LAPIS DIABOLI, C3-C4. S. SABINA In the corner between the counterfaçade and the base of the belltower inside the beautiful early Christian basilica of S. Sabina (425-432) on the Aventine hill stands a reused partial column with spiral fluting. Atop it is a smooth, fairly regular round black stone, flat on top and underneath. This was an ancient Roman counterweight or lapis aequipondus of a determined number of libræ, a standard unit of weight equivalent to 327 grams. Other Roman churches have further examples, possibly because churches were protected places to keep standard measures. However they became reused as relics and their original use forgotten. This one is known as the lapis diaboli or devil's stone, which was meant to have been thrown by the devil himself at the head of St Dominic, who was praying in this church at the time, after failing to tempt him. To me it looks like a stone used in the sport of curling, and with its now-missing metal handle it would have looked even more so.

#SpoliaSunday takes us up the #Aventine hill in #Rome to the splendid though brutally over-restored #palaeochristian basilica of #SantaSabina, where an ancient weight measure does service as a relic of diabolic frustration. #AncientBluesky 🏺

PALAEOCHRISTIAN BAPTISTERY, C5-C7. SAN MARCELLO AL CORSO This extraordinarily well-preserved baptistery was discovered in 1912 during works under the adjacent palazzo Salviati Mellini. It was once in a separate building attached to the late-C4 church of S. Marcello, whose orientation was opposite to today's, as the lower stretch of the Corso had become swampy, so part of the urban section of the via Salaria, now via di S. Marcello, higher up the base of the Quirinal, supplanted the Corso (via Lata) for several blocks. The baptistery shows two different brick layers, the lower from the early 400s,the upper from 200 years later but clearly on an identical plan. The simple white marble revetment, probably reused from the C5 baptistery, is incised with plain lines to create frames. The octagonal form has four semicircular niches, one in every second wall, and the water comes from a natural spring that still wells up inside the rectangular gap in the floor of the baptistery, and once filled the octagon up to at least knee height.

I went into the Six Senses hotel in palazzo Salviati Mellini and asked if they would let me see the #palaeochristian #baptistery of #SanMarcello, over which the palazzo is built, and they showed me this marvel, surely the best-preserved example from #LateAntiquity in #Rome.

GNEISS SLAB TOMB, C4. PALAEOCHRISTIAN CEMETERY, S. EUSTORGIO, MILAN The early Christian basilica of the Three Magi, now called S. Eustorgio, was built by order of Constantius II in 344 CE just outside the walls of the imperial capital of Mediolanum. But even before its construction, its site had been used for about a century as a Christian graveyard, and excavations under the basilica in 1959-1961 brought this cemetery to light. All the burials were inhumations, not meant to be seen or admired aboveground. This one is a sarcophagus made of slabs of gneiss, and coins of Constantius II and his successor Julian were found in it. It's also aligned with the basilica, so we must conclude that it was a burial within it, or at least under it. Earlier tombs in the cemetery were made in the "capuchin" style, with terracotta roof slabs making a pitched roof over the interment, while children were buried in amphorae which had part of the pottery curve cut out to put the little body in, before the makeshift lid was put back on. The plainness and poverty of these burials is striking: only two have their inhabitants named, one a man named Hilarus from Macedon, and a near-centenarian woman called Varicia Asteria.

Wouldn't it be gneiss if we were buried / in a box of rock that lasts so long? #SarcophagusSaturday takes us to the #palaeochristian #cemetery of the Trium Magorum in #Milan, now the basilica of #SantEustorgio, where the #burials ignore centuries of #Roman #sarcophagus tradition. #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 🏺