Friday 20 June: Laundry and iconography

I really needed to do laundry. With the heat, I am going through shirts like crazy, not to mention socks and boxers. Thinking about the heat also had me on a line of research, and I needed to check some references. My question was, which should I do in the relative cool of the morning, and which in the afternoon? Finally, the thought of sitting in the un-air-conditioned laundromat at 3 pm while it was 90 outside (temperatures are the only thing I can’t do in metric) was unbearable, so I got up early and hit the place when it opened at 7:30. I struck up a conversation with the guy who works the place, whom I’ve come to know a little bit. He’s from India, and although Italian is probably about his fifth language, his is excellent, way better than mine. We usually speak in English. He told me a funny story about some American college students who came in the other day to wash their clothes. It seems that one guy took his entire backpack full of clothing, and without emptying it, threw the whole thing into their biggest washer. When it was done, he threw it into a drier, which he set for about two hours. After the drier stopped, the guy just took out his pack and left. Apparently the laundry attendant was either too shocked or too amused to intervene with advice. Or maybe this guy had a method the rest of us just haven’t tried.

I spent the afternoon on a line of research in honor of the blazing sun outside. Apollo, god of light, was identified with the Greek Helios and Roman Sol, the sun god, by the age of Augustus. Apollo was also Augustus’ personal patron. There is a lot of solar imagery in both the art and the literature of the age of Augustus, and this extends to the topography of the Augustan city. Temples and other monuments reveal this solar iconography, which is most blatantly displayed in the obelisks that the emperor brought back from Egypt to adorn Rome. For thousands of years before the Romans, obelisks had been solar symbols in Egypt, and Augustus incorporated them into his programmatic topography. The most conspicuous one is the huge obelisk that served as the gnomon, or pointer, of the immense sundial laid out in a huge marble pavement in the Campus Martius. The inscription on the base reads that it commemorates Egypt being brought into the Roman Empire, and is dedicated to Sol, the sun god. There are a lot of primary sources, including historical and literary texts, inscriptions, and artwork, that can be linked to this, as well as an enormous amount of secondary literature. This should keep me busy for a while.