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Ancient Roman Puzzle Yields Clues
BBC ^ | 7-26-2005 | Vanessa Collingridge

Posted on 07/26/2005 5:10:20 PM PDT by blam

Ancient Roman puzzle yields clues

By Vanessa Collingridge
Presenter, Rebuilding Rome

The map provides a unique insight into ancient Rome (pic: Stanford University)

For more than 500 years scholars have been wrestling with an ancient Roman puzzle that would test even the most cunning of quiz-masters.

How do you put together a giant stone jigsaw when 80% of the pieces are missing and you have even lost the lid?

Now with a joint Italian-US team on the case using a hi-tech approach the answer might finally be within reach.

The Forma Urbis, or Severan Marble Plan, is a giant map of the city of Rome constructed around AD200 by the Emperor Septimius.

It was fixed onto the wall of the Templum Pacis (Temple of Peace) in the heart of the city - a massive display symbolising both the greatness of the city, and the emperor's power to know its every nook and cranny.

But with the decline of the empire from the 4th Century, the vast marble map - measuring 18m by 13m (59 feet by 43 feet) and intricately carved onto 250 separate slabs - was prised off the wall.

The building stones were stolen, crushed into cement or merely slid down off the wall to lie buried in the gardens below for the next 1,000 years.

Historical challenge

The rediscovery of some of the pieces during the Renaissance ignited an interest in reconstructing the map that has bewitched scholars ever since.

Laser scanning helps to piece the fragments together (pic: Stanford University)

Now scientists at America's Stanford University have joined Italian archaeologists in the capital's Museum of Roman Civilisation with a multi-disciplinary and hi-tech approach to solving the ancient riddle.

The Stanford team has digitally scanned all 1,182 surviving pieces of the Plan and constructed a range of computer programmes which use algorithms to try to fit the pieces together.

Helping them in their detective work are a set of clues embedded within the pieces - the shape of the broken edges, the colour and veining of the marble, the carvings of the map itself and also a series of holes on the reverse of the pieces, where the slabs were fixed to the wall by evenly-spaced metal pins.

It is an intriguing cocktail of three-dimensional clues - but the rewards are equally intoxicating, says Stanford's Professor Mark Levoy.

"We used all the clues to no success for the first two-three years, then we started to get the first computer matches. But when we verified them in Rome it was just amazing to physically touch the real pieces and see them connect with a certain finality. The whole room broke into applause!"

Hi-tech success

In the past year, the project has found as many matches as scholars have found in the past 20 years.

And in the last few weeks they have completed 3-D models for all the existing fragments: a monumental achievement and a major leap forward to reconstructing the forgotten landscape of ancient Rome.

The Colosseum: Monuments tell only part of Rome's story Rich and poor, traders and bureaucrats, slaves and the free often lived cheek-by-jowl in the most multicultural and vibrant city of its age.

Its reconstruction after almost 2,000 years is a possibility that excites Professor Andrew Wallis Hadrill, director of the British School in Rome.

"Rome has always been a very cosmopolitan place and you can see this in the detail of the Forma Urbis: there's simply nowhere else like it.

"It was the first duty of the emperor to know who was in his city, where they lived, how on earth to feed them to keep them from rioting. So this map is a symbolical statement in both size and magnificence. It says: we know you in detail, we know every street, every doorway. What a wonderful way to display knowledge! It's saying, 'This is our city - look at it! Wow!'"

The map is also invaluable for revealing the hidden side of Rome which never stood the test of time - the commonplace houses and shops where ordinary Romans lived their lives.

Although frustratingly it only gives details of the ground floors for a city that would have had the New York skyline of its day, it is still the most important topographical work to have survived to modern times.

Now the veil is being drawn back from the real story of Rome - a buzzing, noisy, often smelly and crowded but living city, beautifully captured in stone.


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: ancient; archaeology; clues; ggg; godsgravesglyphs; history; puzzle; roman; romanempire; yields

1 posted on 07/26/2005 5:10:21 PM PDT by blam
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To: SunkenCiv

GGG Ping.


2 posted on 07/26/2005 5:11:15 PM PDT by blam
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To: blam

Neat.


3 posted on 07/26/2005 5:20:28 PM PDT by DoughtyOne (US socialist liberalism would be dead without the help of politicians who claim to be conservative.)
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To: blam

It's not an article about Pente?! I feel cheated...

4 posted on 07/26/2005 5:23:59 PM PDT by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: blam

A funny thing happened on the way to the Forum: I dropped my map and broke it.


5 posted on 07/26/2005 5:35:37 PM PDT by UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide (Give Them Liberty Or Give Them Death! - IT'S ISLAM, STUPID! - Islam Delenda Est! - Rumble thee forth)
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To: blam

We all know it was really broken up because Roman husbands refused to take a map with them.


6 posted on 07/26/2005 5:43:28 PM PDT by pierrem15
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To: pierrem15
... the most multicultural and vibrant city of its age.

Multicultural? Maybe. But "when in Rome, do as the Romans do."

7 posted on 07/26/2005 6:34:18 PM PDT by ReadyNow
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To: ReadyNow
>>> the real story of Rome - a buzzing, noisy, often smelly and crowded but living city,

Speaking of multiculturalism, exactly what has changed in Rome between then and now?

8 posted on 07/26/2005 9:19:46 PM PDT by texas booster (Bless the legal immigrants!)
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To: blam; FairOpinion; Ernest_at_the_Beach; StayAt HomeMother; 24Karet; 3AngelaD; asp1; ...
Thanks Blam.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest
-- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

9 posted on 07/26/2005 11:36:01 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Down with Dhimmicrats! I last updated by FR profile on Tuesday, May 10, 2005.)
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To: blam

"Romulus and Remus" bump.


10 posted on 07/27/2005 2:11:13 AM PDT by Ciexyz (Let us always remember, the Lord is in control.)
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To: texas booster
Speaking of multiculturalism, exactly what has changed in Rome between then and now?

Nowadays, the barbarians are invading from the south!!!

11 posted on 07/27/2005 6:09:52 AM PDT by night reader (NRA Life Member since 1962)
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To: blam

So show us the freaking map already!!!


12 posted on 07/27/2005 8:02:54 PM PDT by Babu
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 GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach
Just updating the GGG info, not sending a general distribution.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.


13 posted on 09/02/2011 7:23:38 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (It's never a bad time to FReep this link -- https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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