Speaker 1: Oh hello, Okay, so two things. One, we won the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two Webby for Best Host, which feels like
Speaker 1: an awkward thing for a host to announce. But I'm
Speaker 1: very shocked and proud. I'm a little ashamed of how
Speaker 1: proud I am, not shockingly. But anyway, if you listened
Speaker 1: to last week's Toothology encore about squids, you may know
Speaker 1: I'm up in my folks helping my dad through some
Speaker 1: cancer treatments. And so while we head off to radiation,
Speaker 1: please enjoy this encore from twenty eighteen, which is just
Speaker 1: so chock full a word facts and history an ologies. Okay,
Speaker 1: oh hey, it's your all dad Ward Bond podcast, just
Speaker 1: slipping into your life to chat with you about ancient toilets,
Speaker 1: buried treasure, and Roman rulers. Oh this episode, it's been
Speaker 1: simmering for millennia, and if you listened to Egyptology you'll
Speaker 1: already have kind of a wee primer on the hot
Speaker 1: empire gossip we're about to unleash. But first, just a
Speaker 1: quick thanks thank you to all the patrons at patreon
Speaker 1: dot com slash ologies for supporting as little as a
Speaker 1: quarter an episode. A buck a month gets you in
Speaker 1: that club and thanks to everyone getting merch at ologiesmerch
Speaker 1: dot com and for no money, you can support just
Speaker 1: by telling some friends, maybe some co workers, some enemies
Speaker 1: about the show. Also, rating and subscribing on iTunes keeps
Speaker 1: this boat afloat, and reviewing just makes my day because
Speaker 1: sometimes I'm tired or sad and then I see a
Speaker 1: nice thing you said. So this week I creep the
Speaker 1: review of Sexy Bitch. They say, you know that thing
Speaker 1: that happens when you meet someone at a party and
Speaker 1: realize that you both love the same science podcast and
Speaker 1: then you freak out and talk about it at a
Speaker 1: mile a minute while everyone around you is like, what's
Speaker 1: their problem right now? If the answer is no, you've
Speaker 1: never listened to ologies, this episode list is like the
Speaker 1: menu at an amazing restaurant. Literally, anything you choose is
Speaker 1: a good idea. Thank you, Sexy Bitch. Okay, Archaeology, let's
Speaker 1: get into the etymology really quick. Archaeology comes from the
Speaker 1: Greek ark for beginning, and classical archaeology deals specifically with
Speaker 1: ancient Rome or ancient Greece. Boy, howdy, hot dang, this
Speaker 1: ologist knows his business. He's an American who lives in Rome,
Speaker 1: so the dude is literally walking the talk, and he's
Speaker 1: the executive director of the American Institute for Roman Culture.
Speaker 1: So dude was a Fulbright scholar who got his masters
Speaker 1: and PhD in archaeology at the University of Texas. And
Speaker 1: he's the host of a PBS series called Ancient Invisible Cities,
Speaker 1: as well as the Italian series called Under Italy, where
Speaker 1: he crawls into cool tunnels and tombs and shit. It's
Speaker 1: very rad. Season two is about to start. He was
Speaker 1: in la as a Getty Conservation Institute scholar at the
Speaker 1: Getty Museum, and my lovely friend, an equestrian by the
Speaker 1: name of Mackenzie Rollins. Hey Girl, introduced us via email
Speaker 1: and then we met up. We chatted. We got a
Speaker 1: little geeky about the Greeks, but mostly it's all about
Speaker 1: the Romans. So a statement on his website just reads,
Speaker 1: my passion is Rome and it is not a lie.
Speaker 1: And like a plague in ancient times, it's infectious. So
Speaker 1: hang on your togas and recline on your laurels to
Speaker 1: hear all kinds of dirt with classical archaeologist doctor Darius Aria.
Speaker 1: Darius Aria sounds like a superhero name.
Speaker 2: Yeah, almost almost rhymes which I've.
Speaker 1: Gotten Darius Aria Hello, also known as Dark. So you
Speaker 1: are in the United States right now, but you're based
Speaker 1: in Italy.
Speaker 2: That's exactly correct. And I get complimented here on my
Speaker 2: English all the time because they're like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: you're from Italy, but you're English. You sound so so
Speaker 2: like a native speaker. I'm like, well, actually, yes, now
Speaker 2: you're from New York originally. No, okay, so I was
Speaker 2: born in Buffalo, but I was. I grew up in Huntington,
Speaker 2: West Virginia. My dad was a coal miner and no, okay,
Speaker 2: one second, the Iranian coal miner. That's a good story though. Anyways,
Speaker 2: then I went to a boarding school in New Hampshire,
Speaker 2: so I had my New England experience. And then I
Speaker 2: stayed in the area. I went to University of Pennsylvania,
Speaker 2: so I had my Philadelphia experience City of Brotherly Love.
Speaker 2: And then I got my PhD in Austin, Texas, which
Speaker 2: is the surreal spot in all of Texas.
Speaker 1: And then when did you start studying archaeology? I know
Speaker 1: your dad he got a coal miner. Your dad was
Speaker 1: a surgeon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my dad's surgeon retired, but he my dad's Iranian,
Speaker 2: so he came over through study in Vienna that my
Speaker 2: mom there, work in London, and then finally to Buffalo
Speaker 2: where he did his residency. My mom is American German American,
Speaker 2: so that's the kind of link up. But archaeology, I mean,
Speaker 2: I was always interested in ancient history. I was always
Speaker 2: interested in something something old. I was lucky enough as
Speaker 2: a kid and to travel to museums in the United States,
Speaker 2: and I love the Smithsonian. I mean, I think the
Speaker 2: Smithsonian will strike has something for everyone. You know, it
Speaker 2: just strikes you in a certain ways, air and space
Speaker 2: or natural history. And for me it was these exhibitions
Speaker 2: on the ancient civilizations. And there was a huge one
Speaker 2: on Darius the Great. I'm like, oh, who is this guy?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: So got a little bit of my history in there
Speaker 2: that spurred it on.
Speaker 1: So side note, if you're like everyone knows who Darius
Speaker 1: the Great, the ruler of Persia around five hundred BCE, is,
Speaker 1: except me, You're not alone. I had to look this up.
Speaker 1: So Darius the dead one, not a live guide that
Speaker 1: I'm interviewing, built the seventeen hundred mile long Intercontinental Royal Road,
Speaker 1: and he had a ton of wives. And he also
Speaker 1: is known for having carved his autobiography into a limestone
Speaker 1: cliff face, including details about a bunch of wars he won.
Speaker 1: It was a baller move. It was kind of like
Speaker 1: a mix between Mount Rushmore and a Barbara Walters interview
Speaker 1: and some really good battle rap lyrics. Anyway, he had style,
Speaker 1: and you were named after him.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, I mean, but I mean it's like.
Speaker 1: Is it like John? Is it a very comedy?
Speaker 2: I'm John John Smith is Darius Aria in FARSI something
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: It's great. Honestly, you sound like a superhero.
Speaker 2: And well, when I studied Latin, it was great because
Speaker 2: then my name can decline.
Speaker 1: You know, that is such a niche observation. As someone
Speaker 1: who studied Latin for four years, very much, I appreciate
Speaker 1: the declining.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 1: Did you study ancient languages when you were getting your
Speaker 1: archaeology PhD?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Right, when I was a kid, I was in Huntington.
Speaker 2: We had this absolutely spectacular, nationally acclaimed Latin teacher. So
Speaker 2: why and that's why I didn't study French. I mean,
Speaker 2: that was the other option that we got to study
Speaker 2: with with this with this person, and she was just
Speaker 2: so dynamic and on fire. Lewis Merritt, I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: she's still kicking around and you know whatever. Wherever I
Speaker 2: go back home, she's always, oh my one of my
Speaker 2: favorite you know, the students and all this sort of stuff.
Speaker 2: But she was just great, and that's what you want
Speaker 2: in any teacher. So that really inspires you, and someone
Speaker 2: you can go back to and someone that just you know,
Speaker 2: is really excited about their material.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I bet as a Latin teacher. She's like, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: she's like I turned one, yeah, into a lifelong Roman
Speaker 1: enthusiast addict, and then I live in Rome.
Speaker 2: That's why he was just blindly doing the Latin and
Speaker 2: Greek junior high then high school. You know it. Just
Speaker 2: really enjoyed it, but I didn't think career. So I
Speaker 2: was in that generation where you just didn't really talk
Speaker 2: about it and then you know, and then you'd move
Speaker 2: forward and then you're in university and your parents like,
Speaker 2: what are you studying? By my studying, I'm going to
Speaker 2: keep studying classics, but I don't want to do that.
Speaker 2: They're like, well, okay, maybe you want to look at
Speaker 2: a PhD. No, no, I don't want to do that. And
Speaker 2: you want to look at the sciences. You know your
Speaker 2: brother's pre med Do you want to look at it?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: No, So I just was not interested in that. And
Speaker 2: then I decided, having studied a semester in Rome, Italy,
Speaker 2: that was the real kicker for me. That was when
Speaker 2: I really just opened my eyes to you know, how
Speaker 2: much more or I could do with the stuff I
Speaker 2: was studying. And so that archaeology just became this thing like, oh,
Speaker 2: could I really do that? And a lot of people
Speaker 2: wanted They fall in love with archaeology, and it's just
Speaker 2: hard to do something with it because the field is
Speaker 2: I mean, you're very specialized, and then you come out
Speaker 2: and there are there's no jobs, so it feels like
Speaker 2: just an uphill kind of battle. So I wasn't even
Speaker 2: thinking about that when I decided to do it. I
Speaker 2: wasn't thinking about job prospects. I was not very This
Speaker 2: is not what I would tell my children. I would
Speaker 2: have to go into something. Don't be responsible, don't think
Speaker 2: about your future, don't think about how you're going to
Speaker 2: pay for anything. You know, I would never tell my
Speaker 2: kids to do that. I'll be like any other parent going,
Speaker 2: oh my god, what are you doing with your life?
Speaker 1: You followed a passion though, yeah, which is what got
Speaker 1: you to keep studying it through getting a PhD. It
Speaker 1: was what you were most passionate about. So Daria says
Speaker 1: that part of being a professional archaeologist is just figuring
Speaker 1: out the right job after you score the PhD. And
Speaker 1: you might have to get a little creative, so you
Speaker 1: might have to compromise a little. You might have to
Speaker 1: write a book in the day while waiting tables at
Speaker 1: olive garden at night. That's okay. So for him, doing
Speaker 1: field work plus scholarly work plus hosting TV shows and
Speaker 1: podcasts has turned out to be the right combination.
Speaker 2: I'm Darius Aria. I'm an archaeologist off to explore three
Speaker 2: of the most amazing cities on the planet.
Speaker 1: So you know, a field is potentially a little challenging
Speaker 1: when your side hustle is being a TV show host.
Speaker 1: But he's great at it and it's working for him clearly.
Speaker 1: I mean, like, imagine if John Stamos had a PhD
Speaker 1: and took over Mike Roe's job, but in ancient catacombs,
Speaker 1: he's killing it. What does an archaeologist do if someone
Speaker 1: says I'm an archaeologist, what does that mean, because I
Speaker 1: feel like we I think of dusty chinos and like
Speaker 1: worn boots and definitely a hat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, most archaeology isn't spending your time in the field.
Speaker 2: I mean I can qualify that and say, okay, some
Speaker 2: people just do that all the time because they're like
Speaker 2: contract archaeologists. So there's always something going on in Italy
Speaker 2: where you know, some house is being built, or some
Speaker 2: building is being restored, or some road is being put in,
Speaker 2: and so they're always out in the field doing the
Speaker 2: excavation in that sense, urban development and so on, or
Speaker 2: rescue operations. But you know, generally speaking, you're studying the past.
Speaker 2: So you know you're an egyptologist or I'm a classical archaeologist,
Speaker 2: so I'm in the Mediterranean, I'm in Central Europe, I'm
Speaker 2: where the Romans were. But generally speaking, you know, the
Speaker 2: archaeologists will spend a lot of time in libraries, like
Speaker 2: I'm here at the library using the resources of the Getty.
Speaker 1: And so it's some part in the field, but a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of it is spent also piecing
Speaker 1: together a lot of different parts of history to form
Speaker 1: kind of a narrative or try to piece together a
Speaker 1: narrative that has parts missing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So you're you're you know, you're getting a
Speaker 2: wealth of information when you're excavating or doing some sort
Speaker 2: of evaluative study. I mean, it could be non invasive nowadays.
Speaker 2: But then you need to sift through the data, like
Speaker 2: what you've now come up with has to make sense.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I love this part archaeology. She is like
Speaker 1: a fascinating parfait of abandoned junk.
Speaker 2: Or if you're excavating, you know, you've unearthed different strata,
Speaker 2: different layers that people have left behind, and you've gone
Speaker 2: through the chronology you know, backwards, so you're trying to
Speaker 2: piece it together understanding from the beginning to the end.
Speaker 2: Of course, you're actually the most recent stuff first, so
Speaker 2: there's a bit of a puzzle there.
Speaker 1: And what kind of tools are you using? Take me
Speaker 1: through a dig?
Speaker 2: Okay, so the first thing is sometimes you know, talk
Speaker 2: to some little kid, rarely an adult, but somebody else says,
Speaker 2: have you ever found any dinosaurs? Like new I'm not
Speaker 2: that kind of archaeologist. So anyways, so what I'm concentrating
Speaker 2: on professionally has been the Roman era, and because Rome
Speaker 2: is not a place that's abandoned and it has continually
Speaker 2: been occupied, there are various layers that can be quite late.
Speaker 2: So you know, top layer of a site, well, I
Speaker 2: mean it will be modern, you know, so there's going
Speaker 2: to be something just people deposit to, People leave stuff behind,
Speaker 2: and it can be you know, a coke bottle or
Speaker 2: a piece of barbed wire fencing. I mean, it could
Speaker 2: be something obviously like that. And then you're getting down
Speaker 2: into actually in Rome, in vicinity, the environs can be very,
Speaker 2: very rapid. Sometimes it's even as it's been just shallow
Speaker 2: as say, you know, four or five inches awesome, boom,
Speaker 2: we're already hitting ancient material.
Speaker 1: And where it is this is this like in a
Speaker 1: construction site, a puddle.
Speaker 2: So I've been my excavations have been in really historic
Speaker 2: places that are well known, like the Roman Forum, but
Speaker 2: then also an archaeological site called Ostia Antica. And Ostia
Speaker 2: Antica was the port city of Rome. Basically, Ostia was
Speaker 2: developed as the city at the mouth of the Tiber River.
Speaker 2: So you imagine this river flowing from the north through
Speaker 2: Rome and then dumping out into the Mediterranean.
Speaker 1: So this is a city located right about at the
Speaker 1: kneecap of Italy. It's right on the sea, and it's
Speaker 1: been abandoned for about one thousand years, and now a
Speaker 1: kind of looks like grassland taking over a grid of
Speaker 1: crumbling brick structures. But in its heyday it was this
Speaker 1: bustling port city and the seaside tourist town filled with
Speaker 1: government buildings and military fortifications, amphitheaters, residences, and ships carrying
Speaker 1: grains and other supplies would offload tons of goods to
Speaker 1: be stored and cataloged in warehouses and then tugged upriver
Speaker 1: by little boats and then dragged into Rome itself by
Speaker 1: oxen or slaves, because yeah, Romans had plenty of slaves
Speaker 1: to cover all kinds of jobs, from hard labor to
Speaker 1: sex work to really specialized and enslaved physicians and accountants.
Speaker 1: And one very famous slave revolt was led by a gladiator.
Speaker 1: What was his name?
Speaker 2: I'm I'm Spotagus, I'm Spartacus, I'm Spotagus, I'm Spartakus.
Speaker 1: Also just a side note, this was recorded in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: and in the last four or so years we've collectively
Speaker 1: moved towards saying enslaved person, because slave implies that it's
Speaker 1: a person's core identity when it's really a condition forced
Speaker 1: onto them. Also, while we're at it, master bedrooms, we've
Speaker 1: learned to call them primary bedrooms. Language is elastic, and
Speaker 1: that's why I love it. See also the etymology episode
Speaker 1: with Helen Zaltzman if you like linguistic things. Okay, back
Speaker 1: to the port, Ostia Antica, which means alluringly old mouth.
Speaker 1: This was a place of a lot of comings and goings.
Speaker 1: But once a newer port city nearby started getting more traffic,
Speaker 1: Ostia Antika became so five minutes ago. It was so over.
Speaker 1: It was like a hipster bar that your mom's friends
Speaker 1: started going to. But it's abandoned. Ruins are a really
Speaker 1: really good place for archaeologists to piece together the past,
Speaker 1: because that's what they do. I just stated the obvious anyway,
Speaker 1: Ostia Antica.
Speaker 2: And so then obviously Ostia becomes a very very important place,
Speaker 2: uh for the Empire, and it becomes a very multicultural city,
Speaker 2: and it's a great it's like a mini Rome. So
Speaker 2: the fact that it gets abandoned is just there. Uh.
Speaker 2: Then allows us to have really exciting and pretty immediate
Speaker 2: excavations as opposed to you know, other sites that are
Speaker 2: you know, continue occupied like Rome. Obviously, Rome is much
Speaker 2: more complex to excavate because there's a modern city on top.
Speaker 1: Of And what kind of stuff do you typically find.
Speaker 2: You find a lot of pottery. I was going to say, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: So I mean imagine, you know, imagine, you know, you
Speaker 2: you have your house, you're living in your house for
Speaker 2: decades and decades and decades, and you're producing over that
Speaker 2: time period a lot of garbage. Now imagine your rubbish heap,
Speaker 2: your dump was right outside in your backyard. Just imagine
Speaker 2: what people would find.
Speaker 1: Personally, There's a bunch of kombucha bottles and empty bags
Speaker 1: that cool ranch to ritos, let's be honest.
Speaker 2: Oh and of course, obviously we're talking about a lot
Speaker 2: of today, we're talking about a lot of plastic. So
Speaker 2: for the Romans, almost everything. I mean, sure there's you know,
Speaker 2: leather goods they're using, or baskets or what you know,
Speaker 2: but the main thing is, you know, in burlap bags.
Speaker 2: But really what's traditionally preserving, what was used for storage
Speaker 2: for pretty much anything, was pottery. So you're going to
Speaker 2: find that and that stuff is fired and it's basically indestructible,
Speaker 2: but you know it's kind of like smashed up and
Speaker 2: those things can be pieced together and then hopefully, if
Speaker 2: you're lucky. You know, there's writing. You know, they write
Speaker 2: on them, oftentimes the what the material is and so forth,
Speaker 2: or you know who owns it and so on. There's
Speaker 2: a big dump actually in Rome called Monthly Testatcho. It's
Speaker 2: like a hill.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Okay, a Google search reveals this huge
Speaker 1: grassy hill in an otherwise flat neighborhood. But then you
Speaker 1: get up close and it's like a ceramics graveyard. There's
Speaker 1: just piles and piles and piles of broken pottery, like
Speaker 1: if a giant was so pissed and just smashed all
Speaker 1: your jars. So it's all the antiquated mystery of a
Speaker 1: creepy cemetery with none of the I'm sad about all
Speaker 1: the lives that have ended. Factor. It's great.
Speaker 2: It's literally something like about one hundred and fifty feet high,
Speaker 2: oh my god, and it's got a circumference of like
Speaker 2: a mile and a half and they just dumped ceramics
Speaker 2: that are smashed and the primarily the amphidi. These jars
Speaker 2: were used for carrying olive oil. So then you say, well,
Speaker 2: why don't they just reuse the jars? Well, because if
Speaker 2: you have it filled with olive oil, you ever try
Speaker 2: to clean a bottle of olive oil. It's a pain
Speaker 2: in the ass. Okay, it's yeah, So what they did
Speaker 2: was they just smashed it. So it gives you an
Speaker 2: idea of the volume, the sheer volume that's coming in.
Speaker 2: And then keep in mind too that the we love
Speaker 2: the ancient guys because it was also sustainable. So even
Speaker 2: Rome was a big consumer city generally speaking, you'd take
Speaker 2: those jars and you'd smash them and you'd stick them
Speaker 2: in the rubble for the mortar of a wall. So
Speaker 2: these things get you know, they're reusing everything. But to
Speaker 2: be able to create a massive hill like that means
Speaker 2: it has so much volume coming into this megacity that
Speaker 2: was the ultimate consumer city, that oh, we can't even
Speaker 2: use all this stuff. We'll just dump it over here
Speaker 2: and it just becomes this hill.
Speaker 1: My god. So people have always been garbage people.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. Some of the greatest finds I think in
Speaker 2: recent times really adding to our knowledge of the ancient
Speaker 2: world is like, for example, the drainage channels in Herculaneum,
Speaker 2: one of these cities destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius.
Speaker 2: They found something like six tons of human feces, So
Speaker 2: you go, oh, that's not my kind of dig, but yeah, like,
Speaker 2: oh we hit the mother load. Ooh, these guys were constipated. Now.
Speaker 2: But basically what happens is they sift through all this
Speaker 2: stuff and they find out you know, oh they had
Speaker 2: parasites and they had you know, and this is what
Speaker 2: they're eating, is that this is their diet and so forth,
Speaker 2: and it's really really fascinating. Again, I don't think I
Speaker 2: want to be like, I don't want to be known
Speaker 2: as the shit archaeologists or something like that. You know,
Speaker 2: what's your specialty, Like I've washed my hands.
Speaker 1: Since making this episode. Side note, we've done scatology, all
Speaker 1: about zoo poo, and more recently environmental microbiology, which is
Speaker 1: all about testing wastewater for diseases. You're welcome, enjoy your lunch.
Speaker 2: Somebody's got to do it. And you don't know what's
Speaker 2: going to happen when you dig, and you always have
Speaker 2: these questions that you ask and you get approval to
Speaker 2: pursue to answer those questions in your excavation. But of
Speaker 2: course it's just like Murphy's law, like you're never going
Speaker 2: to find what you sought out to find. You know,
Speaker 2: you think these are shops, and therefore you want to
Speaker 2: understand the commercial activities along this road. Oh wait a minute,
Speaker 2: they're not shops there, you know, as a brothel or
Speaker 2: I don't know whatever, you know, instead of it being
Speaker 2: you know, a wine shop or something like that. So
Speaker 2: you just you will not know until you excavate. And
Speaker 2: that's part of the fun and the mystery and in
Speaker 2: the puzzle work because you never find everything intact. You're
Speaker 2: always going to find you know, half the puzzle pieces
Speaker 2: are missing, so then you need to figure it out,
Speaker 2: and you figure that out by talking to colleagues and
Speaker 2: seeing things that are similar and so forth. But that's
Speaker 2: a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Now when you've got let's say, a crushed base that
Speaker 1: you've understed and it's very exciting. Whose job is it
Speaker 1: to physically put it back together? Ah?
Speaker 2: Yes? So then I mean, well that's the job of
Speaker 2: the conservator, which is very very important. So you know,
Speaker 2: you can carefully document and excavate, like we actually had
Speaker 2: a number of tombs at our last dig, so then
Speaker 2: we had a you know, specific expert.
Speaker 1: So this expert he's talking about is the very very
Speaker 1: European sounding Pierre Paulo Petrone of the Laboratory of Human
Speaker 1: Osteobiology and Forensic Anthropology. This is near Pompeii. This guy
Speaker 1: studies the victims of ancient disasters, and just a quick
Speaker 1: tippy tap on the old computer machine turned up a
Speaker 1: paper of his entitled quote a hypothesis of sudden body
Speaker 1: fluid vaporization in the seventy nine to eighty victims of
Speaker 1: Vesuvius Sudden body fluid vaporization. So today I learned that
Speaker 1: a volcano can boil the blood right out of your body.
Speaker 2: Okay, anyway, he's looking at some pelvic bone and he's
Speaker 2: telling you man or woman and age and da da
Speaker 2: da da dad. So it's just it was a lot
Speaker 2: of fun to have him on the site. And you
Speaker 2: have to depend upon a good team of people from
Speaker 2: different backgrounds depending on what you're doing. Do you need
Speaker 2: a structural engineer because you're going deep. Do you need
Speaker 2: this forensic anthropologist, Do you need the numismatist, do you
Speaker 2: need you know, for the coins. But it really is
Speaker 2: exciting because what you're doing is it's you're recovering the
Speaker 2: remains of ancient cultures. That's what really archaeology is. And
Speaker 2: you're you're doing that through the examination of the material remains,
Speaker 2: and you know, it's not just the things, but the
Speaker 2: things that then indicate human activity, human lives. I mean,
Speaker 2: it really is the way to connect to those people
Speaker 2: of the past. And oftentimes, you know, it's not the
Speaker 2: big high and mighty the emperors. Like I've done a
Speaker 2: lot of TV shows, it's like tell us one more episode,
Speaker 2: doing one more episode on Caligula, you know, or somebody
Speaker 2: isn't create you know, Nero burning Rome. But it's also
Speaker 2: just that average person, you know, those communities who were
Speaker 2: those people, and so they oftentimes remain anonymous because they
Speaker 2: don't have the funds to leave behind something great and
Speaker 2: massive and impressive. So it's really the archaeological remains that
Speaker 2: can help unearth their story.
Speaker 1: And how did ancient Romans live.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's different ways of looking at it because on
Speaker 2: the one hand, we just I mean, I'm still in
Speaker 2: awe of the aqueducts that were constructed to bring all
Speaker 2: that water into a city. I mean, how do you
Speaker 2: maintain you know, a million, you know people. I mean
Speaker 2: that's a mega city. Cities didn't get that large until
Speaker 2: after the seventeen hundreds. I mean, this is you got
Speaker 2: to get the Industrial Revolution to have the sophistication to
Speaker 2: have those cities. Then you look at the cities of
Speaker 2: the Industrial Revolution, and life for a lot of people
Speaker 2: is pretty shitty, you know, pretty bad. And then you
Speaker 2: look at ancient Roman times and you go, yeah, a
Speaker 2: lot of people just eking by. They're just you know,
Speaker 2: barely making a living. So, you know, we're looking at
Speaker 2: maybe you know, our society today and saying, wow, the
Speaker 2: wealthy are becoming really wealthy, you know that one idea boom,
Speaker 2: you know, that uber that, you know whatever, that startup,
Speaker 2: and but then everyone else, you know, you kind of
Speaker 2: see this kind of crunch and saying, oh, the middle
Speaker 2: class is suffering, and then the poor boy, they're really poor.
Speaker 1: Darius points out with dismay that this mirrors today's culture.
Speaker 1: In some countries, some people can't afford healthcare. Well, some
Speaker 1: are just drowning in coin, no big deal, just taking
Speaker 1: a private seven forty seven.
Speaker 2: Well, well, you go back to the ancient Roman times,
Speaker 2: you had a small class of people and boy were
Speaker 2: they wealthy. I mean, they were so wealthy, just on
Speaker 2: another level. And I'm not even talking about the imperial family.
Speaker 2: It's just that so much wealth was concentrated in the
Speaker 2: hands of, you know, a handful of families, and then
Speaker 2: there really was no middle class per se. It's hard
Speaker 2: to get involved and talk about what was life like
Speaker 2: when we try to look at it in our own terms.
Speaker 2: But it definitely was a hard life. I mean, if
Speaker 2: we think about childbirth, uh oh, exactly. Childbirth is I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, gaving a baby is even you have risks
Speaker 2: today with all the modern menage wild birth. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: you had the midwife. She was very important. You had
Speaker 2: actually really neat to see this. One guy has a
Speaker 2: plaque outside of his shop and literally is a woman
Speaker 2: in a birthing chair that's being assisted, so literally like
Speaker 2: a cutout chair. These things exist today and so the
Speaker 2: Romans wouldn't you know, it wouldn't go flat. That was
Speaker 2: something that was created in more recent times and now
Speaker 2: they're kind of going away from it. But basically, you know,
Speaker 2: he has one giving birth in a chair with a
Speaker 2: cutout and someone's receiving the baby. So it's like this
Speaker 2: is this is the person. This is the person you're
Speaker 2: going to contact to come to your house. You know,
Speaker 2: all these specializations, all these careers, like this is the
Speaker 2: person that makes the shoes times, I mean there was
Speaker 2: the guy down the street that was making your shoes.
Speaker 2: Unless you get the import right, get more refined leather
Speaker 2: or whatever, and it can be much more expensive. And
Speaker 2: that's why you show you that's the way you're showing
Speaker 2: your own wealth. But you know, the clothes that are
Speaker 2: being made, everything is made by hand. But in a
Speaker 2: certain sense things did get industrialized. You could go to
Speaker 2: dry cleaners that could accommodate thousands and thousands of people.
Speaker 2: You drop off your toga and your toga would be cleaned,
Speaker 2: oftentimes being soaked in ammonium from urine to get those
Speaker 2: stains out, no thank you, and then afterwards you'd rinse
Speaker 2: it out. And obviously there are different ways in which
Speaker 2: you can have it finally clean and smelling well. So
Speaker 2: the life got really complicated, but then also sophisticated because
Speaker 2: you have the water, let's say, from the aqueducts coming in,
Speaker 2: you have the bath complexes. You can go you who
Speaker 2: don't even have a flushing, you know, running water in
Speaker 2: your house or a toilet could go to these publicly financed,
Speaker 2: subsidized spaces where you could have a jacuzzi, you know,
Speaker 2: soaking and a rub down.
Speaker 1: Okay, looked up the amenities in Roman baths, and they
Speaker 1: had heated floors and dry saunas and wet saunas, and
Speaker 1: furnace warmed bathing water and cold plunges and these soaring,
Speaker 1: beautiful ceilings and intricate mosaic floors. And they were public
Speaker 1: so they were pretty cheap to get into, and on
Speaker 1: some holidays they were just totally free. So I guess
Speaker 1: if I had a time machine and I could only
Speaker 1: pick one thing to do, I would definitely pop over
Speaker 1: to Germany in the nineteen thirties and fatally kick a
Speaker 1: certain someone in the ball. But then I'd be like, hey, hey,
Speaker 1: on the way back, can we also hit an ancient
Speaker 1: Roman bath? And while we're talking aquatic, so the water
Speaker 1: systems in Rome were legendary. They were channels of water
Speaker 1: that went under the city or above it in these
Speaker 1: bridge like structures, and they were fed by springs and
Speaker 1: the flow was transported only via gravity. So all these
Speaker 1: aqueducts were built to be on some gradient, and even
Speaker 1: if it wasn't too steep, it didn't even look steep,
Speaker 1: it still was enough to keep the water glowing just
Speaker 1: slightly downhill.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: The first aqueduct began operating in three hundred and twelve BCE,
Speaker 1: and it fed a cattle market in Rome. And then
Speaker 1: as the centuries passed, hundreds of these human built rivers
Speaker 1: existed all over the Roman Empire, and a lot of
Speaker 1: the water was used for the bath houses. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm mostly Italian, and it's so weird to think of
Speaker 1: my ancestors just scrubby dubby nude JACUZI chill in. It's
Speaker 1: probably naked, right, I think they were probably naked.
Speaker 2: So the Romans had incredible, you know, different ways of
Speaker 2: you know, benefiting from yeah, conquest, but then also just
Speaker 2: a kind of a life standard that that nobody else had.
Speaker 2: And so then people were what are people doing today?
Speaker 2: We're going to the cities because cities give you more opportunities.
Speaker 2: What were they doing under the Romans? People were flocking
Speaker 2: to the cities. There were jobs, there were opportunities, and
Speaker 2: there was a whole different lifestyle. And the more sophisticated
Speaker 2: studies right now, I would add that we are learning that, Yeah,
Speaker 2: most people probably had lice, and you know, there are
Speaker 2: a lot of people looking at our shit study, you
Speaker 2: know that a lot of people probably had you know,
Speaker 2: different kinds of parasites and worms and whatever whatever. So
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe not necessarily the best thing to be
Speaker 2: in those cities. You talk about the spread of disease
Speaker 2: and so forth. And then of course some of the
Speaker 2: biggest outbreaks from antiquity, you know, or under the Romans,
Speaker 2: like what oftentimes is identified as peopan a plague and
Speaker 2: smallpox and stuff like that that were decimating in different
Speaker 2: periods of the Roman Empire, which had profound effects. So
Speaker 2: imagine one is so bad in the let's say the
Speaker 2: second century, that they say the one out of five
Speaker 2: in the empire. This is an empire of about fifty
Speaker 2: to sixty million people, one out of five died. No
Speaker 2: one was spared from rich to poor, and they're like,
Speaker 2: what the hell can we do? How can we stop this?
Speaker 2: They faced very difficult things back then, and of course
Speaker 2: medicine was really based upon observation. It wasn't based upon
Speaker 2: this sorts of things that we can do today. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't think I really want to go in a
Speaker 2: time machine and hang out in ancient Rome because you
Speaker 2: probably wouldn't live that long.
Speaker 1: You know, you'd have a urine soaked toga and a
Speaker 1: communicable disease.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But I mean those guys were tough too. I
Speaker 2: mean it was all like children again. You know, maybe
Speaker 2: half of them died before the age of five. So,
Speaker 2: and we've got catacombs, we've got to you know, cemeteries,
Speaker 2: you've got places filled with the little sarcophagus, the little
Speaker 2: tomb because obviously everyone, just like today, if you lose
Speaker 2: a child, it doesn't matter what the age is. You
Speaker 2: love that child. Yeah, and so you really but you
Speaker 2: see a lot of them, and so you're getting the
Speaker 2: sense that boy, a lot of kids were dying.
Speaker 1: Well, yay for vaccines, am I right? Also the elderly,
Speaker 1: instead of just being made fun of for not using Snapchat,
Speaker 1: they were revered because you could go to them for
Speaker 1: advice and for wisdom. So instead of just consulting a
Speaker 1: horoscope or a magic eight ball or the robot who
Speaker 1: lives on your countertop for life decisions, you would just
Speaker 1: ask the human being who loves you, who created you
Speaker 1: with their own body and survived plagues and wars and
Speaker 1: ask how do I be an adult? And they would
Speaker 1: tell you, and.
Speaker 2: That could be a world of experience because that person
Speaker 2: lived through X, Y and Z. That now maybe the
Speaker 2: city or this, you know, the state is now experiencing
Speaker 2: and they can remember a time when because that's your
Speaker 2: great asset.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like, look at all the things that didn't
Speaker 1: kill you. It must to be a badass.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you couldn't google the stuff. You'd have the elders talking,
Speaker 2: you have the documents, you have the libraries, you have
Speaker 2: those kind of things that were written down. But having
Speaker 2: a person still alive would have been great. So that's
Speaker 2: sort of the sorts of things that we can tease
Speaker 2: out from archaeology is that we have, I mean, particularly
Speaker 2: with the Romans, we have so much literature and hundreds
Speaker 2: of thousands of descriptions.
Speaker 1: If you had to describe to like a second grader,
Speaker 1: the rise and fall of the Roman Empire and like
Speaker 1: a couple of sentences, h how did how did the
Speaker 1: Roman Empire get so powerful? Right? And what the hell happened?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Okay that's who that's a great one.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's buckle up your butts for a whiz through
Speaker 1: space and time to get some highlights in a very
Speaker 1: very brief history of the Roman empire situation. So the
Speaker 1: history of Rome, it all starts around seven to fifty
Speaker 1: three BCE, when a virgin named Ria got knocked up
Speaker 1: by the god Mars. Legend has it Mars is like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put a couple babies in you. So she
Speaker 1: had twins who were supposed to be tossed into a
Speaker 1: damn river, but instead they got ditched under a fig tree,
Speaker 1: and they were discovered by a she wolf who kindly
Speaker 1: suckled them, which seems weird and gross to be like
Speaker 1: sucking from wild dog breasts. But hello, I ate cheese yesterday,
Speaker 1: which is like from big old cow titties. So whatever. Anyway, Romulus,
Speaker 1: one of the twins, killed his brother Remus, what a dick,
Speaker 1: and he was like, how about this, I'm the first
Speaker 1: king of Rome. Now. Now, Rome was by a bunch
Speaker 1: of kings, a lot of whom were total dicks, and
Speaker 1: then it became a republic in five hundred and nine
Speaker 1: BCE all the way to forty five BC when it
Speaker 1: becomes an empire. So that empire lasts about five hundred
Speaker 1: years until its fall, which happened about four hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy six AD. So I'm going to let Darius explain
Speaker 1: more and why.
Speaker 2: They obviously had great things that nobody else did. So
Speaker 2: they started off as a little village like everybody else,
Speaker 2: but they had a sense of themselves and what they
Speaker 2: could accomplish, and they did it so against all odds,
Speaker 2: so they end up having a better military. Basically, they
Speaker 2: had something a good idea, a good kind of mindset
Speaker 2: that ends up over time allowing them not just to
Speaker 2: defeat people, but to have relationships with those people in
Speaker 2: those communities. And they do it rather quickly, and they
Speaker 2: end up having a great network, to the point that
Speaker 2: all these communities in Italy are now on their side
Speaker 2: and they're all becoming romans, right, they actually get the citizenship,
Speaker 2: and over time that relationship, like me to you, we
Speaker 2: speak each other's language, so we trade. This is after
Speaker 2: we've maybe gone to war, and then eventually we allow
Speaker 2: you to intermarry with us, so now your people can
Speaker 2: marry in our people, and eventually, you know, your community
Speaker 2: can have the right to vote. So all these kind
Speaker 2: of steps is the way they kind of figured out
Speaker 2: how they would deal with other people. If you go
Speaker 2: over to the Greek system just for a second, Well,
Speaker 2: there's no Greece per se, but there were Greek city states,
Speaker 2: so common gods and shared cultural norms and language freaking
Speaker 2: hated each other's guts. So and I'll be like, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna enslave you, and you're gonna enslave me, and so
Speaker 2: there was. They were very jealous about the citizenship of
Speaker 2: their city states. It was just almost impossible to become
Speaker 2: an Athenian or something like that. They would enslave you,
Speaker 2: you know, and so forth. But anyways, that's I think
Speaker 2: one of the core difference is the Romans in the
Speaker 2: end were always navigating negotiating with these kinds of terms.
Speaker 2: By about the nineties BC, even though Rome had already
Speaker 2: conquered the entire peninsula, the entire boot of Italy, the
Speaker 2: bulk of the people that were still fighting with them
Speaker 2: and supporting them, and you know, went against the Carthaginians,
Speaker 2: the big rival of Rome and the western part of
Speaker 2: the Mediterranean. They're not mostly citizens of Rome. So finally
Speaker 2: they're like, hey, we're out of here. We're going to
Speaker 2: do basically a big ass walkout. And because you're not
Speaker 2: letting us be a part of you. But at this
Speaker 2: point we're really we've given enough. And so there's like
Speaker 2: a civil war that ends up with the Romans giving
Speaker 2: all of the Italian allies citizenship. That's like a big
Speaker 2: deal and that was a big bloody fight. But anyways,
Speaker 2: it's you know, these things took place over time.
Speaker 1: Carthage, by the way, is now in modern day Tunisia
Speaker 1: in North Africa, and it's just a hop and a
Speaker 1: skip over from Sicily. So these wars were called the
Speaker 1: Punic Wars, and that's Punic, that's with an N punic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they were rough, long wars. They lasted almost one
Speaker 1: hundred years, but eventually Daria says, Rome wins out around
Speaker 1: one hundred and forty six BCE because they have this
Speaker 1: massive support from Romans all over Italy. So they destroy
Speaker 1: Carthage and the city of Corinth like Burbye. But this
Speaker 1: power doesn't last forever. It starts to crumble.
Speaker 2: So the Romans just they did kick ass, yes it's true,
Speaker 2: but at the same time they were very hesitant to
Speaker 2: use that power. But when they used that power, it
Speaker 2: became quite awesome. And then the last one hundred years
Speaker 2: of the Republic is really about a deterioration of the
Speaker 2: norms and the basic premises, let's say, of their constitution,
Speaker 2: where more more it was about individual strongmen rulers, not
Speaker 2: rulers yet but more like lead politician that were also
Speaker 2: the generals, and the generalships start getting extended more and more,
Speaker 2: breaking the norms.
Speaker 1: So weird rulers start to take over, starting with Julius
Speaker 1: Caesar who crosses the Rubicon into Italy and ends the
Speaker 1: era of this people led republic by becoming a dictator.
Speaker 1: This is around forty five BCE, So a smaller little
Speaker 1: body of rulers start kind of rotting it from the inside.
Speaker 1: Not to be dramatic, but the whole timeline is dramatic.
Speaker 2: You're really getting more and more the concentration of wealth
Speaker 2: and power into just not just these maybe three or
Speaker 2: four hundred families historically. Now it's into like three or
Speaker 2: four people that can really run it. And at a
Speaker 2: certain point it's this guy named Crassus Pompey and Julius Caesar,
Speaker 2: so the triumvir and if you ever heard of this
Speaker 2: term the triomph, the three men and grouping, it's they're
Speaker 2: the ones that conceived of this, and between the three
Speaker 2: of them with all their clout and contacts and so on,
Speaker 2: now they're running the Senate. But finally it boiled down
Speaker 2: to just one guy. And the last man standing in
Speaker 2: that kind of conflict was Julius Caesar. So the Republic
Speaker 2: had an empire in its last one hundred years, but
Speaker 2: now it's under the rule of one guy. Caesar assassinated
Speaker 2: in the IDEs of March. So we covered a little.
Speaker 1: Bit of this drama in the Egyptology episode Just fyi.
Speaker 1: So to meet Caesar, by the way, Cleopatra, Egyptian queen,
Speaker 1: reportedly had herself rolled into a carpet and then snuck
Speaker 1: into Caesar's quarters and he was like hot, damn. This
Speaker 1: teen queen has got some flair, and despite being decades
Speaker 1: apart in age, they became lovers. And then they had
Speaker 1: a son that Caesar never acknowledged. And then Julius Caesar
Speaker 1: got shanked by his own posse crypt two. Oh true,
Speaker 1: But the empire March is on thanks to nepotism.
Speaker 2: The perpetuation, let's say, of the one man rule is
Speaker 2: continued by his great nephew who is his adopted heir,
Speaker 2: and that is Octavin, who changes his name to Augustus,
Speaker 2: who defeats his rival Mark Antony, the former lieutenant of
Speaker 2: Julius Caesar that had kind of a falling out, and
Speaker 2: his now girlfriend Cleopatrara. So I got a mixtion, an
Speaker 2: incredible historical figure.
Speaker 1: Leopatra was Julius Caesar's ex, right, Yeah, well she.
Speaker 2: Had a baby with him, yes, his aaron. So basically
Speaker 2: he is back in Rome, he's consolidated his power, his
Speaker 2: foreign not wife, but you know, his foreign lover, who's
Speaker 2: a queen. He's pretty good, you know, got something over
Speaker 2: all the other guys in the Roman Senate, like who's
Speaker 2: your wife? Who's your girlfriend? Because my girlfriend, let me
Speaker 2: tell you, man, queen of Egypt, and that's pretty good.
Speaker 2: So she's in power. She's hanging out in Rome, and
Speaker 2: then he's killed and so she's like, I gotta get
Speaker 2: out of town, and she goes back to Egypt. But
Speaker 2: then she's a very powerful person. And who comes next
Speaker 2: is marc Antony. Hey give me a chance, you know,
Speaker 2: you know, And so therefore they end up shacking up
Speaker 2: and he ends up living instead in Alexandria with her,
Speaker 2: and it seemed like a legitimate affair that grows into
Speaker 2: a real you know, relationship and lots of kids and
Speaker 2: so forth.
Speaker 1: So Cleopatra Arianas and she and marc Antony have some kids, and.
Speaker 2: He thinks he's going to be ruling the empire with her,
Speaker 2: even potentially from Alexandria, just kind of abandoning Rome as
Speaker 2: the prime city. But then that's all thwarted when you know,
Speaker 2: he goes off against head to head against Octavian and
Speaker 2: loses in a big naval battle it's called Actium. And
Speaker 2: then from that point on then you get these dynasties.
Speaker 2: So you get you know, Julius Caesar's grand nephew, Augustus
Speaker 2: is the emperor changed his name to Augustus. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know how many people are famous today and it's
Speaker 2: not the real name. You know, they've changed their names, right, Well,
Speaker 2: the Augustus did that first, and he did that over
Speaker 2: two thousand years ago. He's like, I gotta leave behind
Speaker 2: and this bad legacy.
Speaker 1: I'll just I change the name or start afresh branding,
Speaker 1: just a little.
Speaker 2: Roll, totally amazing rebranding. And of course he gets the
Speaker 2: best you know, poets and historians of the day to
Speaker 2: write new histories, and you know, poems of praise and
Speaker 2: so on, and that's what you learn as a child
Speaker 2: when you're you know, learning Latin.
Speaker 1: So Augustus, Caesar's nephew, becomes Rome's first emperor, and he
Speaker 1: commissions this great literary figure, Virgil, to write some epic
Speaker 1: soft propaganda, kind of like if terrible news anchors just
Speaker 1: read glowing poetry over the air. But Virgil croaks getting
Speaker 1: off a boat and has instructions to burn the piece
Speaker 1: as it's just a rough draft. He's like, oh, don't
Speaker 1: publish this. Oh my god, it's so bad. But Augustus
Speaker 1: is like, nah, it looks good to me. Let's just
Speaker 1: publish this bitch. And it becomes, of course, the Aeneid,
Speaker 1: which contains lots of swords and blood and one line
Speaker 1: that you are free to bellow as you enter your
Speaker 1: next botched party quote, let me rage before I die.
Speaker 2: And then so the empire chugs along, and you know
Speaker 2: ups and downs. You know, down would be like a Caligula.
Speaker 2: Up would be Trajan who builds a kilometer long bridge
Speaker 2: across the Danube and kicks butt in Romania. So you
Speaker 2: have a lot of high points, but then you get
Speaker 2: to a moment when there's crisis, and the crisis is
Speaker 2: from two thirty five to two eighty four, and it's
Speaker 2: just bad where you know, emperors last about as long
Speaker 2: as a prime Minister of Italy, which is around two years.
Speaker 2: Such as bad, bad and assassinations and invasions and outbreaks
Speaker 2: of plague and runaway inflation. It's like Venezuela. I mean
Speaker 2: really bad stuff. I mean really as bad as you
Speaker 2: can imagine. We get Constantine, and of course Constantine is
Speaker 2: the famous emperor to really give legitimacy to Christianity, but
Speaker 2: he establishes Constantinople, which we call Istanbul today, and ultimates
Speaker 2: in istanbulando.
Speaker 1: But Chilly Wading and the Steinbull, thank you, they might
Speaker 1: be giants for your contributions to historical literacy.
Speaker 2: As the new prime location of the empire, and that
Speaker 2: half of the empire, the eastern half, actually lives on
Speaker 2: another one thousand years. But in the West it really
Speaker 2: kind of disintegrates fully in the fifth century. It kind
Speaker 2: of gets won back just briefly in the beginning of
Speaker 2: the sixth century. And each one of these moments, and
Speaker 2: I'm just just rattling off, I mean, they're all incredible
Speaker 2: moments of history just unbelievable, mind boggling sagas.
Speaker 1: So, ultimately, hundreds of years after Caesar, around four hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy six a d. The Western Roman Empire falls
Speaker 1: and then its last emperor, a dude by the name
Speaker 1: of Romulus Augustus, loses a battle with some Goths, which
Speaker 1: I like to imagine was just a big tussle with
Speaker 1: invaders wearing fishnet shirts and cat collars, blasting sisters, and
Speaker 1: until Rome was like, fine, fine, we're done, We're done here.
Speaker 1: And Rome interestingly started with a Romulus. Its first emperor
Speaker 1: was an Augustus, and it ended with a Romulus Augustus.
Speaker 1: It's done, it's done.
Speaker 2: All the words, but Rome ends up, you know, so
Speaker 2: having this voice ing Rome today still has a voice
Speaker 2: as well. It's the capital of a country country's only
Speaker 2: been around since eighteen seventy eighteen sixty thereabouts as modern
Speaker 2: as modern Italy. There was no modern Italy before there.
Speaker 2: It was all city states.
Speaker 1: So Italy is a brand new country. I did not
Speaker 1: know this, and again I'm Italian, Okay, So how does
Speaker 1: this relate to the archaeology.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he had all kinds of There's a rich history
Speaker 2: in Italy, so and that that is all going to
Speaker 2: leave behind layers strata, which is going to be part
Speaker 2: of your excavation. So you know, so like, oh wait,
Speaker 2: we're in the fifteen hundred still, you know, because we're
Speaker 2: finding this kind of myolic you know, pottery or whatnot.
Speaker 2: So it's just everyone behind something and that's again part
Speaker 2: of the fun.
Speaker 1: So what types of things does Darius find on digs. Well,
Speaker 1: there aren't a lot of old diaries or papers laying around,
Speaker 1: but there are tombstones and inscriptions on marble, and there
Speaker 1: are old coins and those give archaeologists some dates to
Speaker 1: work with. Ps. People who study coins are called numismatologists. Hey,
Speaker 1: a lot of the tombs that archaeologists poke around in
Speaker 1: have already been disturbed, so they mostly find modest, kind
Speaker 1: of everyday articles, like a hairpin made from bone. But
Speaker 1: I kept probing for drama, and I asked about the
Speaker 1: less everyday things, and Darius said that his favorite discovery
Speaker 1: that his team has made is a statue of a
Speaker 1: man and it was made in red kind of veined marble.
Speaker 1: It had one bronze eye, the other went missing. Now,
Speaker 1: the subject of the sculpture is based on an old myth,
Speaker 1: and he's depicted in this blood red stone for a reason.
Speaker 2: Marcius is this so foolish satyr that challenges and challenges Apollo,
Speaker 2: the god of music, god of enlightenment and god of
Speaker 2: many things, but God of Light changes him to a
Speaker 2: musical contest and then he loses. So he is skinned alive.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, So you usually see him in this scene
Speaker 2: where he is strung up on a tree or a
Speaker 2: tree trunk and it looks like he's in pain and
Speaker 2: so forth. And there's a seated Apollo with his lyre,
Speaker 2: and then you have a slave attendant, the Scythian, who
Speaker 2: is sharpening a knife. That's the kind of scene that
Speaker 2: you'd get. So we found the Marsians figure. There are
Speaker 2: many of these, but and some of them are white stone,
Speaker 2: and some of them are in colored red marble. So
Speaker 2: he found one of red marble. And so you get
Speaker 2: that sense of skinned alive like predator, you know, Schwartzenegger. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So it's that kind of It looks just horrific. I mean,
Speaker 2: it looks his face looks very tortured and contorted and
Speaker 2: so on. Just a lot of energy there, which I
Speaker 2: kind of like, I'm more interested in that than say
Speaker 2: the classical kind of classicizing kind of some sort of nice,
Speaker 2: unemotional kind of gaze like I'm above all of this.
Speaker 2: That doesn't get me going, you know, but when you
Speaker 2: see drama and you know, bolder, retorted figures and so on,
Speaker 2: just like, wow, that's drama.
Speaker 1: Some drama that Darius is not into.
Speaker 2: And then of course you have the whole other side
Speaker 2: of collectors and looting and looted art. Like right now,
Speaker 2: please don't buy anything that's from Syria on the market
Speaker 2: because it's stolen. Do you know what I mean? Like,
Speaker 2: don't do it, museum, don't do it individual. But there's
Speaker 2: a huge market for materials and that's again part of
Speaker 2: that space in which I'm interested in. It's not just
Speaker 2: the archaeology excavation, which is destructive, it's also the preservation side.
Speaker 1: You know, in terms of your career, what would you
Speaker 1: say your biggest goal in archaeology is, Yeah.
Speaker 2: It was definitely the preservation side. It's definitely how do
Speaker 2: we how do we treat these sites better, how do
Speaker 2: we get more people interested? How do we communicate values
Speaker 2: of preservations? I mean people right now? I mean we're
Speaker 2: probably traveling more than ever. You know, flights can be cheaper.
Speaker 2: I don't know your airbnbing it. I mean, you can
Speaker 2: do anything you can to save money to get to
Speaker 2: these places. But when you're going to a place, the
Speaker 2: chances are a big part of your experience will be
Speaker 2: what food, will be contemporary society, but it will also
Speaker 2: be something that's old. And so that's the part where
Speaker 2: you got to look at that and say, what's being done?
Speaker 2: Is it being done well, you know, how's it being preserved,
Speaker 2: who's involved, is the local community benefiting from it? And
Speaker 2: so forth. And I hate nothing more than somebody says
Speaker 2: they did something in Rome and says, yeah, but I
Speaker 2: saw it so that it looked really it looked really overgrown,
Speaker 2: or didn't look like anyone really cared. And that's that's
Speaker 2: not the kind of walk away you want from Rome.
Speaker 2: It's like should be a blazing, you know, postcard to
Speaker 2: the world, like this is where we take care of history.
Speaker 2: If you've never been to Rome, you need on some
Speaker 2: level to experience the Colosseum, You need on some level
Speaker 2: to experience the Vatican. Now, if you just drop in
Speaker 2: and say I'm going to go to the Vatican, you
Speaker 2: didn't get your ticket online ahead of time or whatever.
Speaker 2: Then you're kind of you know, you're in trouble. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's just going to be difficult. You might wait hours
Speaker 2: I mean or whatever. But that's that's that would be
Speaker 2: a shame. But then you need to experience the real Rome.
Speaker 2: How do you do that? And a lot of it
Speaker 2: is just you know, carving out some spaces and just
Speaker 2: I think seeing the city go by, sit down on
Speaker 2: the piazza and enjoy that that kind of reality. I
Speaker 2: think that I want you to slow down when you
Speaker 2: come to Rome. Otherwise you come away from Rome with
Speaker 2: I did this and there was a huge line. I
Speaker 2: did this and there was a huge crowd. I did this.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's just really gonna eat into the authenticity
Speaker 2: of the experience.
Speaker 1: What about something archaeological while you're in Rome?
Speaker 2: Oh my god. If you don't, if you don't go
Speaker 2: to the Roman Forum, you're in big trouble. And that's
Speaker 2: that's the most There's one of the most historic sites
Speaker 2: in the world is the Roman Form. So sure there's
Speaker 2: the col scene, which is iconic, but the form is
Speaker 2: where it all happened. I mean, that's where the Senate was,
Speaker 2: That's where the riots were, That's where the voting took place.
Speaker 2: That's where you know Cicero made his career.
Speaker 1: Cicero, by the bye, was one of the most famous
Speaker 1: Roman prose writers, and he was also an orator. He
Speaker 1: was a lawyer, and he spoke out against the dictatorship
Speaker 1: of Julius Caesar. He's like, I think this guy's a knop.
Speaker 1: He also later spoke out against marc Antony, but instead
Speaker 1: of just exchanging Twitter clapbacks, marc Antony just had him
Speaker 1: killed and then displayed his head and his hands in
Speaker 1: the Roman Forum. I'm telling you they love drama. Italians
Speaker 1: love drama.
Speaker 2: I mean, anyone that's famous that you think of the
Speaker 2: ancient Roman world, you're literally gonna walk where they walked.
Speaker 2: You just have to go there. You just have to
Speaker 2: go there, no excuses. And there are tons of other places,
Speaker 2: you know, Trajan's markets, in the Forum of a column
Speaker 2: of Trajan and Lark Argentina, where Julius Caesar was assassinated.
Speaker 2: There are many other things to see. The Pantheon of course,
Speaker 2: Oh my god, gotta go to the Pantheon. Those those
Speaker 2: are the must sees, must you must experience, You must
Speaker 2: be in that space, so you.
Speaker 1: Should block out like at least a week or so.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well, I mean I've like, I live there
Speaker 2: to live there. I live there twenty years, and I
Speaker 2: do not think that I've seen everything. I haven't seen
Speaker 2: a fraction. But you're coming back because Rome is so
Speaker 2: rich in history. How do you rival a place with
Speaker 2: hundreds of churches. It's the capital of an empire that
Speaker 2: basically formed Europe. I mean, all these civilizations around the
Speaker 2: world and everyone. When we're making something extraordinary historically speaking, Sure,
Speaker 2: I'm going to glorify myself because I'm the patron of that,
Speaker 2: but I'm glorifying God and all those statues in all
Speaker 2: those museums from the ancient world. I mean, in one
Speaker 2: way or another. It's really it's religiously motivated. It's so weird,
Speaker 2: and you know, so.
Speaker 1: I'd never thought about it this, but it's so weird
Speaker 1: that ancient art is just like fan art to God. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so every time you see a statue of a god
Speaker 1: or a painting of an angel, it's just like a
Speaker 1: binder paper pencil drawing of Taylor Swift or some Lady
Speaker 1: Gaga lyrics embroidered on a pillow.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, so you walk around the streets
Speaker 2: of Rome or any city in Italy, and in all
Speaker 2: these street corners there's a little shrine to Madonna, you know,
Speaker 2: to marry and you're just like what the hell, like,
Speaker 2: why what the you know? She's everywhere right, she's like rockstar.
Speaker 2: And then you realize that that tradition came from the Romans,
Speaker 2: and the Romans then believed at you know, what's a crossroad.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's a point of it's a meeting point.
Speaker 2: You know, things can happen. You know, you go left,
Speaker 2: you go right, and so forth. So you'd want these
Speaker 2: local deities in your neighborhoods overlooking you, and you'd pay
Speaker 2: your respects to them because they're you know, taking care
Speaker 2: of you that you know, if I go here at
Speaker 2: this intersection, I turn left and a roof tile slides
Speaker 2: off and bashes me in the head and I'm dead.
Speaker 2: But if I go right and I walk along, well,
Speaker 2: then you know I just met my wife or something
Speaker 2: like that, So you know, really sliding doors kind of
Speaker 2: kind of concept.
Speaker 1: Can I ask you patron questions? Yeah, but before that,
Speaker 1: let's send off some money to a good and this
Speaker 1: week we're going to toss some chunks of gold at
Speaker 1: the nonprofit Ancient Romelive dot org, which is a free
Speaker 1: educational learning platform for students and teachers and travelers and
Speaker 1: history lovers that presents Rome, its urban development, its monuments
Speaker 1: and more. It covers more than three thousand years of
Speaker 1: Rome's history. There's videos and all kinds of stuff. You
Speaker 1: can find out more at Ancient Romelive dot org. And
Speaker 1: Darius is the director. So score boom money, Thank you sponsors. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's ask this nerd your questions. So the first Patreon
Speaker 1: question was asked by a few people, including Richard Riguero,
Speaker 1: Neil Williams, John Murray, Ellen, Alexander, and Ashley Hamer. Ashley
Speaker 1: Hamer wants to know what is the deal with all
Speaker 1: the lead in Rome. They had it in their pipes,
Speaker 1: they sprinkled it in their wine. Considering how long they
Speaker 1: used it, you think people would have noticed their effects?
Speaker 2: Did they? Absolutely? Yes. You just read Vitrivius ten Books
Speaker 2: of Architecture from the first century BC, where he says, yes,
Speaker 2: when those guys that are making the lead pipes for
Speaker 2: look at their condition, look at their help, it's terrible.
Speaker 2: So you educated Rome and keep your distance. But they
Speaker 2: wanted the lead. Why because it is a huge derivative
Speaker 2: from the refining process of silver. So when you find
Speaker 2: silver in Spain, you usually get it with a lot
Speaker 2: of lead, So you separate the lead from the silver.
Speaker 2: Now you've got literally tons and tons in tons and
Speaker 2: tons of silver of lead. What do you do with
Speaker 2: the lead. Well, that's a low melting point, it's malleable.
Speaker 2: Let's use it for piping in addition to piping in ceramics,
Speaker 2: piping in stone, even piping in wood. But it's that
Speaker 2: lead is used, and it's okay in Rome because the
Speaker 2: water always flows through it. It doesn't sit the people today.
Speaker 2: In let's say Washington, d C. They have a lot
Speaker 2: of lead pipes. They say, run your tap for fifteen
Speaker 2: minutes before you use that stuff. So the lead is
Speaker 2: also going to not affect you in Rome in the
Speaker 2: same way that you would think. Because the water is hard,
Speaker 2: the piping all gets coated with calcium very rapidly, so
Speaker 2: people don't die from lead poisoning. Let's say per se.
Speaker 2: It's like an old kind of wives tale. But yes,
Speaker 2: they did use lead and other things. And we talked
Speaker 2: about in rouge or we even talk about it. Putting
Speaker 2: in food sometimes so bad idea, bad idea, don't do it,
Speaker 2: don't do it so obviously, I mean some things you
Speaker 2: read about you're just like, I don't understand why they
Speaker 2: would do that. But the lead pipes, I understand now
Speaker 2: why they did it, why they used the lead a
Speaker 2: little smarter about it than let's say we are.
Speaker 1: Is there any true to the fact that that's why,
Speaker 1: like Caligula was kind of crazy, that's why people were
Speaker 1: so banana.
Speaker 2: So I don't know. I mean now, I mean the guy,
Speaker 2: that guy, that guy was messed up. I mean, watch
Speaker 2: my show. But basically fourteen hundred days of terror, I
Speaker 2: mean with the guy with Caligula, the insanity part. We
Speaker 2: can't ever quite figure out what the deal is. But
Speaker 2: here's a guy who his relatives are being killed left
Speaker 2: and right. He's held hostage by the previous emperor Tiberius
Speaker 2: on the island of Capri, is doing god knows what
Speaker 2: for like ten fifteen years. Then when Tiberius is finally dead,
Speaker 2: now he's the last relative still standing. So he's the Now.
Speaker 2: The emperor has no experience, never really dealt with society.
Speaker 2: He's just been living on a private island, living in
Speaker 2: fear of being killed because one by one his other
Speaker 2: relatives are being put to death. So and that's gonna
Speaker 2: mess you up, and it's going to also make you
Speaker 2: not trust anybody. And when we do look at legitimate
Speaker 2: sources that talk about him and show him interacting with
Speaker 2: this one particular delegation that comes from I think Jerusalem,
Speaker 2: he doesn't. He seems to be very sharp and witty,
Speaker 2: maybe cruel, maybe ironic, but doesn't seem crazy. So I
Speaker 2: don't know. But the thing is, you know, he has
Speaker 2: absolute power and he does end up doing some pretty
Speaker 2: strange things. Then the rest of the stories are apocryphal.
Speaker 2: So like they said that he did this, they said
Speaker 2: that he did this, how can we prove that stuff?
Speaker 2: But the bottom line is he was killed by his
Speaker 2: own bodyguards. So he rubbed people the wrong way. It's
Speaker 2: like your secret service just turning around and shooting you.
Speaker 2: Oh God, and that means you're probably you know, you
Speaker 2: got some major issues there, because he was.
Speaker 1: Really known for being, like I feel like, very incestuous
Speaker 1: and very quite kinky. He was a bit kinky.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean again, that's just you know, how the
Speaker 2: stories come out I mean, you know, once you're dead,
Speaker 2: people can say whatever they want in you. There's no
Speaker 2: there's no tape, there's no recording, there's no so it's
Speaker 2: a little difficult to sift through it. But he definitely
Speaker 2: did some over the top things. Whether or not he
Speaker 2: was having sex with his sister, we don't know.
Speaker 1: Well, back then, I feel like that wasn't that weird.
Speaker 1: I mean, FDR married his cousin. So whatever they're like,
Speaker 1: you're alive, I'm alive. Why not? Jay wants to know.
Speaker 1: Is Rome a big archaeological minefield with ancient stuff below
Speaker 1: the ground everywhere? And how does anyone build anything without
Speaker 1: ruining some of the sweet mosaic under the ground.
Speaker 2: You're absolutely correct. Rome was the mega city, the greatest
Speaker 2: city of the ancient world, a million people living there.
Speaker 2: So everywhere you dig you find something ancient. That's exactly correct. Now,
Speaker 2: in different time periods, people cared less. So when you
Speaker 2: unify Italy, the Savoya family wants boulevards and new buildings,
Speaker 2: and they uncovered tons of stuff and then oh, look
Speaker 2: we'll keep the statues or whatnot. We'll document this, but
Speaker 2: we'll knock everything down. So there are those issues where
Speaker 2: you lost a lot of material but also made a
Speaker 2: lot of discoveries. Today, of course is very very the
Speaker 2: process is very meticulous, very refined, and very time consuming.
Speaker 2: So I d put an elevator in this building, or
Speaker 2: I want to gut this building and put in a
Speaker 2: department store, which happened with Rina Chante. Then they literally
Speaker 2: found a whole slice of a neighborhood. It's all been
Speaker 2: fully documented, and they left one wall exposed. But for me,
Speaker 2: the tragedy there is that they should have made them
Speaker 2: spend an extra million or two to make that whole
Speaker 2: slice of neighborhood of Rome, with homes and fountains and
Speaker 2: streets accessible. I think it should have been mandated. That's
Speaker 2: borderline crime. I think it's a tragedy. It's a tragedy.
Speaker 2: So sometimes I think, you know, they do it well
Speaker 2: in Rome, and sometimes they could do it better. I
Speaker 2: mean it's packed in dirt, so I mean you can
Speaker 2: get back to it, but it's like in this sub
Speaker 2: basement of the store all you got, but you know,
Speaker 2: twenty five feet below you, it's just packed dirt. For
Speaker 2: you know, walls and homes and mosaics and everything just
Speaker 2: packed in you know, it's there in C two on site.
Speaker 1: Wow, Lloyd Parley has a bathroom question.
Speaker 2: All right, sponge on a stick yep, sponge on the.
Speaker 1: Still whole wiping their butts with the public shared sponge
Speaker 1: on it.
Speaker 2: Sick. Yes, Actually, there's a nice mosaic that was found.
Speaker 2: I can't remember where I want to say, so.
Speaker 1: A recent mosaic of this item, which is known as
Speaker 1: a xylo spongium, was recently uncovered in modern Turkey. And
Speaker 1: let's just say it was humorous in nature, and it
Speaker 1: confirmed that for millennia people have enjoyed toilet humor and
Speaker 1: comic strips. While in the John.
Speaker 2: They find a mosaic with a guy with a little
Speaker 2: stick and a sponge on it. So what's with that?
Speaker 2: So the idea is, do you have any idea how
Speaker 2: much paper costs? Back then, Oh my god, it has
Speaker 2: made my hand. It's made from a pyrus. Oh god,
Speaker 2: I mean, you can't waste that on your ass. It's
Speaker 2: not going to happen. So you you do, you know what,
Speaker 2: Let's talk about kids, let's talk about let's talk about diapers,
Speaker 2: let's talk about menstruation. I mean, seriously, all the modern
Speaker 2: things we have today, then we're a throwaway society and
Speaker 2: it's convenient. I mean, go back. I mean my parents,
Speaker 2: you know, they washed our diapers, and if you were rich,
Speaker 2: they said you could have a diaper laundry service even
Speaker 2: back then. But I mean who could afford that? So
Speaker 2: you know, and then when you know, then the disposables
Speaker 2: came out and you're like, well, I'll splurge in those
Speaker 2: every once in a while. You know, my parents would
Speaker 2: just to have it if you traveled or whatever. But
Speaker 2: I mean the things that we take for granted today,
Speaker 2: so you know, it's the same thing with a with
Speaker 2: with sponge on a stick. I mean, what do you
Speaker 2: expect them to do? But the fact that you can
Speaker 2: go to these spas and these you know, incredible sophisticated
Speaker 2: experiences of the ancient world, and you're going to the theater,
Speaker 2: and you're going to gladiator games and you're going to
Speaker 2: you know, concession stand and so forth. But then like
Speaker 2: it's a circus Maximus. You saw the chariot racing. Now
Speaker 2: two hundred thousand people got to take a leak. Where
Speaker 2: are they gonna go? Where are they gonna go? And
Speaker 2: we we struggle to figure out where all these people
Speaker 2: are going to go to the bathroom. But you know,
Speaker 2: these are big issues. So sponge on a stick, thank
Speaker 2: you very much.
Speaker 1: Didn't know about that until this moment.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, oh god, God forbid, you had like diarrheas.
Speaker 1: Oh God, like can I just take this stick right exactly?
Speaker 2: I'm gonna need you someone to rinse that out, please,
Speaker 2: thank you.
Speaker 1: Oy, we got an aquaduct, all right? Okay, let's see.
Speaker 1: Christopher Barley and Lord Parley both wanted to know if
Speaker 1: Roman concrete was indeed stronger than ours. Now it is,
Speaker 1: it is, ok it is. Why is the Dome of
Speaker 1: the Pantheon still standing after let's say, you know, eighteen
Speaker 1: hundred years?
Speaker 2: I mean, how is this possible? We can't build anything
Speaker 2: that last eighteen hundred years? But I mean, how do
Speaker 2: you have anything last that long? How come we're excavating
Speaker 2: stuff finding these really well preserved, you know, structures. Is
Speaker 2: because they built them in a different way, and for
Speaker 2: us to do it today it's just not time. It's
Speaker 2: just not what do you call that? It's not efficient,
Speaker 2: it's not cost effect efficient. So are we cook the lime?
Speaker 2: We the processing is different, so the material is weaker.
Speaker 2: Oh I didn't know that, so that doesn't last as long, okay.
Speaker 1: So much like a coveted recipe for barbecue sauce, Roman
Speaker 1: concrete recipes are exciting to people, including myself. Okay. So
Speaker 1: the secret ingredients volcanic ash and seawater. So the seawater
Speaker 1: broke down the ash, and then this other mineral philipsite
Speaker 1: crystallized in its place, and that hardened the concrete over time,
Speaker 1: so instead of breaking down, it just kind of got
Speaker 1: better and better. But still, you know what, I would
Speaker 1: take our shitty concrete over their xylospongia really any day.
Speaker 1: Kimberly wants to know what's the origin or history of
Speaker 1: the saying Rome wasn't built in a day.
Speaker 2: Oh well, gosh darn it. You know, I guess we
Speaker 2: could google that, Okay.
Speaker 1: So I looked in this in case you ever get
Speaker 1: on Jeopardy or if you just truly run out of
Speaker 1: things to talk to your relatives about over the holidays,
Speaker 1: and the saying comes from some medieval French poems from
Speaker 1: the year eleven ninety. Okay, so pass the potatoes. Please
Speaker 1: don't ask about my ex boyfriend getting married, But.
Speaker 2: You know, how about all roads lead to Rome or
Speaker 2: how about okay, here Augustus said the MP for Augustus,
Speaker 2: this is one of my favorite sayings, I think because
Speaker 2: I say it all the time. He used to say,
Speaker 2: make haste slowly.
Speaker 1: What does that mean?
Speaker 2: Exactly? It's great, it's perfect.
Speaker 1: Make haste slowly. Yes, I'm going to need a minute
Speaker 1: to digest.
Speaker 2: So Rome was built in a day? Is that kind
Speaker 2: of idea? Is that? You just it? This is not
Speaker 2: a prefab society. This is not something that happened overnight.
Speaker 2: There were ups, they were downs. But we're measuring that.
Speaker 2: How do we measure time today? I mean that tweet
Speaker 2: that came out an hour ago is no longer relevant,
Speaker 2: you know, like that, but back then, think about it.
Speaker 2: I mean we're talking about civilizations that had had a
Speaker 2: good year. No, they had a good century. I mean
Speaker 2: it's like that kind of idea. So it's like that,
Speaker 2: It's like the measure of time is totally different. And
Speaker 2: that's another way. I guess you could say, why Rome
Speaker 2: as an empire lasted so long? I mean, how long
Speaker 2: do empires last today? How long did the British empire last?
Speaker 2: How long is America doing? I mean, we don't have
Speaker 2: an empire per se but we're like a global or
Speaker 2: dominant global force. You're not going to be the big
Speaker 2: dog on the blog forever. You know, you're not going
Speaker 2: to be dominant forever. I personally tell my kids, don't worry.
Speaker 2: America will still be America as long as you're alive
Speaker 2: as well. Don't worry about it. But things are changing, definitely,
Speaker 2: this change in America, as Rome will change and adopt
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: It's interesting to look at the rise of a kind
Speaker 1: of autocrats as leading to a downfall.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, well we have but we have a very
Speaker 2: strong constitution. And I love Rome. I love the Roman
Speaker 2: Republic and it lasted five hundred years. But they don't
Speaker 2: have the checks and balances and so forth that we do.
Speaker 2: So have faith in the Constitution. It's a good Uh,
Speaker 2: it's a good basic document and uh, and I think
Speaker 2: we'll be fine.
Speaker 1: Okay, So this next question floored me. Jamie Peterson wants
Speaker 1: to know is it true that marble statues were originally
Speaker 1: painted brilliant colors and the paint disappeared over the time
Speaker 1: to reveal the natural stone color that we see today.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, because the materials were biodegradable. If you bury
Speaker 2: something it's just gonna it's gonna come off. But we
Speaker 2: in the field, we know this, but most people, they're
Speaker 2: not involved directly in the field of you know, classical
Speaker 2: studies or ancient archaeology and so on, So they use tempera,
Speaker 2: they're using caustics, so they actually like put a hot
Speaker 2: wax kind of paint that was translucent. Translucent, so the
Speaker 2: whole dynamic what actually really look like We're not exactly sure.
Speaker 2: So when you see a reconstruction, always take those reconstructions
Speaker 2: to day with the grain of salt, because they're usually
Speaker 2: not very good. Okay, okay, so to recreate what must
Speaker 2: have been there has not really been done.
Speaker 1: When did they stop painting them? Do you think?
Speaker 2: Ah, that's a good question. Now, I mean, all throughout
Speaker 2: antiquity they were. They were painting them. That's necessary to
Speaker 2: the full body. It could be like it could be
Speaker 2: the clothing, the drapery, the hair, the paint, the pupils,
Speaker 2: maybe the ring on your finger, et cetera. Even inserting
Speaker 2: like a metal necklace or a crown or earrings. So
Speaker 2: it got to be they got to be quite quite
Speaker 2: dynamic and lavish.
Speaker 1: Gosh, that's nut.
Speaker 2: So but then of course, that's thattue I was telling
Speaker 2: I found the Marsius. I mean he was already made
Speaker 2: of a colored stone. So then you don't even need
Speaker 2: to paint him because you're using the beautiful and veining
Speaker 2: and the color of the marble itself. And that becomes
Speaker 2: really prevalent from the second century a d and onward
Speaker 2: to use that kind of colored stone. I had no idea,
Speaker 2: quite sopistigating stuff.
Speaker 1: Rachel Marshall wants to know. Were people openly LGBTQ. Yes,
Speaker 1: in Roman culture.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's very interesting. So they don't have they don't
Speaker 2: have a term like homosexual. They don't have this term. Uh,
Speaker 2: but they have, you know, obviously homosexual practice, and so
Speaker 2: jeneral Okay, generally speaking in the Greek world, it's pretty
Speaker 2: normal andardize no big deal. In fact, it becomes for
Speaker 2: the Spartans like this is spata, you know three hundred. Well,
Speaker 2: the typical thing was you pair an older soldier with
Speaker 2: a young soldier and when they initiate you and kind
Speaker 2: of get you into the whole military experience, part of
Speaker 2: it is also a sexual bond. And this is kind
Speaker 2: of normal. And the philosophers would be debating about this
Speaker 2: in Athens and talk about it like the highest form
Speaker 2: of love. And of course the higher form of love
Speaker 2: is between a man and a man than a man
Speaker 2: and a woman, because the man and the woman where
Speaker 2: you're gonna have a child. But man and a man,
Speaker 2: it's not about that, it's about real love, right, So anyways,
Speaker 2: lots of interesting conversation.
Speaker 1: So Darius also explained that the way Romans regarded sexual
Speaker 1: preference was really more about dominant versus submissive. So who's giving,
Speaker 1: who's receiving. It was acceptable to be a giver, but
Speaker 1: it was frowned on to be a receiver no matter
Speaker 1: what sex or gender someone was. So not frowned upon. However,
Speaker 1: it's having sex with slaves or children. So yeah, they
Speaker 1: were progressive in some ways and very whack in others.
Speaker 1: They also didn't seem to give tons of consideration to
Speaker 1: female enjoyment or sexuality. But yes, it was expected and
Speaker 1: acceptable for a Roman guide to just swing a bunch
Speaker 1: of ways.
Speaker 2: For the Romans, though, yeah, it's not a big deal.
Speaker 2: The bigger deal would be say, in the Imperial period,
Speaker 2: you're a Christian. Oh you're a Christian. You're denying the
Speaker 2: existence of the gods that hold together the fabric of
Speaker 2: the empire. That's bad. You don't want to be a
Speaker 2: Christian in certain periods, and there are waves of persecutions.
Speaker 2: So that's the worst thing, right.
Speaker 1: Last two questions I always ask, Okay, worst thing about
Speaker 1: your job, thing that sucks, The most shittiest thing about
Speaker 1: being an archaeologist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it probably no money in archaeology. So you do
Speaker 2: it because you love it. You do it because you
Speaker 2: love it. You know, it's not like you're it's not
Speaker 2: like I have a hedge fund or something like that.
Speaker 2: I guess I'm just griping here of it. I got
Speaker 2: no complaints. I think there's everything that's great. You meet people,
Speaker 2: diverse cultures, get to travel, got to always have a
Speaker 2: little bit of a tan. You know.
Speaker 1: Well that was my next question. The best thing about
Speaker 1: being an archaeologist.
Speaker 2: My work is outdoors. My work is outside. Then my
Speaker 2: younger daughter used to say when she was really little,
Speaker 2: she said, daddy's office is the coliseum, which is a
Speaker 2: nice thing to say, and it's kind of like, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.
Speaker 2: I mean it's just I want to be in contact
Speaker 2: with this as much as possible. And the other beautiful
Speaker 2: thing again to underline is there are collections around the
Speaker 2: world in museums which do a phenomenal job to promote
Speaker 2: all this history and stuff like that. But remember they're
Speaker 2: all pretty much all collections. You've acquired, you've bought, you've purchased,
Speaker 2: and right nowadays are really scrutinizing where this stuff is
Speaker 2: coming from because a lot of stuff is looted.
Speaker 1: Daria says that preservation is really important, as is knowing
Speaker 1: where the objects came from.
Speaker 2: Seeing right now I'm at the Getty and the Getty
Speaker 2: has a beautiful, fantastic relationship. Was not always the case,
Speaker 2: but right now with the Italian government, and they're sharing,
Speaker 2: and they're working, and they're preserving monuments and so forth.
Speaker 2: So it's great to see when those things can really
Speaker 2: work and just benefit the monument themselves, it benefits the
Speaker 2: local community, the local governments and so forth. That's the
Speaker 2: kind of things I'm involved in. I want to be
Speaker 2: more involved in.
Speaker 1: So a little bit of karma with your history.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Also, and now we could find you across many social
Speaker 1: media platforms.
Speaker 2: It's the same handle, same handle, Darius Aria digs. You
Speaker 2: just got to figure ou how to spell my name.
Speaker 2: But yeah, Darius Aria Digs pretty much Twitter, Facebook, Instagram,
Speaker 2: my website. I don't know, it's all. It's all pretty
Speaker 2: much there.
Speaker 1: Smart branding.
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you so much, Thank you very much. This
Speaker 2: is great, amazing. Yeah, I gotta go to Rome. Just
Speaker 2: let me know when you're coming to Rome.
Speaker 1: Good, we'll get an apple. All go check out some
Speaker 1: Roman ruins, eat some pizza while you're there. You can
Speaker 1: find Darius Aria all over. He has tons of beautiful
Speaker 1: photo and links up at his website that's Dariusariadiggs dot com,
Speaker 1: and his Twitter and Instagram are also at Dariusariadiggs Special.
Speaker 1: Thanks to his amazing wife, Erica, a writer, for encouraging
Speaker 1: him to have one handle everywhere. That is a great strategy.
Speaker 1: So Dariusara Diggs you can find him everywhere. You can
Speaker 1: check out his show Ancient Invisible Cities on PBS and
Speaker 1: the premiere of this week of season two of his
Speaker 1: Italian show Under Italy, and that's at riplay dot it
Speaker 1: r I A p l a y dot it, and
Speaker 1: his American Institute for Roman Culture is at romanculture dot
Speaker 1: org and he's working on a new podcast. Follow him
Speaker 1: on social media to get all the news on that
Speaker 1: because that's going to be cool as hell. So you
Speaker 1: can find me at Ologies on Twitter and Instagram at
Speaker 1: Ali Ward with one L on both and aliward dot
Speaker 1: com has more links. Ologiesmerch dot com has all kinds
Speaker 1: of shopping fund from pins to winter hats, to ologiesbittsh
Speaker 1: or to keep you warm. Thank you Shannon Felts and
Speaker 1: Bonnie Dutch for all the amazing help with that. All
Speaker 1: of those links are all in the show notes. The
Speaker 1: Ologies podcast Facebook group is a great place full of
Speaker 1: wonderful people, and that's all thanks to Aaron Talbert, and
Speaker 1: thank you Nick Thorburn of the band Islands who wrote
Speaker 1: and performed the theme music, and also, of course thank
Speaker 1: you to Steven Ray Morris. Now at the end of
Speaker 1: each episode, I tell you a little secret, and this
Speaker 1: week's is just a little self help nugget for anyone
Speaker 1: who ever gets down on themselves. Okay, so you know
Speaker 1: how sometimes you walk around you think, wow, I'm such
Speaker 1: a turd. I bet no one will invite me to
Speaker 1: their holiday parties and everyone secretly thinks I'm smelly, And
Speaker 1: then you look for evidence to support that hypothesis, like
Speaker 1: a friend maybe didn't text you back, right away, or
Speaker 1: maybe you got a bad gift in the office present
Speaker 1: exchange and you're like, see you look okay. So the
Speaker 1: problem here is that you're perhaps trying to prove the
Speaker 1: wrong hypothesis, and then you're just collecting data to support
Speaker 1: something that isn't really factual. So you may need to
Speaker 1: change your hypothesis too. I'm pretty fucking cool, and then
Speaker 1: you'll start to realize, hey, there's a lot of evidence
Speaker 1: to support that this feeling lately has been working really
Speaker 1: well for me having a bad day. Maybe just switch
Speaker 1: around my hypothesis. So if you need some evidence right now,
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you right now, if you're still
Speaker 1: listening to this, not only are you curious about the world,
Speaker 1: but you're also very patient and kind to listen to
Speaker 1: the last dregs of this podcast episode. So you're pretty
Speaker 1: fun cool.
Speaker 2: So say I ole.
Speaker 1: Dad word fun podcast. Okay boyebye. Also me again from
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, thank you for rolling with a few reruns.
Speaker 1: Well we take care of family stuff. I really appreciate it. Okay,
Speaker 1: love you, Burbye. Pack of German College Homeiology. You do zoology,
Speaker 1: lithology and technology, meteorology, pathology, ethology, Zeriology ethnology roam around
Speaker 1: the world.