Monday 26 May: Laundry, cats and palestra

This morning we finally tackled the laundry from our trip north. This rather uneventful but hot morning was followed by an afternoon of research for me, and exploration for Gary. I did some work on Augustan iconography and topography, while Gary went exploring central Rome on his own. He walked down to the Area Sacra in Largo Argentina, the location of the old Republican temples and the cat sanctuary, and spent some time making feline friends down town. Gary

took some great cat pics, which you can see on Flickr.

Being ambitious and eager to work out, Gary went for a run along the Tiber. The river’s banks through the city were built up in the late 19^th and early 20^th century, as they had been in ancient Rome. After the collapse of the Empire in the fifth century the embankments fell into decay, and the Tiber flooded frequently over the next fifteen centuries, depositing meters of silt over much of the ancient city. For example, the Pantheon used to be on a hill. Now the piazza in front of it slopes down toward the temple, because it is built on top of over fifty feet of soil left by the Tiber over the centuries. Most of the Forum Romanum itself was under earth until the nineteenth century! Now the river is enclosed in embankments as it flows through the historic center, and you can take steps (lots of steps) down to walk, or in Gary’s case run, along the river.

While I’m on the topic of Gary and exercise, I’ll mention that he has also discovered the palestra, the gym about twenty feet from my front door. He can use the gym all day for 5 euro, which is a pretty good deal in Roma. The place is not huge, but Gary says that it’s clean, comfortable, has great equipment, and most of all, the people are very friendly. He has been going to the gym or running during the day while I’m working on my sabbatical research (I get my exercise by walking all over Rome and climbing steps all day long, which for me is a big deal). I'm actually getting around better than I have in years!