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I'm interested in material artifacts aspect of Roman history, and am less interested (skeptical in fact) about the going narratives. Think how wrong the media gets a story if you happen to have local knowledge of it. But there are hard to overlook vignettes evoked by ruins that just beg for some contextual story, like the alienation of Tiberius or the refinement of the Quintilii brothers based on their respective villas. Same could be said for their meditative portrait sculpture...

Studying Latin in school-- the myths and legends of the early history. It fascinated me that we were reading the very words written by men who walked the earth more than 2000 yrs ago. Speaking of church, my cigar chomping, truck driver uncle who quit school after the eighth grade was quite irate when Vatican II did away with the Latin Mass-- "That's crazy. We should be hearing the words the way The Lord really said them.' (??)