Goodbye Italy

Now I have some sad news for you. Dill has decided to stay in Sperlanga. It is a beautiful beach area with that interesting Villa built into a cave. He must have really liked it.

We can’t go on without a mascot, so I was happy to find this Buffalo. The Professor has named it Buffy. In southern Italy people raise water buffalo for the mozzarella cheese that they can make from their milk. In many places you will find ads for buffalo mozzerella. This picture shows Buffy on an altar. It is a small one built right into the corner of a street. Besides the big temples where there were priests that did special sacrifices to gods there were also smaller alters like this one that were for more ordinary people to use for smaller sacrifices. We took this picture when we went to visit Pompeii for one last time. The day before this most of the group also visited a place called Herculaneum. It is smaller than Pompeii, but also was effected by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. They are doing lots of preservation work at Herculaneum and there is a lot of really fascinating stuff to see there.

In Pompeii I saw a few more things that I want to share with you before we go on to Greece.
Flour Mills-This is a picture of a flour mill. We saw places that had several really large ones and also smaller ones. People would bring their wheat and pour it into the top. Then a wooden rod would be put into the slot on the side and the top part would grind around the lower part and the wheat would turn to flour. Most of these places also had ovens, so you could tell that people came for their flour and also the baked bread to these places.

More evidence of people-This is a picture of one of the bodies that was found here. They did not actually find the body because it would have burned up, but they found places where people had been and they were able to fill the space in with plaster and then it was like a mold that showed the people. The ones that were left there had died of asphyxiation because they could not breath and then when the ashes fell they were buried right there. You can actually see the skull and teeth of this person.

A Puzzle-I saw this piece of a column and wondered why it was slanted. Did people use slanted columns for something. I asked the professor and he figured it out. Can you? It is sort of a geometry problem. If you need a clue click here. Tomorrow I will post the answer.

Today the Professor and I have been traveling from Italy to Greece. We will miss Italy. It really was a great place to visit. I am only on this trip for a few more days. I would really like to write more about what my readers are interested in. Write a comment to let me know what questions you have!

Overview of Rome

Rome has been an important city for thousands of years. For the next few days I am planning to give you an overview of Rome with stories. Maybe some of you know some stories about Roman Gods that you could share. Send them to me at janicef@jfriesen.net and I will try to use them! Since many of the things that I am seeing are from different centuries, I am working on a timeline that I can include to give you an idea of all of the different times.

Today I am just going to tell you about the founding of Rome. Rome was founded about 750 BC. That is a LONG time ago. The story of the founding is well known, but no one knows how true it is, but it is a great story. There is a story that Romulus and Remus were brothers. The god Mars and a human woman gave birth to twins. She did not want to have children, so she tried to eliminate them by abandoning them on the Tiber River. The river was in a flood and the twins came to rest at the bottom of a hill called the Palatine where they were nursed by a wolf and brought up by a couple of shepherds. When they grew up they established a city on the Palatine, which became Rome (named after Romulus who killed his brother in an dispute over boundaries. The Palatine was one of seven surrounding hills: the Palatine, the Coelian, the Esquiline, the Velia, the Viminal, the Quirinal and the Capatoline. Rome is known as the city on seven hills. So, if you remember Romulus and Remus; a wolf; and seven hills you know the origins of Rome!

Dill took a bus trip with me yesterday to see an overview of Rome. On the bus we met these two nice Bulgarian Women and Dill wanted his picture taken with them (the guy holding the umbrella is a street umbrella salesman hoping for a sale). We looked all over and decided that today we should go to the Vatican and see the Sistine chapel where Michelangelo painted.

I am closing with a picture of Dill helping James with his research. James is here along with The Professor and a few others presenting at the International Society of Biblical Literature Conference.

Oh…. and speaking of The Professor…. for the 32 years I have been married to him he has been boasting that Italian Gelato is the best ice cream in the world. Finally I have a chance to test it out and see. WOW, he is right! I have now tasted pistacio, peach, melon, cream, After Five (like mint chip), chocolate, and coffee. I am putting up a short poll about which ice cream flavor I should try next. Let me know what you think!