this week in the odyssey
5.10.99 -- 5.17.99
rome, italy

Putting The Glad Back Into Gladiator

Being a Roman gladiator ain't all it's cracked up to be. Not only is throwing Christians to the lions a lot more difficult than it sounds (some Christians are heavier than others), but you also have to contend with all the young buck gladiators looking to take a piece of your hard-won pie. Then there's the nancy-boy emperors prancing about in bedsheets while you bust a gut down there in the dirt with the lions. You need to come to work with your game face on every day. You need to dot your i's, cross your t's, behead your buddies. You need to maim with alacrity, dismember with elan, and slaughter with panache. And even then, nothing's guaranteed. For every Spartacus with a heavyweight rep, multimillion lira endorsement deals, and a book contract, there're a thousand played-out Thracian and Gaul gladiator wannabes with either their hands out on the street corner or their heads off on the Colosseum floor. That's why that scene there at right plays out with such poignancy, such pathos -- the world-weary gladiators at the bar, hastily bolting down a panini and a cappucino before returning to their grim, grisly toil. O, the humanity!

Whilst you consider the gladiator's lamentable plight, dear gentle reader, please pause to wipe the tears from your eyes as we burden you further with some of our own sorrows. You see, your faithful Extreme Telecommuters are in just the eensiest smidgen of a quandary. Kristanne and I finally figured out how to read the calendar over here (Roman numerals can be a little bit difficult) and, lo and behold, we only have ten more days in Rome! Ten more days in the city for which the poets claim a lifetime would not suffice! Ten more days to drink deeply from the life's rich chalice and savor its nurturing sweetness! Ten more days to learn how to write this webpage without sounding like a completely pretentious wastrel!

Ten days may be pushing it for that last one. Nonetheless, something had to be done. Something, that is, other than sitting on our deck drinking wine and cataloguing the various cool body tricks we can do (in case you're wondering, Kristanne can recite the Song of Hiawatha while simultaneously flaring her nostrils, wiggling her ears, and raising one eyebrow. I, on the other hand, can touch my nose with my hand. Well, while seated, anyway.). So, we hit the Michelin Guide...hard. What was left to see? What three-star sites awaited our hungry eyes?

Since work tasks have lately attached themselves to my backside with the zeal of a rabid weasel (I swear that I am not making that up), we were left with the weekend to fill in the holes in our cultural coverage. So, come Saturday morning, we were up with the roosters, ready for action. Well, the really late-rising roosters, anyway. The ones who have been booted out of the union and forced to seek work as owls (roosters will do anything for a buck). After a hurried continental breakfast of omelettes, toast, coffee, and juice (hey, if you eat it on the continent and it's breakfast, it's a continental breakfast) we hit the subway, bound for the Lateran on the other side of the city. After a headswirling fifteen minutes in the Lateran and its associated baptistry (the first one ever), we hit two neighboring early Christian churches.

As we were entering the second church, we were pleasantly surprised to see a pair of newlyweds leaving the church, fresh from their vows. Now, early Christian churches are a real specialty of Kristanne's. That time period is the focus for her master's thesis and she knows an awful lot about it. So, it came as something of a surprise to me when she started pointedly ignoring the glorious apse mosaics in favor of cooing about the gown worn by the bride leaving the church. She even made me take the picture you see of her there at the left, pretending like she's the bride, re-reciting our vows from eleven months ago. Just as she got into the point in our vows where she endeavors to "wipe my tears with her hams" (long story), I decided that perhaps it would be best if we got Kristanne some fresh air.

So, out into the world we went. Something, however, was amiss. It was quiet...too quiet. Where were the scooters? The unmuffled two-stroke engines? The cars that sound for all the world like a Homelite chainsaw with four wheels and a drive train slapped on? Then, it came. Some sort of sound, musical, but not of human creation. What the heck was it? Kristanne, sensing my disquiet, gently took my hand and whispered in my ear.

"They're just birds honey. Just birds. With wings. They fly around."
"Oh," I said, the light dawning. "You mean like pigeons, right? Like little airborne rats?"
"Close enough, honey. Now take my hand...we're crossing the street."

Slightly shaken (and lightly stirred), we wended our way down the Caelian hill to the Colosseum. The Colosseum is probably the best place in all of Rome to tourist watch. Tourists are easy to watch, even for beginners. You don't even need to sneak up on them -- you can just brazenly walk through them and observe their habits. They generally travel in packs, often following an alpha-male or alpha-female. The alpha unit is easily distinguishable by the large flag they carry and because the other tourists school up behind them in packs. Then, they'll all stop as one, the alpha unit will bark out some gibberish about "rococo flourishes in an otherwise gothic visionscape," and then, boom, they're on their way again. Eventually, they return en masse to their pods ("Greyhounds") to whisk off noisily to some other site where they can repeat the drill ad infinitum. Non alpha unit tourists are also easily identifiable. They typically wear some amazing headgear. Personal favorites include the baseball cap with a small solar panel on the top. The solar panel powers a tiny fan built into the bill of the cap so as to keep the canny tourist free from the ravages of the heat. Less ingenious but equally effective are the stylish parasol caps you see modeled by those folks there at the right. Though the multicolored models shown at right seem to be the most popular, I have also seen them in tweed and also (albeit rarely) in solid pastels. If anyone is doing their Christmas shopping early, I take a size XXL.

After a brief lunch in the Parco Oppio (featuring some more of those bird thingies Kristanne keeps prattling on about), we briefly checked out the ruins of Trajan's Baths and the Golden House of Nero (the Domus Aurea) on our way down to the Roman Forum (and no, absolutely nothing funny at all happened on the way to the forum). The Roman Forum area is the ancient center of Rome and is probably the most impressive sight there. It features an amazing array of ruins, including among many others the ancient senate building, the basilica of Constantine, and the temple of the Vestal Virgins (which, upon seeing, I definitely turned a whiter shade of pale). It also includes the Rostra, the ancient orators' platform from which the great speakers of the day would address the gathered masses. Today, the Rostra simply features some nebbishy dude in a t-shirt rambling on at great lengths about the overwhelming need for a professional basketball league consisting solely of out-of-shape former technical writers under 5'11". I thought the guy kinda had a point but Kristanne just called him "goofy." Political rhetoric sometimes makes art historians cranky.

One thing that doesn't make art historians cranky, though, is a good church. They love those transepts, those naves, those apses. So, we headed back up the Esquiline hill to the church of San Pietro in Vincoli ("Saint Peter in Chains," which, incidentally, would make a great name for a heavy metal band). This church features a famous sculpture of Moses by Michelangelo, in addition to the chains used to hold Saint Peter and the worldly relics of the Maccabees. Kinda cool, right? Unfortunately, I made the mistake of remarking to Kristanne, "Yeah, but you take away the Michelangelo, St. Peter's chains, and the whole Maccabee thing, and really, what have they got? Just another church."

I've really got to start checking out what Kristanne has in her hands before I say things like that. Just like Florence, I once again found myself being boxed about the ears with the Michelin Guide in an apparent attempt at what Kristanne likes to call "reeducation." In case you're wondering, I definitely don't feel any smarter, but my bruises are healing quite nicely, thank you.

At this point, the average sightseer would call it a day. They'd head to the nearest cafe they could find, unlace their shoes, and tie into a nice cold beverage. And that's exactly what I did. Or tried to do, anyway. Unfortunately for me, Kristanne is not the average sightseer. As fast as I could untie my shoes, she tied them back up, double knots and all. Every time I tried to signal a waiter, she'd warn him off with an icy glare and a sharp kick to the shins. Reluctantly, I heaved a heavy sigh and propped myself back up on my weary dogs to catch the bus out to Santa Costanza and Santa Agnese, two early Christian churches on the outskirts of Rome.

Actually, I was very excited to see these two churches. There is a good chance that Kristanne will be doing her masters thesis on Santa Costanza, and I was anxious to see what she had been studying to earnestly. It was also my first chance to see a genuine, no-fooling-around set of catacombs. You probably already know this, but catacombs are subterranean burial chambers. They typically are a maze-like set of narrow corridors wending their way through the damp and the dark. On all sides, remains are interred. This particular set of catacombs had an amazing array of early Christian symbols and inscriptions on the walls, ranging from simple directions on how to get out of the catacombs (something you'd definitely want to do before your torch ran out...these places are more than a little bit creepy) to memorial pictographs and writings. You can see an example of these inscriptions in that picture up above. You can see part of the catacombs themselves there at the left. By the way, that's no dead Christian coming out of the wall, there...that's my wife.

After a couple very interesting hours in Santa Costanza and Santa Agnese, we headed out to catch the bus back to the center of Rome. This time, I definitely got my shoes unlaced as we sat down to some nice antipasto in a streetside cafe in Campo dei Fiori. Flush with success from unlacing my shoes, I pushed my luck a little too far when I tried to unbutton my pants and give myself a little breathing room. I've really got to start watching out for that Michelin Guide.

Well, we know Mr. Scucherini hasn't been around for a while, but he may be out next week as we head up to the Borghese Gardens, Villa Giulia, the Vatican Museum (including the Sistine Chapel), and anything else we can cram into our last ten days of Rome. After that, it's off to Sicily for eight days and then back to Rome for one last day to say our goodbyes before we head off to Switzerland, Sardinia, or Elba for a couple weeks. Keep checking back to see if I ever get any smarter (really, it could happen). See you next time on the Odyssey!

Last Week's Front Page Picture

By the way, that's Kristanne in front of the Lateran over there at right. The Lateran was built by the emperor Constantine and is supposed to symbolize the triumph of Christianity over paganism. It has the title "Mother and Head of all the churches in the City and the world." Kristanne, on the other hand, symbolizes the triumph of Nutella and doughnuts over sensible nutritional habits. She sometimes has the title "Miss Money Money." The parallels are, I'm sure you'll agree, simply uncanny.