Tullia Daughter of Cicero

'To read through the images then, as the "bloom" is plucked from the "meadow," the virgin is deflowered and the genitalia open to disclose the yawning chasm which is the original place of birth and death, the womb of mother earth from which we all come and to which we all return.'

1. Most Charitable: Cicero’s a posh snob, and Gordianus was created to give more of a working class man’s perspective. — This is the best possible reason for why Saylor pivoted: it’s true, and accurate. Of course, Gordianus is still a free male Roman citizen with enough cash to buy slaves, so he’s not exactly giving us a real subaltern voice, but Cicero was in fact absurdly wealthy compared to the average Roman. For a working-class male reader, this is perhaps enough to make Gordianus relatable and Cicero a bore; valid enough.

2. Middling Charitable: Cicero’s evil, or at best purely spineless and self-serving. — We can’t truly know why Cicero made the political moves he did: Cicero himself gives us noble reasons, but we each have to decide whether to trust that those explanations are true. Saylor clearly doesn’t trust Cicero, and that’s an understandable historical reading. I happen to disagree, but I do see how Saylor came to the conclusion that Cicero only ever cared about his own ambition rather than the stability and integrity of the republic.

3. Least Charitable: Cicero’s too gay. — Okay hear me out: I know that (A) Gordianus is bi as all hell for (e.g.) Tiro and Catiline, and (B) Saylor is himself gay. However! Saylor (and by extension his self-insert Gordianus) seems to have some pretty clear ideas about how gay men should present themselves: men, queer or not, in Saylor’s writing are expected to be physically strong and uncompromising. Cicero was not, during his lifetime, the Platonic ideal of Roman masculinity, and things only got worse after his death when queerness and effeminacy became inextricably tied to his legacy. I think Saylor looked at those less-than-fully-masculine traits and said “Oh I don’t want that,” and wrote Gordianus about it.

That being said! Saylor seems fully aware that his reaction to Cicero is not universal: one thing I genuinely like about Roma Sub Rosa is how many characters (including members of Gordianus’s family) are deeply in love with Cicero. The man was in fact good at rhetoric and that did absolutely require being charming! I think Saylor knew that, but for a combination of the reasons above, decided to portray that charm as purely false manipulation, through the eyes of the one character (Gordianus) who isn’t fooled…

Greek Merchant, handing over symposium pottery: of course sir here’s a batch fresh from Athens,

Etruscan Wife, examining the gay sex heavy pottery : …. Where are all the women on these…

the Victoria and Albert museum

The Cast Courts (originally called the Architectural Courts[1]) of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England, comprise two large halls. Unusually for a museum, the Cast Courts house a collection not of originals, but copies. Here are to be found reproductions of some of the most famous sculptures in the world. Most of the copies were made in the 19th century and in many cases they have better resisted the ravages of time, 20th-century pollution and over-zealous conservation than the originals. In a few cases, such as the late 15th century Lübeck relief of Christ washing the Apostles' feet, the original has been destroyed and the cast is a unique record of a lost work.[2]

The column (3) is set in between the Propylon (1), the Greek and Latin libraries (2), and the Basilica Ulpia (4), all four of which were multi-story structures. From any of these buildings, you would have been able to get up high and look at the column up close, like in this reconstruction:

Also! Cast collections where not as rare and unusual as the Wikipedia article on the V&A cast court implies: during the late 18th and 19th centuries, it used to be very common to find museums with large collections of casts of classical sculptures. These objects were used for teaching, and YES you could be more playful with them, because they weren't originals. Unfortunately, many of these collections were scattered or destroyed during the twentieth century, making the V&A's collection rare due to its remarkable state of preservation.

Here's a short bibliography on cast collections if you want to read more:

Alexandridis, Annetta, and Lorenz Winkler-Horaček, eds. Destroy the Copy — Plaster Cast Collections in the 19th–20th Centuries: Demolition, Defacement, Disposal in Europe and Beyond. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022.

Basile, Joseph. “Facsimile and Originality: Changing Views of Classical Casts in Arts Education and Art History.” The International Journal of the Arts in Society: Annual Review 8 (2014): 11–30.

Beard, Mary. “Casts and Cast-Offs: The Origins of the Museum of Classical Archaeology.” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 39 (1993): 1–29.

Born, Pamela. “The Canon Is Cast: Plaster Casts in American Museum and University Collections.” Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America 21, no. 2 (2002): 8–13.

Frederiksen, Rune, and Eckart Marchand, eds. Plaster Casts: Making, Collecting and Displaying from Classical Antiquity to the Present. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010.

McNutt, James K. “Plaster Casts after Antique Sculpture: Their Role in the Elevation of Public Taste and in American Art Instruction.” Studies in Art Education 31, no. 3 (1990): 158–67.

Nichols, Marden Fitzpatrick. “Plaster Cast Sculpture: A History of Touch.” Archaeological Review 21, no. 2 (2006): 114–30.

Payne, Emma M. “Casting a New Canon: Collecting and Treating Casts of Greek and Roman Sculpture, 1850-1939.” The Cambridge Classical Journal 65 (2019): 113–49.

reqs #2. there will be at least ONE more batch

old pea for @tunathena

pompcero for @stasigeier

oratrices for @tulliolaciceronis