Absorption

I have found myself incredibly busy in recent weeks, and so I apologize to my readers for sparsity in new posts.  My time has been largely occupied by academics and exploration, with academia serving as my focus in writing today, while my next post focusing on adventures will be along in just a few day’s time.

I am pleased to say that I absolutely adore the American University of Rome (AUR).  The campus is small and quaint, even more so than CMU.  It is quite smaller, in fact.  My class sizes range from forty down to just one.  I am indeed the only student in my Latin 201 course.  This was very good news for me.  The main reason that I chose AUR was because I wished to take courses in classical studies, namely in Latin.  My Latin course did not begin until this past week because the professor was out-of-country.  When I went to our first class session on Monday and discovered that I would be receiving one-on-one training, I was, needless to say, quite pleased.  This means that the course is entirely catered to my current proficiency in Latin.  Even more fortunately, I will be spared of the competition that typically afflicts intensive courses in ancient languages – I am only in competition with myself!

My archaeology and classics courses have proven very interesting and beneficial to my course of study thus far.  I enrolled in ARC 100: Archaeology of Rome because it is an on-site course and I assumed that we would have special chances to visit sites and excavations that the public typically does not have access to.  This has certainly been true.

Many emails were sent in order to get our class permission to tour the excavations beneath the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran.  Rome, of course, is a city of many layers.  Every major building in the heart of Rome was built over top of many other constructions from hundreds and thousands of years past.   Beneath St. John Lateran we were able to tour the remains of an imperial bath complex, an ancient frescoed house, and the Castra of the Equites Singulares, which were the barracks where the emperor’s horseback bodyguards resided.  This was a profound experience that I certainly would not have been privileged to if I had not chosen a semester at AUR.

Just before St. John Lateran, our class visited the excavations beneath the Basilica of San Clemente.  There are few more moving descents in archaeology.  The uppermost layer is the original San Clemente, or the lower church.  It was constructed in the 4^th century, but was sacked by Barbarians in the 11^th century.  Here we found some frescoes dated to the Paleo-Christian era, very simple in style, almost rudimentary, but great sights nonetheless:

We then descended even further to the layers of a 1^st and 2^nd century Mithraic temple.  Mithraism was an ancient cult religion that was centered on the worship of a bull.  Mithraism involved many secretive initiation rites and cult rituals, and was even in competition with Christianity until about the turn of the third century AD.

I wandered around the dark, dank brick vaulted rooms of the Mithraic temple, in complete awe that I was walking through the city beneath the city.  In one of these rooms I even heard the sound of rushing water, and upon peeking into a dark crevice, I learned that the sound came from ancient pipes and aqueducts that still lay within the walls.  The Romans indeed were brilliant creatures, too brilliant for a photo to convey, but I will provide one simply for visual context:

In my other archaeology course – Troy: Homer versus Archaeology – we are still on the literary side of things.  First we are reading and analyzing The Iliad before moving on to analyze the archaeological evidence of this great story.  I have quite enjoyed the literary aspect and I am proud to be joining the ranks of the educated few who have read The Iliad in the full Lattimore translation, but I am also quite eager to move on to the archaeology.  At CMU, I was able to study classics in a literary sense, to a certain degree, but I was not quite able to receive the training in archaeology as I have here at AUR.  Archaeology is so closely related and vital to my field of study, and so, as an ancient historian in-the-making, I feel incredibly privileged to have the opportunity to study archaeology of Rome while here in the very city.  I know that these experiences will benefit me greatly as I move onto graduate school.

I have grown quite fond of Italian.  I am excelling in my Italian 101 course, but really, using it in the classroom is the easiest part.  My brain is teeming with languages – Latin, Greek, Italian, Spanish, German – all of which I need to perfect, and there is no better way to perfect my Italian than by using it as much as possible out in the city.  I don’t allow myself to speak English, even when I know that the store clerk or taxi driver or whomever is an English-speaker.  I insist on speaking in Italian; even when they respond to me in English, I reply again in Italian.  It’s sometimes quite funny, at a certain café in particular, where my conversation with the Italian cashier typically goes something like this:

Me: “Ciao!”

Him: “Hi!”

Me: “Prendo un caffé doppio e un panino pomodore e mozarella.” (I’ll have a double shot of espresso and a tomato/mozzarella sandwich.)

Him: “Okay, do you want it hot?”

Me: “Si, caldo, per favore.” (Yes, hot, please.)

Him: “Do you want it for here or to go?”

Me: “Qui, per favore.” (Here, please).

Him: “Okay!”

Me: “Grazie, ciao!”

As I said, I insist :) When in Rome, speak like the Romans!

Midterms are quickly approaching, and so I am slightly stressed.  This week and next week I will very much be in academics mode, but on March 15^th our spring break begins and I am off to Athens, Greece for ten days.  It’ll be only me and a backpack, in search of erudition.  Until then, however, I intend to be holed away in the old-fashioned and desolate AUR library, where I can enjoy some peace and quiet away from my roommates, and where I can absorb all of these studies that have grown so very dear to me as a student here in Rome.

I thought that I loved the classics before I came here, but this semester at AUR has instilled in me even deeper passion and fervor for my studies.  Time has been moving so very quickly, and I already regret the day that I will be forced to leave and return home.  Perhaps this picture can portray how I am feeling about Rome, and particularly about the Pantheon, or as I call it, the Pride of Rome.  And on this note, I will end:

Ciao, until next time! Check for a post on adventures within a few days.