THE LAPIS SCELERATA, C2 CE. SS. VITO E MODESTO, ROME There is no obvious reason why this particular funeral altar should have been singled out for veneration in the Middle Ages. It is dedicated to the eternal spirit of one Lucius Aelius Tertius by his uncle. A large part of the inscription has been worn away beginning with a big hole a centre that goes 3 or 4 cm into the marble. A metal file was used for centuries to wear away the marble into dust, which the faithful would mix with water and drink as a cure for rabies, a disease which caused spasms of motion called "St Vitus' Dance". The altar was thought to have been bathed in the blood of martyrs and this sacred elixir lent its power to the stone dust. So the marble was set into the wall of St Vitus' church, and rabies sufferers took its dust as a cure.

For #SpoliaSunday I give you the Stone of Iniquity. This C2 CE tombstone is set into the wall of the church of #SanVito on the #Esquiline in #Rome. In the Middle Ages it was thought to have been an instrument of #Christian martyrdom, and marble dust scraped from it cured #rabies. #AncientBluesky 🏺

MOSAIC PAVEMENT, 54-68 CE. DOMUS OF S. MARIA MAGGIORE The C5-C6 basilica of S. Maria Maggiore is built atop a large ancient domus that was built in the C1 CE near the top of the Cispian peak of the Esquiline hill. This house had a long life, surviving probably until Alaric's sack of Rome in 410, and undergoing modifications over the centuries before the huge Marian basilica crushed its ruins like a Monty Python cartoon foot. The fragments of black and white mosaic we see here have a Neronian date, and may have belonged to a tablinum opening onto a peristyle. Here we see vegetal elements with vases and birds. This was a comfortable and wealthy house with an interior garden, and higher up on the hill, partially built atop this domus, was another one whose traces can barely be perceived under the basilica of 434.

#MosaicMonday takes us under the basilica where #PopeFrancis chose to be buried, #SantaMariaMaggiore, a #palaeochristian basilica built atop at least two #domus in #Rome, on a peak of the #Esquiline. #AncientBluesky 🏺

VAULT FRIEZE FROM THE DOMUS TRANSITORIA, 54-64 CE. PALATINE MUSEUM This frieze was found just below the vault of a room beneath the Domitianic dining hall of the imperial palace, in a room adjacent to the large nymphaeum Nero ordered constructed as a summer retreat for reclining in the shade on hot summer days. Discovered during the Farnese family's ownership of the Palatine hill in the C17, it was moved to Naples along with the rest of the family's antiquities collection and is now on long-term loan to the Palatine Museum from the MANN. Not surprisingly, the theme is Dionysiac, with a Maenad and a satyr, from left to right. The figures are very worn and damaged from years of contact with damp earth, so only the red underpainting in actual fresco survives, while the details painted in a secco have almost completely worn off. The Maenad holds a strange staff in low relief at centre, while the satyr carries a basket of grapes on his head.

#FrescoFriday gives us a trace, but just a trace, of the #fresco work done for #Nero in his short-lived #DomusTransitoria, a first attempt to build a palace linking the #Palatine to the imperial gardens on the #Esquiline. The Great Fire put an end to the palace, but left us this.

GEOMETRIC FRESCO, C. 200 CE. DOMUS UNDER S. MARIA MAGGIORE During the Severan period, the large courtyard of the domus of the Painted Calendar under S. Maria Maggiore was divided and an independent room was built in it. Its interior walls were decorated with marble panels, as is evident from the holes and metal pegs that remain, but the exterior was painted with geometric designs in red, yellow, and white, with a sort of op art effect of square piers as seen from above, each square diagonally attached to the background with false perspective. This is a pattern that we find in floor mosaics, especially in borders and frames, but never in fresco and never at the turn of the C3. The corner of the room interrupts this pattern, and around the corner the wall is frescoed in squares that form diamond designs.

#FrescoFriday takes us back under #SantaMariaMaggiore on the #Cispian peak of the #Esquiline in #Rome, into the #domus of the Painted Calendar, where this unusual and striking #geometric #fresco once decorated the exterior of a room built in the middle of a preexisting courtyard.