Antiquities Exhibits

Unlike lions, leopards, and bears, tigers appear relatively rarely in Roman art, with the tigress seen more frequently than her male counterpart. - Cleveland Art Museum Apparently, the emperor Titus was the first ruler to introduce tigers to the crowds in the Flavian Amphitheater (Colosseum), among the 9,000 beasts killed over the course of its 100 day inauguration. I found a reference to the book "Rome beyond the Empire" by Mortimer Wheeler published in 1954 that describes Roman trading posts around the coast of India and how a Greek merchant sailed as far as the Bay of Bengal about 60 CE. Perhaps he established some trading relationships that resulted in the acquisition of those tigers. "The Scriptores Historiae Augustae explicitly praised the emperor Antonius Pius for his munificence in staging a games featuring ‘all the animals of the whole earth,’ and it seems such claims were scarcely an exaggeration: lions, rhinos, crocodiles, hippos, cheetahs, rhinoceroses, monke...

This fresco of gladiatorial combat, unearthed in Pompeii in 2019, was found in a basement room of a building that scholars think was a tavern frequented by gladiators in the city.  The tavern was found not far from the gladiators' barracks in Regio V. The wounded Thraex, bleeding profusely from injuries on his wrist and chest, raises a finger to indicate his submission and request for mercy. The victorious Murmillo, wearing a plumed, wide-brimmed helmet with visor, holds aloft his large rectangular shield in his left hand while gripping his short sword in his right. For historians, probably the most significant find from Regio V was unearthed in 2018.  Excavators uncovered an inscription proving the city was destroyed after October 17, 79 CE instead of August 24 as previously thought.  The August date had been suspect for some time as a number of the 1,150 victims recovered from the ruins were discovered wearing heavier clothing than the light summer clothes typical of Au...

An aulos or tibia (Latin) was an ancient Greek wind instrument, depicted often in art and also attested by archaeology. Though aulos is often translated as "flute" or "double flute", it was usually a double-reeded instrument like the modern oboe, but with a larger mouthpiece, and its sound—described as "penetrating, insisting and exciting"was more akin to that of the bagpipes. Although used for martial music, the aulos is more frequently depicted in other social settings. It was the standard accompaniment of the passionate elegiac poetry. It also accompanied physical activities such as wrestling matches, the broad jump, the discus throw and to mark the rowing cadence on triremes, as well as sacrifices and dramas. Plato also associates it with the ecstatic cults of Dionysus and the Korybantes. Although aristocrats with sufficient leisure sometimes practiced aulos-playing as they did the lyre, after the later fifth century BCE the aulos became chiefly associ...

Although this elegant bowl could easily have been used for serving food, it is designated as a footbath by curators at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. How did they arrive at this conclusion? According to Marjorie J. Milne in her article "A Greek Footbath in the Metropolitan Museum of Art" published in the American Journal of Archaeology back in 1944, such shallow wide bowls with low lion-footed bases appeared fairly often in vase paintings, particularly in representations of Theseus' adventure with Skiron.  Such a bowl is also shown being used as a footbath for washing Odysseus' feet on a skyphos (two-handled cup) from Chiusi by the Penelope Painter. Another unique aspect of this vessel is that it was cast and not tooled except for the radiating grooves separating the petals of the flower finials.  An armor specialist at the museum at the time points out that casting so large a bowl was a difficult feat. The "footbath" was used for other purposes, too, by th...