 looking at a particularly relevant freeze from the forum transitorium that's going to help narrate this particular festival five-day festival in the month of March dedicated to Minerva. So it's the Quinquatria Festival or also known as the Quinquatris Festival of Minerva and we're going to talk about the goddess. We're going to talk about how she is venerated and who's doing the venerating. In particular, the festival comes in a sharp focus under the reign of the mission, not everybody's favorite emperor, but someone who left his mark on the city of Rome particularly with his massive palace on the Palatine hill that gives us the word palatial and palazzo in palace will then focus on the forum transitorium that we just had a view of We'll talk about the festivities in the city of Rome and then we're going to go out under the reign of Domitian to Albano, to the Alvin Hills, Castele Romani to see what Domitian did to add to the festivities because Minerva was his particular patron goddess. Okay, so Minerva and the festival. Minerva is obviously a key goddess in the city of Rome. You just think of the capitaline triad. You have Jupiter, you have Juno, and you have Minerva. This isn't a Truscan triad that the Romans go with. It's the ultimate triad. Well, she's going to have other cults and shrines throughout the city. The most important one is the largest one is going to be on the Aventine hill and the festival day is going to be on March 19. So we have this one-day festival, which at least by the time of Augustus, according to Ovid, is extended to five days total and the main people that are interested in this festival and really participating in this festival are going to be the artisans. And that makes total sense because like Athena, Minerva, goddess of wisdom is also the goddess of arts and crafts. And here we have a really nice relief block that's found at the base of the capitaline hill. It was decorating some sort of monument, temple, or maybe part of the decoration associated with the temple of Jupiter, Optimus Maximus. It's depicting then men that are working in their workshops as carpenters. Fabri Tignari. The Tignari is referring to the woodworking, the Fabri is referring to the term for workmen. And who is that larger-than-life figure on the far left is the goddess Minerva. So you go forward to the Christian era and you have patron saints. In the ancient times, you had patron gods and goddesses overlooking the various disciplines and and and jobs that you had in antiquity. So for the Romans, it was Minerva who was patronized by Smiths, tailors, cobblers, etc. We have inscriptions as early as the second century BC that are referring to a collage or association of actors and scribes that are venerating Minerva on the Aventine hill. Ovid is going to mention in his Fasti, his calendar epic poem. In the month of March, he mentions also the shrine of Minerva Capta on the Kylian hill. But the person that brings it all into sharper focus is Dimitian, son of Aspecian, built the Coliseum. Here's an image of a Laurel crowned Dimitian in the foreground and in the background. That's dad. That's Vespasian who built the Coliseum. Dimitian succeeds Titus who dies of pneumonia and will reign until is assassinated on his magnificent palace on the Palatine hill in 96. So he fought some German wars, maybe not so successfully, but he does have a massive building project, which you could say is quite successful in the city of Rome, in particular that palace designed by his architect, Riberius. And his reputation is terrible. He was assassinated. The Senate appointed a senator, Nerva, as his successor, personally did that successfully. And then he in turn Nerva chose Trajan, a successful general, as his heir. He went around being called Dominus Aeddeus, master in God. What a way to be called as a ruler of Rome. And it's that sort of term Dominus we have in the life of Augustus, according to Stonius, that Augustus did refuse that term. So it's a very powerful term. It implies that you are Dominus the master and the other people are the slave. So Lord and God, as in living God, is a pretty in-your-face terminology for yourself and ultimately leads to that subsequent assessment of the mission as one of grand negativity. Let's put it that way. And he and his life as other emperors and individuals had their affiliations with individual gods. For Augustus, it was Apollo. For Domitian, it was Nerva and her many manifestations. And in particular, in his forum, which you see above on the top image, is a reconstruction then of the various forum spaces. It's the smallest one. It's the most narrow one. And we know from archaeological evidence that Domitian was planning on building something much larger that is ultimately taken over by the construction of the form of Trajan. So Domitian was always searching and seeking to build something quite large, more so than the foreign transitorium that has his name on it. A mere 160 meters long by 46 meters. But it's completed ultimately and attributed to Nerva. So it's also known as the form of Nerva, even though it was pretty much all built by Domitian. It had its own temple that you see here. It's still standing in the 16th century in the Dipperach Drine and some of the colonnade on the right, which we'll get a view of in a video just shortly. But it's within that decoration that's still visible today that you have allegorical stories that are depicted. Stories like Arachne, who competes against Nerva as the mythological story goes in a weaving contest and ultimately is punished for her hubris to challenge the gods. She is ultimately going to be forced to commit suicide and then Nerva transforms her into a spider. That's why the spider has such a great web because in her human form she was also a great weaver. This is the ways in which we tie these stories into the decoration of the form space and ultimately these kinds of images that are preserved underline the divine order, hubris on the part of the humans, reverence for the gods, various stories are told in these depictions. And of course, it's in that space along what was originally Argalitum Street that we have a video on on ancient Rome live as well as the form transitorium and all imperial forest spaces that Argalitum Street was also a focal point for a lot of businesses including that of booksellers. So here is a view of that same pair of columns that you see in the Deporak drawing on the far right now excavated out and we can pivot up. We'll take a look at that freeze in more detail. There's an image of a province up at the top panel and it's that very freeze then that narrates a little snippet of what would have been something quite impressive on both sides for a length of 160 meters, quite an impressive narrative of many allegorical stories, many scenes of mythology, quite possibly other shrines and cults dedicated to the goddess Minerva. We don't think this was just repeated over and over and over again but there are other narratives, other stories as we see, let's say on the Augustine Basilica Emilia freeze reliefs or we see a narrative along the Column of Trajan. This was a quite sensational image that we have preserved. There's a great book by Eve Damber on private lives and imperial virtues that really tackles the issues of the freeze, of the possibilities of the other stories that are long gone and lost, of the ways in which this form decoration declares that allegiance to the patron goddess of the form and the patron goddess of the mission that is Minerva. So her temple was indeed right here until it was dismantled to build the Fontanone that's now on the Geniculum Hill. So again we'll take a nice little view, pivot up of this magnificent little portion that's preserved but very beautifully rendered with these slim Turkish columns and the beautiful narration up on top. The festivities in Rome lasted five days. Again it's celebrating the birthday of the goddess, again associated with the foundation of the temple on the Aventine Hill. On that day people went and consulted fortune tellers. It was apparently a good moment to have your fortune told. And the first day is a day of bloodless celebration but the next four bring out the gladiator. So you can imagine then it was a great moment in the course of the year to go to the Colosseum and other places throughout the city. And the idea is then it's the month of March and it's all about war. It's all about Mars but it's also about Minerva who is also a bellicose deity like Mars. And on the last day as you conclude in the gladiator fights you have the tubalustrium which is a moment to purify the war trumpets, the tuba that are going to be blasted by the trumpeters as part of the retinue in the Roman military. So every single component of warfare is treated with from the shields to the weaponry to the trumpets that will be blasted and they're considered also then sacred to be purified every year implements to conduct war successfully. We can go out to Albana, the Albin Hills, where Ramius and Remus were born and there are games that are added by Domitian were told by Suhtonius in the life of Domitian, section four. And he ultimately creates an association, a collegium to supervise the various related games. And why up here is because another villa, another palace constructed by Domitian that maybe isn't common knowledge and most people haven't visited but it's owned by the Vatican and you can indeed visit it today. It's another magnificent villa that on one side gave you a view of the Albin Lake and on the other side to the left you'd see the coastline. So it's a magnificent, magnificent location to have an enormous villa. And there there were exhibitions of wild beast games, stage plays, we'll see the theater in a minute, and competition of orders and poets. So it really was an enormous event that Domitian himself was the key proponent to expanding the festivities to celebrate his own personal deity. These are some, it looks like Versailles here, these are some of the papal gardens that are created over time over the ruins. And in this case here, we're pivoting toward one particular large cryptoporticus. You can see all those holes, those windows. I'm going to take you inside in a minute. But literally there was a walkway then constructed on a barrel vault several hundred meters long. Take away the trees there, right on the to the right, you'd walk over and you'd be able to see the Albin Lake. And if you pivoted to the to the left where we started our little video, you'd see the coastline. So you'd have an magnificent sunset. Now we're inside this long corridor and we can just get a sense. It was once lined with marble and we're getting a sense of scale. So in this property where we're getting a sense of an enormous scale that you had the guests come, you had the entertainment and you had all kinds of venues for poets, the orators, the stage play performances and beast hunts. Here's a little view of the theater. There's the stage right there and we're pivoting to the space for the seating. So it's not the large theaters like we have in the city of Rome, the theater of Pompey and Marcellus and Balbi, but it is a smaller venue within the palace of the mission, quite magnificent.