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This paper considers the ruin as a special genre of representation involving special objects. The paper examines the temporality of the ruin, the mediality of the ruin – especially the relation between image and word – and the historical positioning of the idea of the ruin in relation to antiquity and the modern era. The author analyzes aspects of the basic visual and phenomenological “grammar” of the ruin and comments on some of the implications for our understanding of the representation of history and historical change. The ruin's “deep sense of voicefullness” (as Ruskin calls it) is conveyed precisely through the silence of the material remains (and hence also their quality as images). The ruin, the paper argues, is as much an ancient idea as it is a product of modernity, but it allows us, paradoxically, both to understand times other than our own and to maintain historical difference and to keep a distance from the past. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper seeks to dispel several myths prevalent in the scholarship on Roman sexuality: that a freed slave was still obligated to serve his former master's sexual demands (I.A.), that the cinaedus cannot be the same as the modern male homosexual because the cinaedus was thought capable of performing cunnilinctus (I.B.), that exoleti were male prostitutes (I.C.), that the Romans were implacably hostile to lesbianism and that they “constructed” the lesbian as a phallic monstrosity (II.). It also draws attention to some neglected, unfamiliar, or misinterpreted evidence--anomalous on the current understanding of Roman sexuality, where women, boys, and lower-class men are supposed to have equal standing as potential passive sexual partners for adult men--for adult men whose sexual partners are exclusively male, and either active or passive: exoleti as active partners (I.C.), a puer delicatus who is prized for a masculine appearance rather than a feminine one (I.D.), and the Warren Cup, which glorifies a world of exclusively male-male sexuality (I.E.). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elderly inhabitants' memories can be a valuable source of information about the intangible aspects of cultural heritage of interest to tourists. Using the theory of social representations, this research project focuses on the urban area of the former 17th Municipality of Rome (located on the right riverbank of the Tiber River and including the neighborhoods of Prati and Borgo close to the Vatican City). All three older people's centers of the municipality have participated on a voluntary basis. The total of 64 persons provided demographic information, took tests assessing cognitive skills and memory, attended focus groups and participated in in-depth interviews in order to produce a documentary for tourists. As a result, the four most significant social representations of the cultural heritage of the former 17th Municipality of Rome have been identified and described in relation to the predominant emotions evoked. The final product consists of a documentary that includes selected interviews with the elderly inhabitants, insights from an archeologist and art historian, as well as local administration and authorities, in order to enrich tourist experience. Practical implications of the research project are discussed in relation to urban tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

HBO's two-season series Rome subverts the generic expectations created by the 'historical epic' as well as those of Shakespeare's Roman plays by portraying history not as the product of the Great Man but as a series of capricious accidents and happenstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]