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Jon Hawke 🏛️🏺@HawkeJon
2 May 2017
At the top of the mountain we are all snow leopards. Hunter S. Thompson
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BruceTruthful@BruceTruthful
Nov 9
Replying to @BBCScrumV
When you select hookers for their ball-carrying ability rather than their basic skills, what do you expect? Elliot Dee is our best technical hooker. Surely securing possession at the lineout and scrummaging come before carrying? Cant ball-carry if you can't win your own ball? 🏉
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Anthony Majanlahti@antmoose
Nov 9
For #MosaicMonday, two C2 CE opus vermiculatum #emblemata from #VillaAdriana, now in the #VaticanMuseums. Framed by late C18 borders, their true power lies in the #Roman theatre of illusion and the acute danger of dining with an emperor.
THEATRICAL MASK MOSAICS, 117–138 CE. VATICAN MUSEUMS Two Roman opus vermiculatum emblemata found together in the Imperial Palace at Hadrian's Villa, now set within late C18 borders. The top panel features tragic and comic masks with a flute and lyre; the bottom shows a maenad mask and a panther drinking from a tympanum. Theatrical imagery was ubiquitous in elite Roman dining, symbolising the cultivated symposium. But at Hadrian's Villa, this theatre of illusion carried a sharper, more political edge. Hadrian was a brilliant but notoriously capricious and moody autocrat. Attending an imperial banquet meant navigating a treacherous social stage where every guest had to play their part flawlessly. Surrounded by these masks, courtiers were subtly reminded of the boundary between performance and reality, and the deadly danger of dropping one's mask and provoking the emperor's mercurial temper.
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BladeoftheSun@BladeoftheS
Nov 6
Elon Musk is hiding this video of Bill Burr ripping him apart.

So don't RT it.

Or do if you don't like Elon Musk.
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Alison Fisk
@AlisonFisk
Nov 7
WOW! This small woven basket is about 9,500 years old! 🤯

Looks like it was made yesterday rather than by hunter gatherers during the Mesolithic!

From the Cueva de los Murciélagos (Cave of bats) near Granada, southern Spain. 📷 by me

#Archaeology
My photo shows a small, shallow, conical-shaped basket viewed from above, woven from Esparto grass. It is displayed against a dark museum background. Two different colour twines, greyish-brown and a warmer tan brown, have been woven together to create a decorative geometric pattern, giving it a two-tone appearance. Height 4.6 cm, diameter 10.8 cm. This basket belongs to a famous basketry assemblage recovered from the Cueva de los Murciélagos (Cave of bats) near Granada, southern Spain. The assemblage is the earliest known basketry in southern Europe, made by hunter-gatherers some 9,500 years ago. Part of the collections of the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid. However, this basket is currently on loan to the State Prehistory Museum in Halle, Germany, for the temporary 'Shaman of Bad Dürrenberg' exhibition, which is where I photographed it.
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Anthony Majanlahti@antmoose
Nov 6
For #FrescoFriday, the C3 CE #tauroctony from the #Barberini #mithraeum, found in 1936. Unlike usual marble #reliefs, this painted version uses colour and a #zodiac arch to frame the bull's #sacrifice as a celestial map of shifting #constellations.
TAUROCTONY FRESCO, C3 CE. PALAZZO BARBERINI A Roman fresco of the tauroctony, the central cult image of the Mithraic mysteries. The god Mithras, wearing a blue Phrygian cap and a red cape studded with stars, kneels on a light brown bull, plunging a dagger into its neck. A dog and a snake stretch towards the sacrificial wound, while a scorpion grasps the bull's testicles. An arch containing the zodiac signs frames the scene above. Discovered in 1936 behind palazzo Barberini, this sanctuary features a painted cult image rather than a standard marble relief. This surviving colour clarifies its theology. The figures represent constellations: Taurus (bull), Canis Minor (dog), Hydra (snake), and Scorpio (scorpion). Mithras, acting as a supreme cosmic force, sacrifices the bull to rotate the heavens and shift the astrological ages. The starred cape and zodiac band explicitly map this action as a structural event governing the universe.
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Michel Lara@VeraCausa9
Nov 5
Did you know the word stentorian i.e 'a voice of great power & range' derives from the Homeric herald "brazen-voiced" Stentor?

Homer describes him as a man whose "voice was as powerful as fifty voices of other men". In the Iliad, Hera impersonates him exhorting Greeks to fight.
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Anthony Majanlahti@antmoose
Nov 2
Replying to @antmoose @museitaliani @WittsPat @DrJEBall @chapps @caputmundiHeidi @rogueclassicist @NCDrusus38 @HawkeJon @Livia_en_Roma @arakhnos
The wider floor reveals the dark narrative key. Definitely assault. Placed directly below the mythological encounter is a #mosaic panel of brutal animal combat, a lion taking down a horse. The mosaicist's metaphor is clear: man is the most ferocious predator of all.
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Jon Hawke 🏛️🏺@HawkeJon
7 Jun 2022
The Tomb of the Shields, ( dated 340 BC and discovered in 1870), is a large hypogeum one of the largest #Etruscan #tombs in #Tarquinia. The plan of the tomb imitates that of a house with a central atrium with three rooms #TombTuesday #Italy #Archaeology #History #art
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Anthony Majanlahti@antmoose
Nov 2
For #MosaicMonday, a C2-C3 CE pavement from the MArTa in #Taranto, made from local stone. The central panel features an intimate #Dionysiac scene of a #satyr and #nymph in a cave, complete with abandoned instruments. But is it #seduction, or #assault?
MOSAIC OF A SATYR AND NYMPH, C2-C3 CE. MUSEO ARCHEOLOGICO DI TARANTO A Roman floor mosaic made of local stone tesserae. The central square panel depicts a semi-nude nymph and a wreathed satyr in a close hold within a stylized, jagged rocky landscape. The nymph holds a sheer piece of drapery, while the tools of their Bacchic revelry, a tambourine and a curved shepherd's crook, lie discarded on the yellow ground beneath them. The main scene is framed by a braided guilloche border in red, white, and black, with a separate rectangular register above featuring two plump birds perched on small branches. The use of local stone gives the piece a wonderfully muted, earthy palette, perfectly suiting this quiet moment tucked away in a cave. At first glance, the exact nature of their physical interaction remains unsettlingly ambiguous.
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Dr Pat Witts@WittsPat
Nov 2
Could do with some soothing music this #MosaicMonday, and this handsome if fragmentary Triton might oblige, even though his conch shell is broken. In the Musee Saint-Raymond in Toulouse.
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Jon Hawke 🏛️🏺@HawkeJon
11 Apr 2022
Dionisos mosaic, 2nd AD, Delos

#MosaicMonday #Art #Archaeology
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Héraklès Citharède
@HeraklesCithare
Nov 1
Mercenaire gaulois reconnaissable à son épaisse barbe et à son bouclier à umbo - le thyreos des textes grecs - adopté par les armées hellénistiques après les invasions Galates du IIIe siècle av. J.-C. Il porte cependant une armure musculaire, une chlamys et un casque attique grecques.

IIe siècle av. J.-C. Terre cuite, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Boston.
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Anthony Majanlahti@antmoose
Nov 1
For #SarcophagusSaturday, a C3 CE strigillated #sarcophagus plumbed as a #fountain at the Villa Medici. Ecstatic corner figures elevate it above mere plumbing. The #Dionysiac theme carries a #Renaissance joke: trickling water, like wine, stimulates the bladder.
STRIGILLATED DIONYSIAC SARCOPHAGUS, C3 CE. VILLA MEDICI A rectangular ancient marble sarcophagus repurposed as a garden fountain, resting on mismatched column bases. The front face is decorated with undulating S-shaped flutings known as strigillation, representing the ripples of the river Styx, flanking a central architectural niche containing a relief of a drunken Dionysus supported by a companion. What elevates this piece above a banal repurposed box are the unusually beautiful, albeit damaged, ecstatic Bacchanalian figures carved into the corner panels. Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici clearly chose this coffin not just for its wave-like strigillation, which suits a water feature, but for its subject matter. Repurposing Dionysiac imagery for a fountain is a spirited Renaissance joke, carrying the distinct implication that the sound of trickling water will, much like a surplus of good wine, inevitably stimulate the bladder.
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BBC ScrumV
@BBCScrumV
Oct 31
Dragons end their first block of the season with a five-try victory in Newport 🔥

FT: Dragons 35-14 Zebre 🏉

#BBCRugby #Rugby
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Jon Hawke 🏛️🏺@HawkeJon
28 Jul 2023
#FindsFriday - Uruk in modern day #Iraq, this stone tablet is thought to be the oldest #payslip in the world. Dating back 5,300 years, the tablet is written in cuneiform, an early version of pictorial #writing. Shows how much #beer labourer is owed 🍺
#Archaeology #History
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arkeolojihaber ®
@arkeolojihaber
Oct 27
📍 İzmir'in Seferihisar ilçesindeki Teos Antik Kenti'nde, Roma İmparatoru Hadrian'ın yakın çevresinde yer alan Antinoos'a ait mermer portre ortaya çıkarıldı.

Teos'ta 2026 yılı kazı çalışmaları Tanrıça Roma ve Augustus Tapınağı çevresinde yoğunlaştı. Kazılarda, tapınağın güney, nın ardından batı uzun kenarında da çalışmalar gerçekleştirildi.

Prof. Dr. Musa Kadıoğlu, Tanrıça Roma ve Augustus Tapınağı'nda ortaya çıkarılan önemli eserlerden biri de Roma İmparatoru Hadrian'ın yakın çevresinde yer alan Antinoos'a ait mermer portre olduğunu aktardı. Kadıoğlu, insan ölçülerine yakın boyutlardaki portreyi Anadolu'daki benzer örnekler açısından önemli bir buluntu olarak değerlendirdi. “Burada Antinoos'un normal insan ölçülerinde bir portresini bulduk. Anadolu'da bu ölçülerde bilinen tek örnek olması bakımından çok önemli." diyen Kadıoğlu, "Yazıt parçalarıyla birlikte değerlendirdiğimizde, yapının ikinci yüzyılda Tanrıça Roma ve Augustus'un yanı sıra Antinoos'la da ilişkili bir kutsal alan olarak kullanıldığını söyleyebiliyoruz" ifadesini kullandı. Kaynak: AA (27.10.2026)
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Héraklès Citharède
@HeraklesCithare
Oct 29
Mégas Alexandros.
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Anthony Majanlahti@antmoose
Oct 28
Replying to @antmoose @VillaMedicis @ChezCirce @chapps @caputmundiHeidi @rogueclassicist @HawkeJon @arakhnos @NCDrusus38 @Livia_en_Roma @DrJEBall
The afterlife of Mommsen's #AraPietatis is a testament to academic momentum. Scholars dutifully gathered stray Julio-Claudian reliefs to assemble a grand puzzle for this magnificent monument. There was just one problem: the altar never existed.
RELIEF OF VESTAL VIRGINS AT A BANQUET, C1 CE. MUSEO DELL'ARA PACIS A jagged marble fragment depicting a rare scene of six Vestal Virgins seated closely together at a banquet, their heads covered in veils, with a small table visible in the foreground. Currently housed alongside other purported Ara Pietatis reliefs, this piece highlights the brutal reality of Mommsen's wishful thinking. The altar was a historical fiction, a sincere fabrication of solemn German scholarship. The illusion shatters when one looks at the sheer diversity of scale among these supposed fragments and the scattering of their findspots across the city. Furthermore, many of these disparate pieces, including this banquet scene, are far more likely to belong to the canonically recognised but vanished altar to the Gens Julia. It takes a very specific kind of C19 academic optimism to ignore a documented missing monument in favour of sticking mismatched fragments onto an altar that was entirely invented in a library.
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Anthony Majanlahti@antmoose
Oct 28
Replying to @antmoose @VillaMedicis @ChezCirce @chapps @caputmundiHeidi @rogueclassicist @HawkeJon @arakhnos @NCDrusus38 @Livia_en_Roma @DrJEBall
The ALT text for this photo:
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Anthony Majanlahti@antmoose
Oct 28
For #ReliefWednesday, a fascinating piece of #spolia from a garden pavilion of the #VillaMedici. The central panel shows a suovetaurilia sacrifice, confidently assigned by Theodor #Mommsen and his successors to the Ara Pietatis Augusti, built by #Tiberius.
SUOVETAURILIA RELIEF, C1 CE. VILLA MEDICI A rectangular ancient marble panel set into a plastered wall depicting a Roman sacrificial scene, part of a suovetaurilia. A kneeling victimarius pulls a bull's muzzle down toward the ground, simulating the animal's willing assent to sacrifice. This genuine Julio-Claudian fragment was long recognised as part of the Ara Pietatis Augusti, an altar elegantly reconstructed by the formidable Theodor Mommsen. Relying heavily on textual sources, Mommsen argued that Tiberius must have built this monument as a pendant to the Ara Pacis to celebrate his mother Livia's recovery from a serious illness, providing a brilliant structural framework for generations of archaeologists attempting to categorise stray Roman reliefs.
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