#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 🏺

On 9 September 1349 a devastating #earthquake shook #Rome. The façades of the eastern buildings of #TrajansMarkets fell into the street below, and the last house had to be completely rebuilt in what I would call opus incertissimum, including a #cipollino column for #SpoliaSunday. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#SarcophagusSaturday takes us into #palazzoBarberini in #Rome to see this beautiful tub #sarcophagus in white marble surrounded by continuous #strigillation. This is an elegant #Dionysiac coffin: here the wave forms represent wine as well as the circular nature of time, and more. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#FrescoFriday gives us this #Pan holding a #thyrsus, a #Dionysiac symbol, in this #fresco fragment from the Evan Gorga collection now in #PalazzoAltemps. This is of possibly #Neronian date and is all about fun and revels, rather Saturnalian, with Pan wearing the crown of #Serapis.

#ReliefWednesday shows us the rich #relief work of the #cinerary #urn of one C. Iulius Saecularis, from c. 90 CE. The nude youth, a bit chubby, holds a #butterfly in his right hand, symbol of the #spirit. He doesn't want to let go of his earthly life. #Dionysiac symbols abound. #AncientBluesky 🏺

For #EpigraphyTuesday I was forced to go back to my original posting style, but here's the short version: this #inscription was found in the #necropolis of Villa #Pamphilj and records a wealthy eye doctor and his dear wife, who has the singularly unpoetic name of Ogulnia Prepusa. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#MosaicMonday brings us to the #MuseodelleCiviltà in #Rome for these two faces in #opussectile from the #domus of #PortaMarina in #OstiaAntica, dating to 385-388 CE. This splendid house had a mysteriously short life, and these faces seem to be reacting to imminent destruction. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#SpoliaSunday leads into the vicolo dell'Atleta in #Trastevere in #Rome, where a piece of #sarcophagus front with the familiar #strigilate curves that represent the ripples of the river #Styx was reused in the C14 as the side wall of an entrance, now walled up. #AncientBluesky 🏺

For #SarcophagusSaturday, what does the story of #Oedipus and the #Sphinx have to do with the story of #Polyphemus and #Galatea? As far as I can tell, nothing! But both stories appear on this #sarcophagus front in the #androne of #PalazzoMattei di #Giove in #Rome. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#FrescoFriday brings us to somewhere in #Herculaneum where a scene of #sacrifice is underway in the wall #fresco, now in #Naples. This beautiful young woman wearing an olive-branch wreath is seen in 3/4 view, looking down to the right with her lips parted apprehensively. "Dad?" #AncientBluesky 🏺

This splendid terracotta #antefix in medium #relief is my offering for #ReliefWednesday this week. It shows #JunoSospita, a terrifying huntress divinity of the Latial peoples, and comes from the ruins of #Antemnæ, one of the #Sabine towns whose women were taken by #Romulus. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#EpigraphyTuesday offers us a shattered and recomposed slab of Luni marble from the #Forum of #Augustus in #Rome. Its #inscription has been somewhat devoured by the human termites who ran the lime kilns but is easily legible as a statue dedication to #Drusus #Germanicus. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#MosaicMonday presents us with a #floor #mosaic from a #tomb of the "middling sort", which is the class below the rich but above the artisanate, a significant commissioner of funerary art in #Rome and the provinces. Here we are in a #necropolis along the ancient #viaPortuensis. #AncientBluesky 🏺

He's a Cluniac, #Cluniac, on the floor / And he's praying like he's never prayed before! #SpoliaSunday takes us to the #spolia rich #crypt of #SantAlessio on the #Aventine in #Rome, where a reformist community of monks reused a #Romanesque #ciborium to built the abbot's #throne.

This #SarcophagusSaturday finds us in the #viridarium or enclosed garden of Paul II in #palazzoVenezia in #Rome, where a #sarcophagus teeming with #Erotes evokes both fecundity and transformation. The #relief work is reminiscent of late-antique ivories. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#FrescoFriday offers us this #portrait of a #youth in a #tondo, once in #Herculaneum and now in #Naples. The #MANN houses many such portraits, but they often seem generic "types" without identifying determiners, being instead aspirational indicators of a desired social status. #AncientBluesky 🏺

For #ReliefWednesday we're in the #MuseodeiForiImperiali in #TrajansMarkets, to look at an exquisite fragment showing a #relief of #Erotes from the temple of #VenusGenetrix in the Forum of #Caesar, rebuilt by #Trajan. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#EpigraphyTuesday introduces us to one of the soon-to-be indispensable figures of #Roman public life, the #apparitor or bureaucrat. This Marcus #Claudius was possibly a lesser member of the gens Claudia, one of the ruling class of #Rome. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#MosaicMonday once again draws us back to the #MuseodelleCiviltà in the #EUR in the south of #Rome to marvel at the #domus of #PortaMarina from #OstiaAntica, where a central alcove imitates humble brick and #tufo, complete with shadows, in costly #opussectile. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#SpoliaSunday takes us up the #Aventine hill in #Rome to the splendid though brutally over-restored #palaeochristian basilica of #SantaSabina, where an ancient weight measure does service as a relic of diabolic frustration. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#SarcophagusSaturday brings us to a modest #fountain near the foot of the #Pincio in #Rome, next to the #SpanishSteps. In 1570 this was meant as the site for a grand fountain celebrating the entrance of the #AcquaVergine into the city, to no avail. This was installed in 1967. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#FrescoFriday leads us into the dreary suburban sprawl of the #Portuense quarter in #Rome, where the delightful surprise of a #tomb with #fresco decoration awaits our discovery in the basement of a former supermarket, now a little museum. #AncientBluesky 🏺

For #ReliefWednesday we're in the small museum at the site of #Pompeii, where a rather wonderful #relief in #tufo (a friable stone that usually doesn't hold detail well) is on display after its temple was bombed into view during the Second World War. #AncientBluesky 🏺

For #EpigraphyTuesday we're diving into the archaic past to find an #inscription from well outside #Rome that may be primary- source evidence of one of the two consuls who founded the #Roman Republic. The Latin might be Volscian and the #epigraphy is unclear. So buckle up, y'all. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#MosaicMonday takes us back to the #MuseodelleCiviltà in the #EUR, and to the breathtaking #opussectile hall of the #domus of #PortaMarina in #OstiaAntica, to get an overall view of the north wall. This is #LateAntiquity at its most refined, a real masterpiece of stonework. #AncientBluesky 🏺

I went into the Six Senses hotel in palazzo Salviati Mellini and asked if they would let me see the #palaeochristian #baptistery of #SanMarcello, over which the palazzo is built, and they showed me this marvel, surely the best-preserved example from #LateAntiquity in #Rome.

#Spolia was rarely reused only once. For this #SpoliaSunday we're in the #MuseodelleCiviltà to look at the splendid carving of this #Romanesque #ciborium or altar canopy, the marble taken from some ancient #Roman structure, and later reused again as part of an altarpiece frame. #AncientBluesky 🏺

I think of you night and day. #SarcophagusSaturday offers us a #sarcophagus striking in its simplicity, now in the #BathsofDiocletian but originally in a #necropolis along the ancient #viaPortuensis outside #Rome. #Helios has a radiate crown and #Selene a crescent moon. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#FrescoFriday brings us to the #fresco goldmine of the #Naples Archaeological Museum, where this week we find a #sacred #landscape or perhaps more of a magical one, with an idyllic rural temple, high mountains, a river, a spring, and a statue of #Hecate. #AncientBluesky 🏺

For #ReliefWednesday, we're off to #Paris to see some #Napoleonic loot from the #VillaAlbani in #Rome: a magnificent #fountain in #gold #alabaster dating probably from the reign of #Hadrian. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#EpigraphyTuesday finds us under an ugly apartment building in the #Portuense quarter of #Rome, where a former "drugstore" (really a kind of #supermarket) has been opened as a #museum to display the #tombs found underneath it. Here we find a #cippus of #Vespasian among much else. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#MosaicMonday for the next few weeks will be obsessing over the incredible #opussectile room of #PortaMarina, from the very edge of #OstiaAntica, though the room is now hidden away in the former Museo dell'Alto Medioevo in the #EUR. #Christ takes centre stage on the south wall. #AncientBluesky 🏺

For #SpoliaSunday, we're on site in the #BathsofDiocletian in #Rome looking at #spolia from the same Baths, in a part that belongs to the church of #SantaMariadegliAngeli and not to the @MNR_museo. This courtyard has an odd jumble of ancient #marble. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#SarcophagusSaturday brings us back to #PalazzoMattei di #Giove in #Rome, where a wonderful collection of #sarcophagus fronts decorates the two androni or entrance corridor. Here we have the deceased as a sort of #Apollo with the #Muses. But who's the extra one? #AncientBluesky 🏺

#FrescoFriday takes us into the southern #œcus of the #HouseoftheVettii in #Pompeii, where a seated #Leda is eagerly getting ready for some #avian #sex with #Jupiter, which will have strange effects on her reproductive system, producing two #eggs each containing #twins. Ouch. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#ReliefWednesday takes us to the town of #Gabii, 18 km east of #Rome, where this splendid #antefix was found. This is #Typhon, vengeful son of Mother Earth and enemy of the #Olympian gods, done in a #Latial style identical to work found from the same period in Rome. #AncientBluesky 🏺

When I was studying this #epitaph for #EpigraphyTuesday on a tombstone in the #CapitolineMuseums I thought it seemed familiar. Only later did I remember that I'd helped Chapps research this a couple of years ago. Yet it bears repeating. #Rome was home to many specialist trades. #AncientBluesky 🏺

Everybody likes a sailor. #MosaicMonday takes us to the Porto Fluviale or port of the #Tiber riverbank on the #Trastevere side across from #SanPaolofuorileMura. This #mosaic may have been part of a bath complex for the use of sailors and dock workers. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#SpoliaSunday takes us along via del #Gesù in #Rome, where a block of ancient #marble built into the wall of the C16/C17 palazzo #Frangipane shows signs of use and reuse. No doubt many other pieces of #spolia are still hidden under the plaster façades of the city. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#SarcophagusSaturday brings us a medium-quality #sarcophagus from #OstiaAntica, now in the #BathsofDiocletian, made for a child initiate of #Isis and later recarved for an older boy. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#FrescoFriday returns us to the #Augustan #domus of the #Farnesina, whose surviving #fresco work is in #PalazzoMassimo alle #Terme in #Rome. Here we meet two figures of #Greek #philosophy famous in antiquity, the consciously shameless #Cynic couple #Crates and #Hipparchia. #AncientBluesky 🏺