Celleno

some people really don’t realize how privileged they are that they get fanfics for free. imagine having access to something for free because someone is kind enough to share it with you… and then being rude, entitled and an ungrateful pos to that person who was kind enough to share their creation with you for free

“almost 1 year is a lil too much for me” fuck off. fanfic writers don’t owe you anything. one of my favorite fics was updated after 13 years, and what I did is that I thanked the author for choosing to continue the work, I didn’t act like a spoiled toddler by asking why they didn’t update sooner. and even if a writer chooses to abandon their fic permanently with no explanation, that is their choice, their hobby, their decision. they don’t owe your entitled ass anything.

536AD, The Roman Apocalypse

In the tenth year of Justinian’s reign, the sun lost its brightness and shone like the moon, as though perpetually eclipsed. From that moment, humanity knew no relief from war, famine, or pestilence. The plague followed soon after, spreading across the whole world without regard for age, rank, or place, bringing mankind to the edge of annihilation. -Procopius on the Years following 536AD

"The Colosseum is an organism that digests itself"

[pointing at a honorary inscription from the v century] "So what do you think?" [silence] "you can say it's ugly. I mean, in the I century not even a freedman would have accepted something this ugly"

"No, the Colosseum is like pork: you don't throw anything away."

[two inscriptions about the same thing done by the same guy] "Yet they are a bit different - why? That's late antiquity for you, baby"

[about a scholar who was horribly wrong] "This happens when you don't let the stone speak"

[pointing at a few inscriptions that mentioned barbarian attacks] "They simply have no shame anymore, don't they?"

"We might say that Constantine was the inventor of politically correct- well, no, actually, this would be true if Augustus hadn't come before him"

"Here's a thing that Donald Trump's political campaign, augustean propaganda and Constantine's arch have in common"

[still on Constantine. this time the hispellum rescriptum] "It took him 38 lines to actually answer and say: yeah it's cool"

"Constantine introduced himself as Rome's new founder - he had that old-fashioned problem of killing his family members - however..."

"Fashion changes. They liked inscriptions that we would have probably given back to their maker because of their ugliness. Look at this one. Yes it's whole. Yes they didn't even cut it right."

of course ! basically what we nowadays have of the colosseum brings us back to the last phase of use of the amphitheater. not much of its original state is preserved because many materials of its early stages were reused for inscriptions, architectural structures and equipment during late roman empire. so most of the original colosseum is forever lost to the colosseum itself, because the amphiteater is, in my professor’s words, like “a microcosm that grew digesting itself”.

this practice of reusing older material and inscriptions is a rather interesting trait that characterises the epigraphical landscape of that age, but it’s extremely striking in the case of the colosseum.

there are slices of columns reused for loca senatorii (inscriptions in the cavea that marked the place where certain aristocratic families used to sit), steps and bleachers transformed into blocks of imperial inscriptions that circled the arena, and even inscriptions themselves turned into building material during the various restorations of the building

this, for example, is a fragment of an imperial inscription from the time of valentinian III that reuses a former bleacher (the holes have been probably made by spectators to play with marbles while waiting between different shows)

here you can see how inside (in its maenianum summum) the structure is almost a "patchwork" of different materials.

Summer Break, 2023