Italian Reflections: The Platypus Travels Part VII

-
The Gardens of the Temple of Vesta with Je ne sais qua behind them.

The chief memories I have of the Roman Forum are of old stone and wild flowers.  The citizens of Rome strip-mined the Empire's political center and by the early Modern Era it was a trash dump.  Nineteenth and twentieth century archeologists are responsible for excavating the site and its appearance today.  Sadly, there wasn't much of the old grandeur to recover -a few isolated columns and heaps of broken stone.  Nature, however, has added her own adornment to the ruined capital.  Wildflowers cover the site making it one of the pleasanter places we visited.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Platypus Reads Part XXVII

-
Thoughts after reading the "Iliad" to prepare a Greece unit for my students: -Hector is a jerk until he's dead. He even advocates the exposure of Achaean corpses and then has the cheek to turn around and ask Achilles to spare his. He rudely ignores Polydamas' prophecies and fights outside the gate to save his pride knowing full well what it will cost his family and city. After he's dead, he becomes a martyr for the cause. -Agamemnon has several moments of true leadership to balance out his pettiness. In this way, he's a haunting foil to Achilles: the two men are more alike than they want to acknowledge. -We see that Achilles is the better man at the funeral games of Patroclos. His lordliness, tact, and generosity there give us a window into Achilles before his fight with Agamemnon and the death of Patroclos consumed him. -Nestor is a boring, rambling, old man who's better days are far behind him, and yet every Achaean treats him with the upmo...
Read more