#Roman mirror

[thesilicontribesman]

Third Century CE Silver Roman Mirror, Shrewsbury, England

This is the finest Roman mirror found in Britain. It was made of silver and is extremely heavy. With its curved convex surface, it is difficult to imagine users being able to see themselves without help. The mirror would probably have been held at a distance by a slave or servant.

The mirror was made in the Rhineland and may have been brought to Britain by a wealthy Roman woman.

The mirror was found during excavations in the 1920s leaning against the footings of a wall in the south courtyard of the Forum at Wroxeter.

[blackoutbugza]

quick! show me your design for one of the sides as kids!

i’ll go first :)

[spiritsdancinginthenight]

Bronze circular mirror with bone handle. Menerva (Athena) in the centre holding up the head of the Gorgon Medusa, with Ferse (Perseus) seated left and Turms (Hermes) seated right. Names are inscribed. Etruscan. c. 400-350 B.C. British Museum. 1888,1110.1

[sforzesco]

ladies of the conspiracy

porcia and tertulla! I have some thoughts about their appearances in the scraps of the historical conspiracy that are visible (since it's like. the nature of conspiracy, even one as widely known and studied as the one leading up to the assassination of caesar, means that there's a gap in visibility with the details etc) that I'll have to try and pin down later, but for now, I think we should give them a dagger too

Brutus, the Noble Conspirator, Kathryn Tempest

Junia too, the niece of Cato, wife of Caius Cassius and sister of Marcus Brutus, died this year, the sixty-fourth after the battle of Philippi. Her will was the theme of much popular criticism, for, with her vast wealth, after having honourably mentioned almost every nobleman by name, she passed over the emperor. Tiberius took the omission graciously and did not forbid a panegyric before the Rostra with the other customary funeral honours. The busts of twenty most illustrious families were borne in the procession, with the names of Manlius, Quinctius, and others of equal rank. But Cassius and Brutus outshone them all, from the very fact that their likenesses were not to be seen.

Tacitus, Annals III.76

[impositioned]

ugh long lucious hair always covering my lovely pretty face

[susiehunsecker-remade]

:(

[grinchwrapsupreme]

any other character I might not have noticed, but the way Roman holds his arms in front of him when he's crying at the funeral like a shield... like he might get hit...

[allisfairinloveandfiction]

Colin's Love for Pen is My Roman Empire xoxo

[cuties-in-codices]

narcissus

from a copy of the "roman de la rose" by guillaume de lorris and jean de meun, france, first half of the 14th c.

source: Lausanne, Bibl. cantonale et universitaire, M 454, fol. 6r

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Imagine if Jin Zixuan DID yeet his brother from another mother (🥲) down the stairs.

Meng Yao: I'm your brother. Happy birthday! 🥰

Jin Zixuan: There can only be one. YEET

I am truly sad he didn't; think of the 'No Doubles' memes that we could have had...

[thesilicontribesman]

Roman Copper Alloy Hand Mirror, Corinium Museum, Cirencester

[galleryofart]

The Mirror

Artist: Lawrence Alma-Tadema (Dutch, 1836-1912)

Date: 1868

Medium: Oil on Canvas

[the-evil-clergyman]

The Mirror by John William Godward (1899)

[canvasmirror]

Carravagio (Italian, 1571-1610) • Bacchus • c. 1596 • Uffizi Gallery, Florence

This cannot be Carravagio, you say? You are correct. The self-portrait is hidden in the wine flask which is part of the composition of Carravagio's famous Bacchus painting, shown above.

Via an infrared technique called multispectral reflectography, researchers were able to identify a tiny man which they're fairly sure is Carravagio. He's at the easel holding a paintbrush. One can faintly see the outline the head.

More here

“All works, no matter what or by whom painted, are nothing but bagatelles and childish trifles… unless they are made and painted from life, and there can be nothing… better than to follow nature”

– Carravagio

[thewaitisogre]

this moment is so emblematic of where roman is right now in the series. alone, in love with himself, too faced, and IN THE CLOSET.

[gingermintpepper]

I spent something like six and a half hours in the hospital today so day 6 of my challenge is being further postponed but, in the lieu of not doing any drawing, I did end up rereading Ovid's Metamorphoses in between waiting and I just wanted to offer some of my favourite underrated bits.

Cadmus and Harmonia's twin transformations into snakes is so gentle? Cadmus goes first, transformed mid plea for his wife to caress him one last time before his face is completely covered in scales, then he rests gently between her boobs and wraps around her neck and shoulders like a big snake gorget. Harmonia follows him shortly and the two snakes intertwine with each other before gently slithering off into the bushes and I love that actually mwah mwah mwah (I also appreciate the sweet irony of Cadmus who slew a snake for his glory becoming a snake, toothless and gentle in the last of his days)

Everything about Perseus was hilarious. Like, I'm sorry - I've never done a lot of reading into Perseus but I did always remember the banquet massacre and the Andromeda rescuing and like, bro I know it's not meant to be funny but Perseus is funny. I think it's his politeness honestly? He goes up to Atlas and is like "hello kind sir, may I please stay a night in your lands? I've travelled an awful long way and I am weary and hungry. If you only accept noble guests, rest assured, I am of noblest birth and have completed the noblest of deeds. 🥺" and Atlas takes one look at him, has a That's So Raven vision about the one time Themis gave him a prophecy about a son of Jove stealing his apples and then told Perseus to kick rocks. So Perseus, like the well adjusted and noble individual that he is, turns Atlas into a mountain with Medusa's head. This is how a great many of Perseus' stories unfold. It is actually hysterical.

I am going to give a special shoutout to Athis and Lycabas who were two young lovers in attendance at Perseus and Andromeda's blood wedding. Athis died first - a skilled archer who never got to shoot and was burnt and bludgeoned across the face with a wedding brazier. When Lycabas saw that his dear friend's beauty was ruined, he picked up the fight against Perseus himself in Athis' name and was slashed to strips by Perseus' sword. Lycabas managed to drag himself over to Athis in his last moments and died beside him, so I thought that was a particularly touching bit of beauty in the otherwise extremely tragic blood wedding.

No one can ever make me feel bad for Niobe. In a lot of the Greek accounts I've read and heard, because they tend to be much shorter or references in a wider narrative, it's hard to really grasp how insanely disrespectful she was to Leto (not that her boasting she should be the goddess of motherhood to the actual goddess of motherhood isn't worthy of death and destruction enough) but Ovid really did go the extra mile to dig it home how far down her throat this lady put her foot because even at her sons' seven way funeral she did not stop boasting about how she was still glorious. I did find it interesting that the seemingly innocuous detail of Apollo killing off the boys first and then Artemis killing the girls was kept cross-culturally, I assume it's because boys were more auspicious than girls in both cultures.

The detail of Athena bonking Arachne constantly with a wooden box and her being transformed into a spider because she begged to not be bonked to death. Also very interestingly, in Ovid's account, it's not a clear victory for Athena against Arachne - she gets flustered at the depictions of her relatives' affairs and rips the tapestry up - the judges didn't actually get a chance to opine. This is in contrast to the contest the Muses sang about where their representative Calliope unilaterally won against the daughters of Pierus.

The account of Apollo and Marsyas was much shorter than I remember it being. I recall it being touted as one of the more vicious and visceral tales in Metamorphoses' collection but it included neither the details of Marsyas' contest against Apollo, nor Apollo's feelings (or even any dialogue from him!) throughout his peeling of Marsyas' skin. Instead it is wholly focused on Marsyas - on describing the physical gore of his exposed veins and contracting muscles and the grief of the rustic crowd as they mourned his loss - which is curious indeed since the entire theme of the poems of Book 6 is divine punishment and it is otherwise filled with rather full accounts of these contests and insults.

Byblis and Caunus made me want to reread Euripedes' Hippolytus for the twelve thousandth time. Caunus made the right call of course but I also very much hoped he would have a huge big speech about incest being bad instead of just smacking the messenger.

And lastly, for now, Jove's speech as Hercules lay burning atop his death pyre where he addresses the host of his gods and goes "Man, wasn't Hercules a great guy? Look, there goes all his mortal attributes burning away in the fire, now he is all my son and surely we are all in agreement that any divine son of mine deserves a place on Olympus :)" was very endearing. I always feel quite bad for Deianira because she truly didn't mean any harm by her gift and I've always wished for an account of Heracles/Hercules' death from her perspective. There could scarcely be a thing more awful, especially given how long and drawn out and incredibly painful Hercules' death was.

Lowkey, I want to take a day and compare Ovid and Euripedes' Medeas. They're both very different women and they both handle their situations very differently. Partially for my own vindication - I adore Medea and Jason equally and since popular fiction cannot speak about Medea without flattening her or making Jason completely monstrous, this is just one of those things I'll have to do myself sometime.