Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Tuesday 23 March 2021

More about Caligula’s Horti Lamiani


My algorithm yielded today the link to an article  about the new museum arrangement in Rome that displays remains of Caligula’s Horti Lamiani, as well as items found on the site. The article, from Town and Country, is written in a lively and pacey way, but is informative and also suggests some interesting later parallels with Caligula’s taste in home furnishings and entertainment. The article can be read at How to Do Cocktails at Caligula's, History's Original Hype House

I posted about the opening up of this site in January in Uncovering Caligula’s Horti Lamiani and last week wrote about another of Caligula’s recreational projects, the boats on Lake Nemi, in Where did you get that lovely coffee table?



Emperor Caligula - Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus

Image: Encyclopaedia Britannica/ Metropolitan Museum of Art New York 

As to the Emperor himself there is an online account from Wikipedia at CaligulaThere are some good illustrations of him and his family on a fact-sheet type article at Caligula: 16 Little-Known Facts You Probably Don't Know

see that in 2013 I linked to an article which discussed whether he was the victim of posthumous vilification in Reassessing Caligula. This question is discussed in a useful and readable illustrated account of his life from Museum Center at Caligula: Mad or Misunderstood?

As this year saw the 1980th anniversary of Caligula’s assassination on January 24th perphaps the people who have organised the Hortus Lamiani display will, when they can open it, feel like partying like it was 41AD..... or perhaps not.


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