Miletus
Miletus was an ancient Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia, near the mouth of the Maeander River in ancient Caria. Its ruins are located near the modern village of Balat in Turkey. Before the Persian invasion in the middle of the 6th century BC, Miletus was considered the greatest and wealthiest of Greek cities. Evidence of first settlement at the site has been made inaccessible by the rise of sea level and deposition of sediments from the Maeander; the first available evidence is of the Neolithic. In the early and middle Bronze age the settlement came under Minoan influence. Legend has it; the site was renamed Miletus after a place in Crete. The Late Bronze Age, 13th century BC, saw the arrival of Luwian language speakers from south central Anatolia calling themselves the Carians. In that century other Greeks arrived; the city at that time rebelled against the Hittite Empire. After the fall of that empire the city was destroyed in the 12th century BC and starting about 1000 BC was resettled extensively by the Ionian Greeks.
Legend offers an Ionian foundation event sponsored by a founder named Neleus from the Peloponnesus. The Greek Dark Ages were a time of Ionian settlement and consolidation in an alliance called the Ionian League; the Archaic Period of Greece began with a sudden and brilliant flash of art and philosophy on the coast of Anatolia. In the 6th century BC, Miletus was the site of origin of the Greek philosophical tradition, when Thales, followed by Anaximander and Anaximenes began to speculate about the material constitution of the world, to propose speculative naturalistic explanations for various natural phenomena. Miletus is the birthplace of the Hagia Sophia's architect Isidore of Miletus and Thales, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher in c. 624 BC. The ruins appear on satellite maps at 37°31.8'N 27°16.7'E, about 3 km north of Balat and 3 km east of Batıköy in Aydın Province, Turkey. In antiquity the city possessed a Harbor at the southern entry of a large bay, on which two more of the traditional twelve Ionian cities stood: Priene and Myus.
The harbor of Miletus was additionally protected by the nearby small island of Lade. Over the centuries the gulf silted up with alluvium carried by the Meander River. Priene and Myus had lost their harbors by the Roman era, Miletus itself became an inland town in the early Christian era. There is a Great Harbor Monument where, according to the New Testament account, the apostle Paul stopped on his way back to Jerusalem by boat, he met the Ephesian Elders and headed out to the beach to bid them farewell, recorded in the book of Acts 20:17-38. During the Pleistocene epoch the Miletus region was submerged in the Aegean Sea, it subsequently emerged the sea reaching a low level of about 130 meters below present level at about 18,000 BP. The site of Miletus was part of the mainland. A gradual rise brought a level of about 1.75 meters below present at about 5500 BP, creating several karst block islands of limestone, the location of the first settlements at Miletus. At about 1500 BC the karst shifted due to small crustal movements and the islands consolidated into a peninsula.
Since the sea has risen 1.75 m but the peninsula has been surrounded by sediment from the Maeander river and is now land-locked. Sedimentation of the harbor began at about 1000 BC, by AD 300 Lake Bafa had been created; the earliest available archaeological evidence indicates that the islands on which Miletus was placed were inhabited by a Neolithic population in 3500–3000 BC. Pollen in core samples from Lake Bafa in the Latmus region inland of Miletus suggests that a grazed climax forest prevailed in the Maeander valley, otherwise untenanted. Sparse Neolithic settlements were made at springs and sometimes geothermal in this karst, rift valley topography; the islands offshore were settled for their strategic significance at the mouth of the Maeander, a route inland protected by escarpments. The graziers in the valley may have belonged to them. Recorded history at Miletus begins with the records of the Hittite Empire and the Mycenaean records of Pylos and Knossos, in the Late Bronze Age; the prehistoric archaeology of the Early and Middle Bronze Age portrays a city influenced by society and events elsewhere in the Aegean, rather than inland.
Beginning at about 1900 BC artifacts of the Minoan civilization acquired by trade arrived at Miletus. For some centuries the location received a strong impulse from that civilization, an archaeological fact that tends to support but not confirm the founding legend—that is, a population influx, from Crete. According to Strabo:Ephorus says: Miletus was first founded and fortified above the sea by Cretans, where the Miletus of olden times is now situated, being settled by Sarpedon, who brought colonists from the Cretan Miletus and named the city after that Miletus, the place being in possession of the Leleges; the legends recounted as history by the ancient historians and geographers are the strongest. Miletus was a Mycenaean stronghold on the coast of Asia Minor from c. 1450 to 1100 BC. In c. 1320 BC, the city supported an anti-Hittite rebellion of Uhha-Ziti of nearby Arzawa. Muršili or
Hadrian
Hadrian was Roman emperor from 117 to 138. He was born Publius Aelius Hadrianus near Santiponce, Spain into a Hispano-Roman family, his father was a first cousin of Emperor Trajan. He married Trajan's grand-niece Vibia Sabina early in his career, before Trajan became emperor and at the behest of Trajan's wife Pompeia Plotina. Plotina and Trajan's close friend and adviser Lucius Licinius Sura were well disposed towards Hadrian; when Trajan died, his widow claimed that he had nominated Hadrian as emperor before his death. Rome's military and Senate approved Hadrian's succession, but four leading senators were unlawfully put to death soon after, they had opposed Hadrian or seemed to threaten his succession, the senate held him responsible for it and never forgave him. He earned further disapproval among the elite by abandoning Trajan's expansionist policies and territorial gains in Mesopotamia, Assyria and parts of Dacia. Hadrian preferred to invest in the development of stable, defensible borders and the unification of the empire's disparate peoples.
He is known for building Hadrian's Wall. Hadrian energetically pursued personal interests, he visited every province of the Empire, accompanied by an Imperial retinue of specialists and administrators. He encouraged military preparedness and discipline, he fostered, designed, or subsidised various civil and religious institutions and building projects. In Rome itself, he constructed the vast Temple of Venus and Roma. In Egypt, he may have rebuilt the Serapeum of Alexandria, he was an ardent admirer of Greece and sought to make Athens the cultural capital of the Empire, so he ordered the construction of many opulent temples there. His intense relationship with Greek youth Antinous and Antinous' untimely death led Hadrian to establish a widespread cult late in his reign, he suppressed the Bar Kokhba revolt in Judaea. Hadrian's last years were marred by chronic illness, he saw the Bar Kokhba revolt as the failure of his panhellenic ideal. He executed two more senators for their alleged plots against him, this provoked further resentment.
His marriage to Vibia Sabina had been childless. Hadrian died the same year at Baiae, Antoninus had him deified, despite opposition from the Senate. Edward Gibbon includes him among the Empire's "Five good emperors", a "benevolent dictator", he has been described as enigmatic and contradictory, with a capacity for both great personal generosity and extreme cruelty and driven by insatiable curiosity, self-conceit, ambition. Modern interest was revived thanks to Marguerite Yourcenar's novel Mémoires d'Hadrien. Hadrian was born on 24 January 76 in Italica in the Roman province of Hispania Baetica, he was named Publius Aelius Hadrianus. His father was Publius Aelius Hadrianus Afer, a senator of praetorian rank and raised in Italica but paternally linked, through many generations over several centuries, to a family from Hadria, an ancient town in Picenum; the family had settled in Italica soon after its founding by Scipio Africanus. Hadrian's mother was Domitia Paulina, daughter of a distinguished Hispano-Roman senatorial family from Gades.
His only sibling was Aelia Domitia Paulina. Hadrian's great-nephew, Gnaeus Pedanius Fuscus Salinator, from Barcino would become Hadrian's colleague as co-consul in 118; as a senator, Hadrian's father would have spent much of his time in Rome. In terms of his career, Hadrian's most significant family connection was to Trajan, his father's first cousin, of senatorial stock, had been born and raised in Italica. Hadrian and Trajan were both considered to be – in the words of Aurelius Victor – "aliens", people "from the outside". Hadrian's parents died in 86, he and his sister became wards of Publius Acilius Attianus. Hadrian was physically active, enjoyed hunting. Hadrian's enthusiasm for Greek literature and culture earned him the nickname Graeculus. Trajan married Paulina off to the three-times consul Lucius Julius Ursus Servianus. Hadrian's first official post in Rome was as a judge at the Inheritance court, one among many vigintivirate offices at the lowest level of the cursus honorum that could lead to higher office and a senatorial career.
He served as a military tribune, first with the Legio II Adiutrix in 95 with the Legio V Macedonica. During Hadrian's second stint as tribune, the frail and aged reigning emperor Nerva adopted Trajan as his heir, he was transferred to Legio XXII Primigenia and a third tribunate. Hadrian's three tribunates gave him some career advantage. Most scions of the older senatorial families might serve one, or at most two military tribunates as a prerequisite to higher office; when Nerva died in 98, Hadrian is said to have hastened to Trajan, to inform him ahead of the official envoy sent by the go
Castel Sant'Angelo
The Mausoleum of Hadrian known as Castel Sant'Angelo, is a towering cylindrical building in Parco Adriano, Italy. It was commissioned by the Roman Emperor Hadrian as a mausoleum for himself and his family; the building was used by the popes as a fortress and castle, is now a museum. The structure was once the tallest building in Rome; the tomb of the Roman emperor Hadrian called Hadrian's mole, was erected on the right bank of the Tiber, between AD 134 and 139. The mausoleum was a decorated cylinder, with a garden top and golden quadriga. Hadrian's ashes were placed here a year after his death in Baiae in 138, together with those of his wife Sabina, his first adopted son, Lucius Aelius, who died in 138. Following this, the remains of succeeding emperors were placed here, the last recorded deposition being Caracalla in 217; the urns containing these ashes were placed in what is now known as the Treasury room deep within the building. Hadrian built the Pons Aelius facing straight onto the mausoleum – it still provides a scenic approach from the center of Rome and the left bank of the Tiber, is renowned for the Baroque additions of statues of angels holding aloft instruments of the Passion of Christ.
Much of the tomb contents and decorations have been lost since the building's conversion to a military fortress in 401 and its subsequent inclusion in the Aurelian Walls by Flavius Honorius Augustus. The urns and ashes were scattered by Visigoth looters during Alaric's sacking of Rome in 410, the original decorative bronze and stone statuary were thrown down upon the attacking Goths when they besieged Rome in 537, as recounted by Procopius. An unusual survivor, however, is the capstone of a funerary urn, which made its way to Saint Peter's Basilica, covered the tomb of Otto II and was incorporated into a massive Renaissance baptistery; the use of spolia from the tomb in the post-Roman period was noted in the 16th century – Giorgio Vasari writes:...in order to build churches for the use of the Christians, not only were the most honoured temples of the idols destroyed, but in order to ennoble and decorate Saint Peter's with more ornaments than it possessed, they took away the stone columns from the tomb of Hadrian, now the castle of Sant'Angelo, as well as many other things which we now see in ruins.
Legend holds that the Archangel Michael appeared atop the mausoleum, sheathing his sword as a sign of the end of the plague of 590, thus lending the castle its present name. A less charitable yet more apt elaboration of the legend, given the militant disposition of this archangel, was heard by the 15th-century traveler who saw an angel statue on the castle roof, he recounts that during a prolonged season of the plague, Pope Gregory I heard that the populace Christians, had begun revering a pagan idol at the church of Santa Agata in Suburra. A vision urged the pope to lead a procession to the church. Upon arriving, the idol miraculously fell apart with a clap of thunder. Returning to St Peter's by the Aelian Bridge, the pope had another vision of an angel atop the castle, wiping the blood from his sword on his mantle, sheathing it. While the pope interpreted this as a sign that God was appeased, this did not prevent Gregory from destroying more sites of pagan worship in Rome; the popes converted the structure beginning in the 14th century.
The fortress was the refuge of Pope Clement VII from the siege of Charles V's Landsknechte during the Sack of Rome, in which Benvenuto Cellini describes strolling the ramparts and shooting enemy soldiers. Leo X built a chapel with a Madonna by Raffaello da Montelupo. In 1536 Montelupo created a marble statue of Saint Michael holding his sword after the 590 plague to surmount the Castel. Paul III built a rich apartment, to ensure that in any future siege the pope had an appropriate place to stay. Montelupo's statue was replaced by a bronze statue of the same subject, executed by the Flemish sculptor Peter Anton von Verschaffelt, in 1753. Verschaffelt's is still in place and Montelupo's can be seen in an open court in the interior of the Castle; the Papal state used Sant'Angelo as a prison. Another prisoner was goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini. Executions were performed in the small inner courtyard; as a prison, it was the setting for the third act of Giacomo Puccini's 1900 opera Tosca. Decommissioned in 1901, the castle is now the Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant ` Angelo.
It received 1,234,443 visitors in 2016. Cardinal-nephew Concordat of Worms List of castles in Italy Stand of the Swiss Guard Via della Conciliazione Official website Site describing arrangement of the original mausoleum. Mausoleum of Hadrian, part of the Encyclopædia Romana by James Grout Platner and Ashby entry on the tomb on Lacus Curtius site Roman Bookshelf – Views of Castel Sant'Angelo from the 19° Century Hadrian's tomb Model of how the tomb might have appeared in antiquity
Roman emperor
The Roman emperor was the ruler of the Roman Empire during the imperial period. The emperors used a variety of different titles throughout history; when a given Roman is described as becoming "emperor" in English, it reflects his taking of the title Augustus or Caesar. Another title used was imperator a military honorific. Early Emperors used the title princeps. Emperors amassed republican titles, notably princeps senatus and pontifex maximus; the legitimacy of an emperor's rule depended on his control of the army and recognition by the Senate. The first emperors reigned alone; the Romans considered the office of emperor to be distinct from that of a king. The first emperor, resolutely refused recognition as a monarch. Although Augustus could claim that his power was authentically republican, his successor, could not convincingly make the same claim. Nonetheless, for the first three hundred years of Roman emperors, from Augustus until Diocletian, efforts were made to portray the emperors as leaders of a republic.
From Diocletian, whose tetrarchic reforms divided the position into one emperor in the West and one in the East, until the end of the Empire, emperors ruled in an monarchic style and did not preserve the nominal principle of a republic, but the contrast with "kings" was maintained: although the imperial succession was hereditary, it was only hereditary if there was a suitable candidate acceptable to the army and the bureaucracy, so the principle of automatic inheritance was not adopted. Elements of the republican institutional framework were preserved after the end of the Western Empire; the Western Roman Empire collapsed in the late 5th century after multiple invasions of imperial territory by Germanic barbarian tribes. Romulus Augustulus is considered to be the last emperor of the West after his forced abdication in 476, although Julius Nepos maintained a claim recognized by the Eastern Empire to the title until his death in 480. Following Nepos' death, the Eastern Emperor Zeno abolished the division of the position and proclaimed himself as the sole Emperor of a reunited Roman Empire.
The Eastern imperial lineage continued to rule from Constantinople. Constantine XI Palaiologos was the last Roman emperor in Constantinople, dying in the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453; the "Byzantine" emperors from Heraclius in 629 and onwards adopted the title of basileus, which had meant king in Greek but became a title reserved for the Roman emperor and the ruler of the Sasanian Empire. Other kings were referred to as rēgas. In addition to their pontifical office, some emperors were given divine status after death. With the eventual hegemony of Christianity, the emperor came to be seen as God's chosen ruler, as well as a special protector and leader of the Christian Church on Earth, although in practice an emperor's authority on Church matters was subject to challenge. Due to the cultural rupture of the Turkish conquest, most western historians treat Constantine XI as the last meaningful claimant to the title Roman Emperor. From 1453, one of the titles used by the Ottoman Sultans was "Caesar of Rome", part of their titles until the Ottoman Empire ended in 1922.
A Byzantine group of claimant Roman emperors existed in the Empire of Trebizond until its conquest by the Ottomans in 1461, though they had used a modified title since 1282. Eastern emperors in Constantinople had been recognized and accepted as Roman emperors both in the East, which they ruled, by the Papacy and Germanic kingdoms of the West until the deposition of Constantine VI and accession of Irene of Athens as Empress regnant in 797. Objecting to a woman ruling the Roman Empire in her own right and issues with the eastern clergy, the Papacy would create a rival lineage of Roman emperors in western Europe, the Holy Roman Emperors, which ruled the Holy Roman Empire for most of the period between 800 and 1806; these Emperors were never recognized as Roman emperors by the court in Constantinople. Modern historians conventionally regard Augustus as the first Emperor whereas Julius Caesar is considered the last dictator of the Roman Republic, a view having its origins in the Roman writers Plutarch and Cassius Dio.
However, the majority of Roman writers, including Josephus, Pliny the Younger and Appian, as well as most of the ordinary people of the Empire, thought of Julius Caesar as the first Emperor. At the end of the Roman Republic no new, no single, title indicated the individual who held supreme power. Insofar as emperor could be seen as the English translation of imperator Julius Caesar had been an emperor, like several Roman generals before him. Instead, by the end of the civil wars in which Julius Caesar had led his armies, it became clear that there was no consensus to return to the old-style monarchy, but that the period when several officials, bestowed with equal power by the senate, would fight one another had come to an end. Julius Caesar, Augustus after him, accumulated offices and titles of the highest importance in the Republic, making the power attached to those offices permanent, preventing anyone with similar aspirations from accumulating or maintaining power for themselves. However, Julius Caesar, unlike those after
Lucilla
Annia Aurelia Galeria Lucilla or Lucilla was the second daughter and third child of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius and Roman Empress Faustina the Younger. She was the wife of her father's co-ruler Lucius Verus and an elder sister to Emperor Commodus. Commodus ordered Lucilla's execution after a failed assassination and coup attempt when she was about 33 years old. Born and raised in Rome into an influential political family, Lucilla was a younger twin with her elder brother Gemellus Lucillae, who died around 150. Lucilla’s maternal grandparents were Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius and Roman Empress Faustina the Elder and her paternal grandparents were Domitia Lucilla and praetor Marcus Annius Verus. In 161, when she was between 11 and 13 years old, Lucilla's father arranged a marriage for her with his co-ruler Lucius Verus. Verus, 18 years her senior, became her husband three years in Ephesus in 164. At this marriage, she became a Roman Empress. At the same time, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus were fighting a Parthian war in Syria.
Lucilla and Lucius Verus had three children: Aurelia Lucilla was born in 165 in Antioch Lucilla Plautia Lucius VerusAurelia and the boy died young. Lucilla was an influential and respectable woman and she enjoyed her status, she spent much time in Rome, while Verus was away from Rome much of the time, fulfilling his duties as a co-ruler. Lucius Verus died around 168/169 while returning from the war theater in the Danube region, as a result, Lucilla lost her status as Empress; as an unattached link to Emperor Aurelius and to the late co-Emperor Verus and because of her royal-born offspring, Lucilla was not destined for a long widowhood, thus, a short time in 169, her father arranged a second marriage for her with Tiberius Claudius Pompeianus Quintianus from Antioch. He was a Syrian Roman, twice consul and a political ally to her father, but Lucilla and her mother were against the marriage as a less than ideal match because Quintianus was at least twice Lucilla's age, but because he was not of her own Roman nobilis social rank though he was descended from rulers in the East.
They married nonetheless and, about a year in 170, Lucilla bore him a son named Pompeianus. In 172, Lucilla and Quintianus accompanied Marcus Aurelius to Vindobona in support of the Danube military campaign and were with him on March 17, 180, when Aurelius died and Commodus became the new emperor; the change meant that any hope of Lucilla becoming Empress again was lost and she and Quintianus returned to Rome. Lucilla was not happy living the quiet life of a private citizen in Rome, hated her sister-in-law Bruttia Crispina. Over time, Lucilla became concerned with her brother Commodus' erratic behaviour and its resulting effect on the stability of the empire. In light of her brother's unstable rule, in 182 Lucilla became involved in a plot to assassinate Commodus and replace him, her co-conspirators included Tarrutenius Paternus, the head of the Imperial Guard, her daughter Plautia from her first marriage, a nephew of Quintianus called Quintianus, her paternal cousins, the former consul Marcus Ummidius Quadratus Annianus and his sister Ummidia Cornificia Faustina.
Quintianus’ nephew, brandishing a dagger or sword, bungled the assassination attempt, trying to kill Commodus. As he burst forth from his hiding place to commit the deed, he boasted to Commodus "Here is what the Senate sends to you", giving away his intentions before he had the chance to act. Commodus's guards were faster than Quintianus and the would-be assassin was overpowered and disarmed without injuring the emperor. Commodus ordered the deaths of Quintianus’ nephew and of Marcus Ummidius Quadratus Annianus, banished Lucilla, her daughter and Ummidia Cornificia Faustina to the Italian island of Capri, he sent a centurion there to execute them that year. Her son Pompeianus was murdered by Caracalla. In the 1964 film The Fall of the Roman Empire, Lucilla was played by Sophia Loren - her part in the film's plot bearing only a loose relation to her real life. In the 2000 film Gladiator, Lucilla was played by Connie Nielsen. In the 2016 six-part docuseries Roman Empire: Reign of Blood, Lucilla was played by Tai Berdinner-Blades.
List of Roman women Women in Ancient Rome Tyrannicide Balsdon, J. P. V. D. Roman Women, Barnes & Noble Inc, 1998. ISBN 978-0760708620. D'Ambra, Roman Women, Cambridge University Press, 2006. ISBN 978-0521521581. Fraschetti, Lappin Linda, Roman Women, University Of Chicago Press, 1999. ISBN 978-0226260945. Freisenbruch, Caesars’ Wives: Sex and Politics in the Roman Empire, Free Press, 2011. ISBN 978-1416583059. Gardner, Jane F. Women in Roman Law and Society, Indiana University Press, 1991. ISBN 978-0253206350. Peck, Harry Thurston, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1898
Meditations
Meditations is a series of personal writings by Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor from 161 to 180 AD, recording his private notes to himself and ideas on Stoic philosophy. Marcus Aurelius wrote the 12 books of the Meditations in Koine Greek as a source for his own guidance and self-improvement, it is possible that large portions of the work were written at Sirmium, where he spent much time planning military campaigns from 170 to 180. Some of it was written while he was positioned at Aquincum on campaign in Pannonia, because internal notes tell us that the first book was written when he was campaigning against the Quadi on the river Granova and the second book was written at Carnuntum, it is unlikely that Marcus Aurelius intended the writings to be published and the work has no official title, so "Meditations" is one of several titles assigned to the collection. These writings take the form of quotations varying in length from one sentence to long paragraphs. Wilhelm Xylander first translated the Meditations into Latin in 1558.
The Meditations is divided into 12 books. Each book is not in chronological order and it was written for no one but himself; the style of writing that permeates the text is one, simplified and reflecting Marcus' Stoic perspective on the text. Depending on the English translation, Marcus' style is not viewed as anything regal or belonging to royalty, but rather a man among other men, which allows the reader to relate to his wisdom. A central theme to Meditations is the importance of analyzing one's judgment of self and others and the development of a cosmic perspective; as he said "You have the power to strip away many superfluous troubles located wholly in your judgment, to possess a large room for yourself embracing in thought the whole cosmos, to consider everlasting time, to think of the rapid change in the parts of each thing, of how short it is from birth until dissolution, how the void before birth and that after dissolution are infinite". He advocates finding one's place in the universe and sees that everything came from nature, so everything shall return to it in due time.
Another strong theme is of maintaining focus and to be without distraction all the while maintaining strong ethical principles such as "Being a good man". His Stoic ideas involve avoiding indulgence in sensory affections, a skill which will free a man from the pains and pleasures of the material world, he claims. An order or logos permeates existence. Rationality and clear-mindedness allow one to live in harmony with the logos; this allows one to rise above faulty perceptions of "good" and "bad" – things out of your control like fame and health are irrelevant and neither good nor bad. There is no certain mention of the Meditations until the early 10th-century. A doubtful mention is made by the orator Themistius in about AD 364. In an address to the emperor Valens, On Brotherly Love, he says: "You have no need of the exhortations of Marcus." Another possible reference is in the collection of Greek poems known as the Palatine Anthology, a work dating to the 10th-century but containing much earlier material.
The anthology contains an epigram dedicated to "the Book of Marcus". It has been proposed that this epigram was written by the Byzantine scholar Theophylact Simocatta in the 7th-century; the first direct mention of the work comes from Arethas of Caesarea, a bishop, a great collector of manuscripts. At some date before 907 he sends a volume of the Meditations to Demetrius, Archbishop of Heracleia, with a letter saying: "I have had for some time an old copy of the Emperor Marcus' most profitable book, so old indeed that it is altogether falling to pieces... This I have had copied and am able to hand down to posterity in its new dress." Arethas mentions the work in marginal notes to books by Lucian and Dio Chrysostom where he refers to passages in the "Treatise to Himself", it was this title which the book bore in the manuscript from which the first printed edition was made in the 16th-century. Arethas' own copy has now vanished, but it is thought to be the ancestor of the surviving manuscripts.
The next mention of the Meditations is in the Suda lexicon published in the late 10th-century. The Suda calls the work "a directing of his own life by Marcus the Emperor in twelve books,", the first mention of a division of the work into twelve books; the Suda makes use of some thirty quotations taken from books I, III, IV, V, IX, XI. Around 1150, John Tzetzes, a grammarian of Constantinople, quotes passages from Books IV and V attributing them to Marcus. About 200 years Nicephorus Callistus in his Ecclesiastical History writes that "Marcus Antoninus composed a book for the education of his son Marcus, full of all worldly experience and instruction." The Meditations is thereafter quoted in many Greek compilations from the 14th to 16th centuries. The present text is based entirely upon two manuscripts. One is the Codex Palatinus known as the Codex Toxitanus, first published in 1558/9 but now lost; the other manuscript is the Codex Vaticanus 1950 in the Vatican Library. The modern history of the Meditations dates from the issue of the first printed edition by Wilhelm Xylander in 1558 or 1559.
It was published at the instigation of Conrad Gesner and printed by his cousin Andreas Gesner at Zurich. The book was bound with a work by Marin
Capitoline Museums
The Capitoline Museums is a single museum containing a group of art and archaeological museums in Piazza del Campidoglio, on top of the Capitoline Hill in Rome, Italy. The historic seats of the museums are Palazzo dei Conservatori and Palazzo Nuovo, facing on the central trapezoidal piazza in a plan conceived by Michelangelo in 1536 and executed over a period of more than 400 years; the history of the museums can be traced to 1471, when Pope Sixtus IV donated a collection of important ancient bronzes to the people of Rome and located them on the Capitoline Hill. Since the museums' collection has grown to include a large number of ancient Roman statues and other artifacts; the museums are operated by the municipality of Rome. The statue of a mounted rider in the centre of the piazza is of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, it is the original being housed on-site in the Capitoline museum. Opened to the public in 1734 under Clement XII, the Capitoline Museums are considered the first museum in the world, understood as a place where art could be enjoyed by all and not only by the owners.
This section contains collections sorted by building, brief information on the buildings themselves. For the history of their design and construction, see Capitoline Hill#Michelangelo; the Capitoline Museums are composed of three main buildings surrounding the Piazza del Campidoglio and interlinked by an underground gallery beneath the piazza. The three main buildings of the Capitoline Museums are: Palazzo Senatorio, built in the 12th century and modified according to Michelangelo's designs. In addition, the 16th century Palazzo Caffarelli-Clementino, located off the piazza adjacent to the Palazzo dei Conservatori, was added to the museum complex in the early 20th century; the collections here are ancient sculpture Roman but Greek and Egyptian. Features the relief from the honorary monument to Marcus Aurelius; the second floor of the building is occupied by the Conservator's Apartment, a space now open to the public and housing such famous works as the bronze she-wolf nursing Romulus and Remus, which has become the emblem of Rome.
The Conservator's Apartment is distinguished by elaborate interior decorations, including frescoes, stuccos and carved ceilings and doors. The third floor of the Palazzo dei Conservatori houses the Capitoline Art Gallery, housing the museums' painting and applied art galleries; the Capitoline Coin Cabinet, containing collections of coins, medals and jewelry, is located in the attached Palazzo Caffarelli-Clementino. Statues, sarcophagi, busts and other ancient Roman artifacts occupy two floors of the Palazzo Nuovo. In the Hall of the Galatian can be appreciated the marble statue of the "Dying Gaul" called “Capitoline Gaul” and the statue of Cupid and Psyche. Housed in this building are: The colossal statue restored as Oceanus, located in the museum courtyard of this building A fragment of the Tabula Iliaca located at the Hall of the Doves The statue of Capitoline Venus, from an original by Praxiteles The Galleria Congiunzione is located beneath the Palazzo dei Conservatori and the piazza itself, links the three palazzos sitting on the piazza.
The gallery was constructed in the 1930s. It contains in situ 2nd century ruins of ancient Roman dwellings, houses the Galleria Lapidaria, which displays the Museums' collection of epigraphs; the new great glass covered hall — the Sala Marco Aurelio — created by covering the Giardino Romano is similar to the one used for the Sala Ottagonale and British Museum Great Court. The design is by the architect Carlo Aymonino, its volume recalls that of the oval space designed by Michelangelo for the piazza. Its centerpiece is the bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, once in the centre of Piazza del Campidoglio and has been kept indoors since its modern restoration. Moving these statues out of the palazzo allows those sculptures temporarily moved to the Centrale Montemartini to be brought back, it houses the remaining fragments of the bronze Colossus of Constantine and the archaeological remains of the tuff foundations of the temple of Capitoline Jupiter, with a model and computer reconstructions and finds dating from the earliest occupation on the site to the foundation of the temple.
In the three halls adjacent to the Appartamento dei Conservatori are to be found the showcases of the famous Castellani Collection with a part of the set of Greek and Etruscan vases, donated to the municipality of Rome by Augusto Castellani in the mid-19th century. The Centrale Montemartini is a former power station of Acea in southern Rome, between Piramide and the basilica of San Paolo Fuori le Mura, close to the Metro station Garbatella. In 1997, the Centrale Montemartini was adapted to temporarily accommodate a part of the antique sculpture collection of the Capitoline museums, at that time closed for renovation, its permanent collection comprises 400 ancient statues, moved here during the reorganisation of the Capitoline Museums in 1997, along with tombs and mosaics. Many of them were excavated in the ancient Roman horti (e.g. the Gardens of Sallu
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