History Unveiled

Although my interests in grad school focused on the history of the Americas, and in particular, the American West, I've always been fascinated by Rome. I think part of it just is knowing that there once existed a world that had many of the amenities we take for granted today: hot and cold water, baths, indoor toilets, and the like. You can tell I'm a terribly spoiled 21st century citizen. *grin* I like my comforts.

Part of it is harder to explain, I think. The time period just fascinates me. Of course, it helps that quite a few of their rulers are fascinating, and the period between the end of the Republic up through the era of the Four Emperors is very interesting, if bloody. It certainly has been one of the more documented periods of Roman history too, which is how I got interested in it. First was through reading Robert Graves' I, Claudius and Claudius the God, and then being fortunate enough to catch a re-run on PBS of the series "I, Claudius." The later release on videotapes a few years back had captions, but the DVD release shortly after doesn't seem to include captions or subtitles, which is a pity. It really is worth seeing. It concerns the story of Claudius, the "idiot" grandson of Augustus's wife Livia, and his observations regarding the history of the Imperial Court at the beginning of the Roman Empire and the flawed men who ruled Rome. The cast of characters includes Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius himself, and Nero. Graves culled his novel from Suetonius' The Twelve Caesars, among other sources, but wove a tale that is plausible in the way it fills in the gaps in the historical accounting. Reading the books and watching the show was like observing a soap opera, 1st Century AD style. If you have the chance to read the books or can find a captioned copy of the BBC series, I'd advise you to let yourself get captivated by the story. It's really worth your time. After reading and seeing all of this, I started educating myself more about the time period, the history, politics, geography, etc. of the Roman World. I took Latin in college partially because of this, and even today I still read books and watch shows about Rome.

I haven't yet been to Rome, let alone Italy, but I hope to one of these days. It really is something that so much has survived two thousand years of wars, upheavals, changes, "modernizations," and population growth. Pompeii and Herculaeneum are the best known, along with the Colosseum and other Roman ruins, but there are also places like Ostia, the ancient Roman port, the buildings and residences on Capri, the acqueducts all over the Mediterranean, and bits and pieces of old town centers in places in Spain and France that were once outposts of one of the largest Empires in recorded history.

Artifacts turn up all the time, too. Today, for example, I read this article that states that during a clean-up of an old sewer in the Forum, a marble statue of the emperor Constantine was discovered, nearly 1,700 years after Constantine's rule. It's amazing that something like this lasted so long, and survived relatively intact. Thanks to the sturdiness of Roman buildings, infrastructure, and artworks, we have a fairly good idea of how the Romans lived. Certain texts have survived, so we have an outline of Roman history. I wonder what, in two thousand years' time, will survive of our civilization? What will future generations see and know about the American Empire?