Heading to the Capitoline Museum

I am back home, now.  But here are some of my reflections from my time in Rome.
The Capitoline Museum was one of my favorite places to visit

At the top of the stairs leading to the Capitoline hill are two statues of Castor and Pollux. These two were twin heroes, who helped the people of Rome in battle when they were founding the city. The statues are very old, with the exception of one of the heads which was lost, and later replaced by Michelangelo. This hill was a very important to the Romans. Although the root Latin word Caput means head, the Capitoline hill was also considered the exact center, or belly button, of the Eternal City.

Castor and Pollux

After some waiting, we entered into the Capitoline museum. The first thing we saw was a giant head, part of the remnants of a colossal statue of Constantine. He built two such statues after he moved the capitol to Constantinople. These statues look over the entire city of Rome giving Constantine a strong presence in the city, even though he had moved to the far reaches of the empire.

The second statue was made of bronze and its remains are kept in a separate room. In his hand Constantine held a globe, symbolizing his world dominance. With it is kept the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, the only bronze statue of a man on horseback which remains from antiquity.

Most bronze statues were melted down to provide building materials. This particular statue is thought to have survived because people during the medieval period mistook Marcus Aurelius for Constantine, the first Christian emperor. This is a strange mistake to make given that they have such different heads. As you can see from the photographs one has a beard while the other does not. Despite their differences, however, both are generally considered to be decent emperors. This cannot be said of Commodus, the son of Marcus Aurelius who was exceedingly proud. 

 In his pride, Commodus thought himself to be the god Hercules. This bust has Commodus adorned in the lion skin of Hercules, and bearing the Club and golden apples of this Hero. At the base there is a kneeling Amazon, who seems to have lost her head. The curly design above her in the center is thought to be a representation of the shields which the Amazons used. The subjugation of the Amazons represents the triumph of human reason over the bodily passions.  

Commodus not only portrayed himself as Hercules in art, but actually believed that he was the reincarnation of this minor god and would frequently dress up in a lion skin. His pride swelled him up to such an extent that he even demanded that the Senate refer to him as Hercules. This was too much for the senators, so they bribed Commodus's wrestling partner slave named Narcissus to strangle thim in his bath.  Thus Commodus was killed by Narcissus. 

While Commodus portrayed himself as a relaxed Hercules complete with all the trappings of lion skin, club and golden apples, the true Hercules was nothing like him. This is a depiction of the actual Hercules.

His naked and unadorned body is tensed and in action as he fights some monster. If I recall correctly, he is in deadly battle with the Hydra. The Hydra was a many-headed beast. If you were to cut off one of its heads then two more would spring up in its place. Unable to kill it by strength, Hercules had to overcome the Hydra through his wit. He tricked it into a cave and sealed the entrance, thereby trapping the heads beneath the stone mountains. 

One of my favorite pieces of art at the museum was a depiction of another monster, Medusa. This bust, with the twisting snakes above her contorted brow, captivated my attention. Medusa was once the most lovely of women, until she let the beauty of her body go to her head. She began to boast that she was even more beautiful than Athena. Hearing this, Athena, punished Medusa by turning her into a hideous monster with snakes for hair. Indeed, she was so hideous that anyone who looked upon her would be turned to stone. Thus, Medusa was shunned as an outcast, cut off from the vast body of human society. The expression in the stone looked so lonely, so painful, that I could not help but feel a deep sympathy for Medusa.

Apparently, this Bust was made by Bernnini

Eventually Perseus set out to kill Medusa. Since he could not look upon her for fear of being turned to stone, he instead polished his shield until he could see reflected in it the world behind him. In this way he was able to see the reflection of Medusa in his shield. After a long and perhaps slightly awkward flight, Perseus succeeded in severing the head of Medusa from her body. He then gave it to Athena who put it onto her shield, thereby beginning the practice of the Greeks and Romans of painting Medusa’s head on their shields to frighten their enemies. Below the sculpture there was this inscription...

“The head of Medusa, in ancient times used as ornamentation on the shields of the Romans to terrorize their enemies, today shines brightly in the Capitol in glory of the renowned sculptor.”

After leaving Medusa, behind I eventually came across someone whose face was far more beautiful than the snaky Medusa.  

It is hard to tell without the body, but this is actually not a girl. It is Dionysius. He just looks like a girl. As my friends and I walked through the museum we consistently mistook Dionysus’s face for that of a female. Even in the Greek tragedy, The Bacchae, Pentheus makes fun of the god for his feminine appearance.

The story goes that Pentheus, the king of Thebes, was severely punished for his irreverence. Dionysus used his power to drive all the women in the kingdom into a mindless frenzy and drove them from the city into the woods. He then tricked Pentheus into going after them. The women, in their maddened state, mistake Pentheus for a lion and proceed to tear him limb from limb. Pentheus’s mother, Agave, tore his head from his body and paraded it through the streets thinking herself to be a mighty lion hunter. But soon she is brought to realize what she has done, and is overwhelmed with sorrow. I think that this might be a representation of this scene.

It is smaller than it looks

In ancient Greek tragedy the actors would hide their heads behind great masks. When they had to change characters, they would simply change masks. It is most likely that the Head Agave carried onto stage was the mask which Pentheus previously wore. While at the Capitoline museum I saw a representation of one of these hollow faces.

Nearby there were several rooms full of the busts of famous people, including the busts of poets and tragedians. There I saw a bust of Sophocles, perhaps the greatest tragedian of all. There were no fewer than three busts of Homer, the author of both the Iliad and Odyssey.

Another bust I happened to see was that of Alcibiades. Alcibiades was an Athenian leader who betrayed his people to the Spartans, betrayed the Spartans and ran away to the Persians, betrayed the Persians to gain favor with the Athenians, was kicked out of Athens, and returned to Persia where he died. Somewhere along the way he became the leader of some northern barbaric tribes. He was, in short, a two-faced smooth-talking trickster, whom no one seemed able to resist.

Alcibiades even appears in some of Plato’s writings about Socrates. In the Symposium Alcibiades shows up at the end of the evening, dressed like the wild god, Dionysus. He then gives a speech about how much he loves Socrates, and how Socrates does not love him, but only loves philosophy and reason. He is very upset at this.

We continued down a section that had all the busts. I was quite excited to see my favorite philosopher Plato. Plato believed in a strong separation between body and soul. The body being physical dealt with changing things, while the mind stood above the body, contemplating true reality. His ideal life would be to be separated from the body, forever thinking eternal thoughts undistracted by bodily passions. I am sure he is very happy as a bust.

At last we left the museum and headed back.