Ancient stuff

I have done so much in the past few days that I hardly know where to start. So I'll just kick it off with a few pics that I took on Sunday's Roma Antica tour that I went on, with 20 other JCU girls (most of whom were bored and whining the whole time...seriously, people, go to France or something if you can't handle heat and history). I was soo excited to be seeing all this stuff, but it was really just a brief overview. Hopefully for my class I'll return and spend more time at all these sites, getting some more in-depth information. So anyway, just a few pics for ya:

Trajan's column, in Trajan's Forum, just down the street from the Colosseum. The entire structure is covered with carvings depicting the emperor Trajan's conquest of Dacia (present-day Romania). It's hollow and used to have Trajan's ashes in the base. This is one of those things I've been drooling over in the textbook, and now I've seen it!

This is kind of cool. This temple, just across from the Forum, was originally dedicated to the deified emperor Antoninus Pius (2nd century) and later converted to a medieval church. See where the bottom of the green door is? It's several feet above the bases of the columns. That's how far it was buried in medieval times, so the floor of the church is several feet above the original, and now excavated, ground level.

The Arch of Titus. In the 1st century AD, Titus was the general who sacked Jerusalem and carried the treasures of the Temple back to Rome. Later, he became emperor. This is just one frieze in his huge triumphal arch near the Forum.

Ancient + Modern = Rome

(Theater of Marcellus, 1st century AD, plus who-knows-when add-ons)

These pictures, of course, only give little pieces of the whole experience. It's a pretty cool thing to walk along those ancient stone-paved roads and see the actual places where the movers and shakers of ancient Rome did their thing. Sure, there isn't much left, but it's exciting to me just to sit among the rubble. I'll be back, for sure.