Get Ready for Rome

Love Among the Castelli Romani

The Castelli Romani are a cluster of hill towns just to the southeast of Rome. This podcast reviews a good new book that explores four of them shows how travel can stimulate our thinking as well as our other appetites.

108. From the Cattle Market to the Palatine and from Aeneas to Romulus

After two episodes on the Forum Boarium, we move up to the Palatine Hill. At the same time, we move from Rome's distant prehistory and Aeneas to its founding by his descendant Romulus, the son of Mars. Later still, Caesar and his adopted son Augustus presented Aeneas and Romulus as precursors of the Caesars.

107. The Two Temples of the Forum Boarium

The two temples in the Forum Boarium as illustrations of Rome's cultural flux over the ages.

106. The Forum Boarium and Rome's Mythical Prehistory

There is scant evidence regarding the prehistory of Rome, but the Romans supplied this defect by handing down and codifying engaging myths. Today we visit the Forum Boarium, where Rome's distant ancestors met and began to form the people from whom the Romans would descend, or so at least Livy and Virgil tell us.

105. The Making of Modern Italy

Today is March 17, the anniversary of the proclamation of the birth or making of modern Italy. It seems strange to me that this anniversay is largely overlooked, so I invite listeners to think for a moment about its meaning.