #Praedia of #JuliaFelix in #Pompeii (though the #fresco is now in #Naples) gives us a floating scene of a #satyr holding a bucket of #grapes on one shoulder and carrying off a #maenad with his other arm. He seems cannibalistically interested in her forearm. #AncientBluesky 🏺

This #funerary #altar for #EpigraphyTuesday and #ReliefWednesday is of late #JulioClaudian date. It names one T. Apusulenus Alexander and his slaves, and the delicate #relief shows a seated woman releasing a dove, helped by an #Eros, while a little girl at left is doing the same. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#MosaicMonday takes us back to the #MuseodelleCiviltà in #Rome, this time to look at the dazzling #opussectile floor of the #domus of #PortaMarina from #OstiaAntica, 385-388 CE. Its complex #geometric design makes it the most perfect floor of its kind in #LateAntiquity. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#SpoliaSunday gives us a #sarcophagus from 200-225 CE decorated with the #Muses but recarved on three sides for reuse as the tomb of Jacopa dei Prefetti di Vico in 1398, sister-in-law of the reigning pope #Boniface IX #Tomacelli, a prestige coffin for a powerful woman. #Rome #AncientBluesky 🏺

A C3 CE child's #sarcophagus for #SarcophagusSaturday, this one from the Altemps collection in #PalazzoAltemps in #Rome. Two #Erotes hold up a central #clipeus with a sad inscription on it, and on either side are two more, the other four representing the seasons. #AncientBluesky 🏺

Costume suggestions for #FrescoFriday #Halloween from a #fresco from the #domus of the #Farnesina, 30-20 BCE: this odd pair of women in long chitons, one in front with a shield on her head topped with olive branches, and another taller woman behind, holding a menacing little saw. #AncientBluesky 🏺

A magnificent #statue of a #priestess of #Isis, from the #Serapeum of #Tauromenium, today's #Taormina, from around 200 CE. The knot in her dress identifies her. She's holding a cista or container indicating that she is about to initiate a believer into the Isaic mystery cult. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#ReliefWednesday gives us a #market scene from #OstiaAntica, a bustling stall where clients on the left argue, while two women are selling fruit from full baskets on their counter. A huge wicker container holds snails, a delicacy. But what are the two monkeys? Pets or meat? #AncientBluesky 🏺

Floating up from the darkness of late antiquity is this #opussectile #octopus from the #domus of #PortaMarina in #OstiaAntica, now in the #MuseodelleCiviltà in #Rome. This sea creature in giallo antico comes from somewhere in the famous opus sectile room, dating from 385-388 CE. #MosaicMonday 🏺

#EpigraphyTuesday shows us ideal formal #epigraphy, with this fragmentary base from the #Forum of #Augustus dated to 2 BCE of a statue of #Aeneas: "AEN[E]A[S PRIMVS]/LATIN[ORVM REX] / REGNAV[IT ANNOS III]", Aeneas, first king of the Latins, ruled three years". #AncientBluesky 🏺