Old Age in Rome - Truth in Statues

Boxer at Rest at Palazzo Massimo alle Terme

Covid-19 is forcing us to look at old age more closely, even to consider the value of an older human life as the virus ravages the elderly. And so it might be helpful to examine the attitude towards old age of other ages and cultures as well--in the case of this blog, that of the ancient Romans.

Cicero (106-43 BCE), from the Capitoline
Museums in Rome. Bust 1st century CE.
An image of Cicero is the lead photo
for the site: The Geopolitics of Dignity.

Much has been written about old age in ancient Rome, based primarily on writings of the classic authors of the epoch - Cicero, Horace, Juvenal, Plautus. The general conclusion is that, perhaps as today, the attitude was one of ambivalence. The weak and decrepit were often marginalized, because they were seen as not contributing to society. And Romans had a strong work ethic, and a commitment to their society. 

On the other hand, the old were valued as having gained knowledge, being good moral models for the young, and as still useful in society, some holding important positions into their 80s.

The average life expectancy of ancient Romans was much shorter than in the Western world today--around 25. This is distorted, however, by half of children dying before 10. And 7-8% of the population lived beyond 60 or 65. Although that is less than half of the percentage of Americans today living beyond 65, it's still a significant group.

This image from The Getty accompanies
an article on hair loss in ancient Rome.
25 BC - 10 CE

Most surprising is Romans' willingness--even desire--to portray old age accurately, complete with balding heads (photo at left), wrinkles, flabby skin, sunken cheeks, and blemishes. We get these depictions from statues, the faces of which are usually solemn, indicating the gravitas of old age. These physical markers of old age are considered to be signs of one's having contributed to society, having put in years of hard work and having gained experience--in a word, dignity.

Boxer at the Getty, 2015. Date of sculpture from
330-50 BCE.

We first saw the dramatic effects of this kind of portraiture in the spectacular sculpture, "Boxer at Rest." It's a Greek sculpture, valued by the Romans, and found only in the 1880s near the Quirinale. You can see it now in the national museum at Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, near the train station. The statue shows the boxer's scarred and bruised face and broken nose. We saw the "Boxer" a few years ago when it had been recently restored--in a room in the seat of the Italian Senate, Palazzo Madama, as I recall. It was alone in the room, and we were alone with it, all the better to feel its power. We saw him again in 2015 at The Getty Center, which managed to borrow the statue for its blockbuster Roman statuary exhibit that year. The photo at the top is by Carole Raddato on Wiki commons.

from the Vatican Museums;
1st half of 1st century BCE.

The bust at left is from the Vatican Museums and illustrates "Verism" - the hyper-realism valued by the Romans, according to some scholars. 

Photo of bust - cast from the original
bronze -  in Wiki commons.
See By Daderot - Own work, CC0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78464202

At right, from the Naples museum, Lucius Caecilius lucundus. He's not bald; his hair is etched into the bronze bust. But, as others have pointed out, he's a "Verism" example - or "warts and all," which the Romans preferred. He was a Pompeian banker, born 14 AD, died about age 62.

Women who reached old age also were viewed from two perspectives: as useful and authoritative matrons or as grotesque - especially, in the latter case, old prostitutes.

It's not as easy to find statutes of women in old age as it is as of men. Perhaps women were not generally subject to the "verism" of male portraits. I didn't find any in Rome--a hunt left for a future visit.

"Bust of a Flavian Matron" - Toledo (Ohio) Museum
of Art.  1st-2nd century CE

The bust at right is considered a rare portrait of an older woman. And, according to the museum's notes, the hairstyle is that of a younger woman.

Below is the statue of a clearly old woman - from The Met. It's a 1st Century CE copy of an earlier Greek sculpture. The museum notes the range of subject matter for sculptures was expanded to include figures on the fringe of society. This sculpture is known as the Old Market Woman, but it is probably, per the museum notes, an aged courtesan on her way to a Dionysian festival.

Old market woman or aged courtesan? 14-68 CE.

For more information on the treatment of old age in ancient Rome, see these two articles, both titled "Old Age in Ancient Rome":

https://www.brlsi.org/events-proceedings/proceedings/25020#:~:text=At%20present%2C%20the%20aged%20(those,becoming%20a%20major%20social%20problem.

and

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/old-age-ancient-rome

The illustrations in this post - and decisions on how to illustrate these points - are from my own research.

Dianne

Occupied! Spin Time Labs, Scomodo, ACTION, and a Big Building in the City Center

The building's entrance on via di Santa Croce in Gerusalemme.  Note information boards on both sides.  The banner
reads: "The right to housing is sacrosanct." 

It's an undistinguished building, to say the least. Despite its enormous footprint--occupying the end of a city block on the Esquilino, bounded by via Carlo Emmanuele, via Statilia, and via di Santa Croce in Gerusalemme (the latter a major thoroughfare running southeast off Piazza Vittorio Emanuele)--it is forgettable, pedestrian architecture of the sort that was all too common in the 1960s and 1970s.

"Read Scomodo" (a basement pillar)

In this case, what matters is what's inside, and fortunately, the building's contents were at least partially suggested by information boards on the via Santa Croce side.  One board revealed that there were all kinds of things going on inside: the ground floor housed a social service center, an afternoon school, and a "mini-basket" facility, where children could learn to play basketball; next floor up, an enoteca (wine shop), a wood-working facility, and something called the "spin beer lab." There's a theater on the 2nd floor and, on the 3rd, a religious center and a place to take lessons in the martial arts. From a personal friend, we also knew that the building housed the offices of "Scomodo" (meaning, roughly, "uncomfortable"), an excellent left-leaning, muck-raking magazine produced and distributed by young Romans, and now mainly online.

Two of the information boards.

Another board provided some background.  The building was once occupied by INPDAP (a government agency responsible for providing assistance to public employees), then for some years abandoned, before being "occupied"--that is, taken over, illegally and informally--in October 2013 by a group known as "ACTION," for housing purposes.  The group began to reclaim some of the floors, went on a hunger strike--for what purpose remains unclear--and obviously (from the right information board), launched a variety of cooperative institutions and services that together constitute an effort to create an alternative community.  There's even an osteria.

Today "ACTION" remains involved. However, as still another board explains, most everything is done under the auspices of the group "Spin Time Labs." The building is now home to 150 families (about 450 people), including immigrants, many of them once homeless or otherwise in need of a place to stay.  And all this has happened in a building the occupants--whether the 150 families or Spin Time Labs--don't own.

Occupied buildings are common in Rome, and oddly (from an American perspective) tolerated--until they're not, which can be a long time. (We wrote in 2011 about the occupation of a theater.) Covering the occupations, the newspaper Il Messaggero noted that a building that once housed the Treasury Ministry was occupied for many years by the right-wing organization, CasaPound. Il Messaggero seemed especially irritated that those occupying the buildings did not pay the appropriate fees.

Our first encounter with the structure was in mid-April, 2019.  By mid-May, the building, and Spin Time Labs, were at the center of a major controversy.  Neighbors of the building were upset--indeed, enraged--that the occupied structure was hosting loud, well-attended late-night (or all-night) parties, featuring a disco, drugs, and heavy drinking. It was impossible to sleep, they said, and in the morning the area was a mess: mounds of trash and hundreds of empty beer bottles.

Late-night, nearly-morning revelers.

One of the most offensive of the parties, "Notte Scomoda," put on in December, 2018 by Scomodo magazine in their basement quarters, was visited by a number of motorcycles (there's a vehicle ramp leading downward, off via Carlo Emanuele), whose riders surely enjoyed revving their engines in that echo-y subterranean space.

The ramp off via Carlo Emanuele

The legendary motorcycle party.  Neighbors not in favor. 

This could be the space used by the motorcycle rally.

Aside from the noise problem, the parties raised once again the issue of whether building occupations were and should be tolerated by the authorities. It was noted that Forte Prenestina had been occupied since 1986, and that another troublesome "entertainment" occupation, at "Strike spa" in Portonaccio (both farther from the city center), had been ongoing since 2002. (See our post here, about Rome's issues with immigration and housing, and here, about Rome "capital of evictions.")

Even the Vatican came in for censure. When Spin Time Labs failed to pay the building's electric bill, the electricity was cut off, then restored through the intercession of one Cardinal Krajewski (who has some sort of official church role in that area of Rome), who apparently did so on the grounds that there were 450 poor people depending on it. In addition, Il Messaggero claimed that Spin Time Labs was exploiting the idea of helping those in need of housing in order to hold enormous social events and makes lots of money: thousands attending every weekend, each paying about $10 to enter, dance, and carouse. 

If we read the information boards correctly, those involved in the occupation have long been interested in the re-use of materials, and with good reason. When INPDAP moved out, they left behind enormous amounts of stuff.  We know this because when we visited the building--by invitation of our Scomodo friend--we were witness to the ongoing cleanup required to clear space for Scomodo's offices and social events.

A basement area that needs to be cleaned up, contents sorted.  Dianne is holding up a sign from one of the parties.  Note that beer is more expensive than wine--the norm in Italy. 

A very old film projector.

Some rooms--including one (above) that resembles the newspaper photo featuring the motorcycles--have been emptied and cleaned.

Graffiti on the basement walls would suggest that housing remains a high priority for those occupying the building.

"Too many people without houses.  Too many houses without people." 

Italy has some 50,000 people without housing,

We've never been on the building's upper floors, never seen the osteria or the enoteca or the areas where families live.  Maybe next year.

Bill

Sanford Biggers and the American Academy in Rome: Destruction and Creation

Sanford Biggers' art is astounding in its variety and materiality. We were fortunate to see several of his quilt works, and to talk with him, at the American Academy in Rome's Open Studios  in 2018.

Biggers and his art were profiled recently in a full-page New York Times Sunday feature.  He has shows coming up in the Bronx, Los Angeles, and New Orleans. Biggers' art has ranged from his use of vintage quilts to create new art to his BAM series that deals with the killing of blacks by police (which he says he can't work on or watch at this time - "There's a point where there's no longer any detachment from these things happening").

The quilts were his primary focus when he was a Rome Prize Fellow in Visual Arts at the Academy. We took photos of five that were on the walls of his studio there.

Fascinated as we were with his work, I was also troubled by his cutting apart, or covering over parts of, vintage quilts. It reminded me of Ai Weiwei breaking a Han Dynasty vase. Of course, in that case the vase was worth $1 million, and breaking it was Ai's point. (Here's the video if you want to re-live it.)

In response to my questions, Biggers seemed untroubled by what some may think of as destruction of these objects, objects that he and others value. As he said to the NYT reporter, commenting on the seminal "Quilts of Gee's Bend" show he saw at the Whitney Museum in 2002,  "There was color, modulation, rhythm, and all these compositional things. But seeing them in these beautiful textile works made by a woman's hands, it was touching on sculpture, touching on the body, touching on politics."  (I was surprised the NYT didn't ask this question.)

A portion of Maude Bennett's quilt made for
Dianne from material used to make Dianne dresses.

I may be somewhat protective of "the quilt," because my grandmother was a quilter. She made me quilts, many from scraps of fabric she had after making me dresses.  So, as a girl, I had the echoes of my dresses in the quilt on my bed. (See photo left.)  And, of course, she's no longer here (she died in 1984 at age 98), but her quilts are still with our family.

Biggers said he saw himself, in contrast to destroying, as perpetuating the life of some of these quilts, making them more long-lasting and visible than not. One of his quilt projects projects "codes" from the Underground Railroad onto the quilts. And he also sees his quilts projects as more an art of process than of object. He said he sits with the quilts for months or years, and then when he starts working on one, "it's led by what the material is going to give back."

A Rome influence in Biggers art appears in busts he is making in bronze and marble, with artisans in Italy, combining African sculptural traits with Greco-Roman ones.

Biggers and a guest in his studio at the Academy.

As the Open Studio times were drawing to a close, Biggers and his wife and then infant daughter were enjoying the outdoor music and sculpture "unveiling" in the Academy's front courtyard. 

In a corner of the studio - an artwork or
the tools of his trade? Hard to tell with
Biggers (but I still didn't touch it).

The Open Studios - which our friend Dana Prescott (now Executive Director of Civitella Ranieri international cultural center in Umbria) began when she was Associate Director at the Academy - have been an annual ritual and we hope one that will start again post-Covid. They are a benefit the Academy - which itself benefits from Rome  (one might even say the experience is "priceless") - can give back to Romans.

Dianne

City to Mountain Top, Life to Death: Signs of Summer in Rome

If Americans can't get there, at least we can have some dreams of Rome.  Below some photos from an earlier summer, exhibiting some of Rome's uniqueness - and markers of life and death

Here's life  - a bra ad - and death - notices of death pasted over them. In Castel Gandolfo (summer home of the Popes - and featured in the award-winning 2019 film, "The Two Popes"). "In forma smagliante"  is a sort of double entendre  here, trans. "In great shape" "In top form" "Fit as a fiddle" etc.

 Though from 2012, these graffiti faces at left remind us of our 2020 "mask-up" days.

On the "life" side (mostly), right - "Brigata Peroni" or "Peroni [as in the beer] Brigade."  One doesn't normally associate brigades, as in armed forces or the anarchical - and deadly (they killed Aldo Moro)- leftists, the "Red Brigade," with beer.

Left, a fully-stocked outdoor bar/cafe', complete with the requisite photo of iconic actor Alberto Sordi, in the iconic still of him eating spaghetti (from the film "Un Americano a Roma") - we've probably seen a hundred of these in restaurants and cafes and bars - and books!

Okay - we've posted photos of the nonsensical writings on shirts and jackets, but we think not this one, which does have the word "death" in it - seen in a Rome market. I just finished reading Bill Bryson's "The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way" in which he quotes some of these.  None is better than this one at right.

Eating IN the streets of Trastevere. This could be a good model for restaurants in the US
trying to expand their outside service.  Not exactly social distancing.  And no
worries from those actually standing in the street that they could be run over.

For the death end, here are two photos from the top of a mountain an hour or two outside Rome in the Abruzzi (the Gran Sasso). Yes, the ubiquitous cross was there, but also Mary, complete with rosary, and several plaques to hikers who had gone on to other heights.

In the photo below, the plaque on the right says, "Friendship doesn't need time or space. We know you will always be at our side.  Ciao Nicola."

And in that same photo, the plaque on the left reads, "In memory of Ezio Noce. Your mountain friends affectionately remember you, in this place familiar to you."

Dianne

Roman roads pave the way to prosperity in the 21st century

The old via Prenestina, a Roman road we "ran across" in the Roman countryside,
this near Gallicano nel Lazio, during our mostly-successful search for aqueducts.

At RST we're fascinated by the new in Rome, and how it often ties into the old. We've also spent a fair amount of time in and outside of Rome, "discovering" ancient Roman roads, including one in the woods that we couldn't believe dated back two centuries (see photo at right).

Via Sacra ("Holy road") on Monte Cavo
on the way to what once was probably
a temple to the goddess Diana.

At its peak (second century CE), the Roman road system covered Europe and parts of the Middle East and Africa. The tie between the old Roman roads and contemporary life is the thesis of a recent study by Danish economists that links today's European centers of healthy economic activity with infrastructure created 2,000 years ago - the Roman road system.

Looking at the Roman roads in 117 CE, the four economists conclude "greater Roman road density goes along with (a) greater modern road density, (b) greater settlement formation in 500 CE, and (c) greater economic activity in 2010." Underscoring this conclusion is their finding that this tie is weakened to the point of insignificance "where the use of wheeled vehicles was abandoned from the first millennium CE until the late modern period" - that is, in the Middle East and North Africa.  They also found market towns flourishing from the medieval period to modern times along those Roman roads.

Ancient Roman roads (light yellow) superimposed on 2010 satellite imagery of nighttime lighting in Europe. (Washington Post illustration using data from NOAA Earth Observatory, Natural Earth and Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilization)

How did the economists figure this out?  Among other tools, they used contemporary population and road density and night-time satellite imagery of light. (See photo above.) The Danes piggybacked on Harvard University's research and mapping project - its Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilizations - which we plan to feature in a future post.

This article from the Washington Post, here, summarizes nicely the Danish research and has some illustrative maps.

The original paper is here:http://web.econ.ku.dk/pabloselaya/papers/RomanRoads.pdf

Talk about the need for infrastructure?  Could the US take a lesson here?

Dianne