Posted on 03/05/2016 2:38:35 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Only fragments remain today and most are held in the Capitoline museum. They cover just 10 percent the original map surface that once stood on a wall in the Templum Pacis (Temple of Peace).
The wall still survives today in a building near the 6th-century Church of Santi Cosma e Damiano. Rows of holes where the map was attached using bronze clamps can still be seen.
Carved on 150 marble slabs, the 60-foot by 43-foot map detailed every building, street and staircase in Rome until it was partially ripped from the wall, probably to make lime for cement. What was left fell down and broke apart in hundreds of unrecognizable pieces.
Piecing the jigsaw puzzle together remains one of the great unsolved problems of archaeology. The first fragments were discovered in 1562. Since then, some 1200 pieces have been brought to light...
The new fragment was discovered in 2014 during work at the Palazzo Maffei Marescotti, a building owned by the Vatican.
The marble piece ended up there as it was likely recycled during the construction of the palace at the end of the 16th century.
The new fragment has allowed the researchers to piece together at least other three chunks of the huge puzzle, allowing a more comprehensive reading of an important area of ancient Rome.
"The fragment relates to plate 31 of the map, which is the present-day area of the Ghetto, one of the monumental areas of the ancient city, dominated by the Circus Flaminius, built in 220 BC to host the Plebeian games, and where a number of important public monuments stood," the Superintendency said.
Pieced together with the other bits of plate 31, the new fragment will be on display at the Museum of Ara Pacis until March 17.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.discovery.com ...
This is the latest addition to an ancient Roman map puzzle. [Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali]
Somewhere out there is this group of idiot-savants...
LOL!
I worked for an ancient Roman newspaper.
I was a columnist!
Capital man! You really are an upstanding individual! You could try and lighten up and not be so rigid though.
Getting hungry. How about we go out for some bread and circuses?
There is this new chick I mean chic place just DOWN the street called “Gladiator”.
OK. Maybe not.
How about we go Greek instead?
I need a Gyro...
Oh, I was glad-i-ator. :-)
I shouldn’t, but I mosaic anyway — it’s moments like that which led Moe Howard to his screen career. ;’)
The truth is, I’m corroded with jealousy that I didn’t think of it.
Half the time I feel I should be pilastered before logging on here.
And change your name to the “Pilsner Doh! Boy”?
I hope that the slime who made decisions to destroy so many of these ancient gems died slowly of excruciating nasty diseases.
Any limestone structures or statuary was considered fair game during the middle ages for rendering into lime mortar. A former lime mortar production spot (abandoned for centuries) was stumbled across (someone digging a basement, I forget) and it had some of the mortar in a pile or two, and unmatched parts of various unknown classical-era statues. No muzzies were involved, either.
After I get banned I may use that.
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