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Sorry to Barge In - Dirt 133
261 Plays4 years ago
This week, Anna and Amber are playing catch-up after attending the SAA conference, recovering from vaccine shots, and life in general. We'll be taking the rest of April off for a short break. In the meantime, please enjoy a cleaned-up version of a Dirt After Dark episode where Anna treats Amber to the story of the Roman emperor Caligula's absurd pleasure boats on a tiny, tiny lake.
Links
- Nemi Ships: How Caligula's Floating Pleasure Palaces Were Found and Lost Again (Discover)
- Divers to scour lake for Emperor Caligula’s 2,000-year-old pleasure ship (Washington Post)
- A missing mosaic from Caligula’s ship served as a coffee table in NYC home for 45 years (The Vintage News)
Contact
- Email the Dirt Podcast: thedirtpodcast@gmail.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Episode Preview
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:17
Speaker
We had the SAA conference. We're recovering from our various vaccine shots. And we've got a lot of stuff going on. But we're not totally going to leave you hanging. What we are releasing here is a cleaned up version of an episode of Dirt After Dark, which is one of our premium Patreon episode series that we do. If you're interested in joining our Patreon, signing up and getting access to some of the bonus episodes, plus a newsletter that you get every month telling you what we're up
Dirt After Dark Introduction
00:00:46
Speaker
to,
00:00:46
Speaker
You can go to patreon.com slash the dirt podcast. Thank you all so much for listening, for understanding, for supporting us, and we will be back in May. We love you.
00:01:18
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Dirt After Dark, the monthly bonus episode where we tell you the stories too spicy for the main feed. This one is one installment in a double feature for you listeners. So I'm going to tell Amber a story and then in the second part, if you haven't listened to that one already, she returns the favor.
Winter Challenges and Ancient Shipwreck
00:01:35
Speaker
So let's get into it. It's my turn. It's like actually Dirt After Dark because it's after like 457. I know it's dark here too.
00:01:45
Speaker
Winter is hard. I want to give the biggest of ups to Paul Cooper at Discovery magazine's The Crux for 85% of this story. I tried to add a little of my own flavor, but you know. For centuries, the medieval fishermen who sailed in the placid waters of Lake Nemi, 19 miles south of Rome, knew a secret.
00:02:13
Speaker
It was said that the rotting timbers of a gigantic ancient shipwreck lurked below the water's quiet surface. But the lake was tiny, with an area of only 0.6 square miles. Amber, I cannot emphasize enough how important it is that you keep in mind that this lake is so very, very tiny. OK? 0.6 square miles. It's very small. So this is like a lake? Well, I mean. There's a pond. Well, it's a big pond, a small lake.
00:02:39
Speaker
I don't know. Can we have a brief sidebar to talk about Lake v.
Caligula's Ships in Lake Nemi
00:02:43
Speaker
Pond? It's by depth? I think it must be. Is it depth? I have no idea because I thought it was lakes have to be at least 50 feet deep. I think, well, first of all, are there international standards? Second of all, it might be because we're going to talk about plumbing the depths. Also, my parents live right near a place called Farm Pond and it's massive. It must be. It should be a lake. So I don't really know.
00:03:06
Speaker
Anyway, it's very important for the purposes of this story that you remember that this lake is comically small.
00:03:12
Speaker
The EPA's recommendation of four hectares, 10 acres, as the minimum surface area for a water body to still be considered a lake. Yeah, but that's surface area. The water, it's just, I'm trying to read you a series of sentences. The water must also be at least three meters deep, 9.5 feet, to ensure stratification. So it's, okay, so it's gotta be. Nine feet deep? Enough. No, I think the key part there was stratification.
00:03:41
Speaker
like having stuff filtered down. That you've got like your murky bits. You've got your like, I don't know, pelagic zone. Clear middle bits. And then like the surface. And so I think that's what it is, but it's also surface area. Interesting. But again. We did not define pawns. No, well. Do you hear my dog? I don't hear your dog, but I might when I edit it. You will, because she's like circling me.
00:04:09
Speaker
Well, I still am not sure that this is an international measure. And remember, we're in Italy. Anyway, this is a very small lake with no other body of water connected to it. So what could a vessel of such massive size be doing there? And yet the stories about the gigantic ship persisted.
00:04:27
Speaker
Well, they couldn't have known then, but at the bottom of this tiny lake were two of the most unique artifacts ever to be uncovered from the ancient world. Their story would span millennia, bridging the eccentricities of Rome's most notorious emperor and one of the 20th century's most reviled rulers, only to be lost forever in the fires of war. Wait!
00:04:50
Speaker
This is really small. So small. Yeah. So is it bigger in the past? Nope. Well, yes and no. We'll get, we'll get to it. Um, so the first reviled ruler was Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus. But if that name doesn't ring a bell, you'd likely know his nickname.
00:05:15
Speaker
There are very few surviving sources about the actual reign of Caligula, though he is described as a noble and moderate emperor during the first six months of his rule.
00:05:26
Speaker
Sort of goes downhill after that, and the sources focus upon his cruelty, sadism, extravagance, and sexual perversion, presenting him as an insane tyrant. I think one of the first things that I learned about Caligula was that he supposedly promoted his horse to Senate. I don't know. It's hard to find good politicians.
00:05:46
Speaker
While the reliability of these sources is questionable, yeah, it is known that during his brief reign, Caligula worked to increase the unconstrained personal power of the Emperor.
00:05:59
Speaker
It's probably also relevant that he was portrayed in Caligula, the only movie ever to be produced by Penthouse magazine, a 1979 erotic historical drama film focusing on the rise and fall of the eponymous Roman emperor.
Caligula's Reign and Legacy
00:06:14
Speaker
Ready for this cast? The film stars Malcolm McDowell in the title role alongside Teresa and Savoy, Helen Mirren, Peter O'Toole, John Steiner, and John Gilgood.
00:06:26
Speaker
And it is the only feature film ever produced by the men's magazine penthouse. So that was 1979. That is much too recent history for our show. So let's travel back in time to the original Caligula, which translates to little boots, little boots, and the story behind the Lake Neme shipwreck.
00:06:47
Speaker
Caligula, the real one, was born into the first ruling family of the Roman Empire, conventionally known as the Julio-Claudian dynasty. So remember his name is... It was the first one. It was the first dynasty. Yeah, that's what I said. I must have been squeaking. Just, just... Sorry, that's cool. I'm so sorry. No, it's fine. Germanicus' uncle and adoptive father Tiberius succeeded Augustus as emperor of Rome in 14 CE.
00:07:18
Speaker
So he was named after Gaius Julius Caesar, the original one. You may have heard of him. He acquired the nickname Caligula, meaning little soldier's boot from his father's soldiers during their campaign in Germania. And when Germanicus died at Antioch in 19 CE, Caligula's mother Agrippina, or Agrippina, not sure.
00:07:41
Speaker
returned with her six children to Rome, where she became entangled in a bitter feud with Tiberius. The conflict eventually led to the destruction of her family, quite literally, with Caligula as the sole male survivor.
00:07:58
Speaker
Caligula's still a baby at this point, or he's a little kid. Yes. Gramonicus. That's his dad. Gramonicus died. So he's named after him? Mm-hmm. Yes. He's named for Gaius Julius Caesar, but then his last name is Gramonicus after his father. Oh, my God. Do you have any names? Do you know how many semesters of Latin I've taken? Roughly, yes. And yet. That's fine. It's been a while. Did not. Don't worry about it.
00:08:28
Speaker
certainly not the crux of this episode. Untouched by the deadly intrigues, Caligula accepted an invitation in 31 CE to join the emperor on the island of Capri, so Tiberius, where Tiberius had withdrawn five years earlier. And so, yes, to his grotto with the art, yes. Was that the black one? Yeah. Wasn't black one in the grotto? I think it might have been.
00:08:56
Speaker
Because one of the... You Google, I'll keep reading. Incidentally, Pliny the Elder, in some of his writings, called the Emperor Tiberius the gloomiest of men, so I'm sure it was a fun time. Following the death of Tiberius, though, were you right? I'm guessing you were right. Was Lyaco on in the grotto?
00:09:16
Speaker
It was one of the Sperlonga sculptures, which were at the grounds of the former villa of Tiberius. Anyway, Caligula succeeded his adoptive grandfather as emperor in 37 CE. So that's his rise to emperordom. But Caligula was emperor for only four years, from 37 to 41 CE.
00:09:43
Speaker
but for various reasons, some of them true to history. His name is lived on due to a penchant for sadism, hedonistic excess, and brutality. He demanded to be worshipped as a living God, which isn't that different from what Roman emperors did anyway. They apotheosized after death anyway. They were raised to deities. So why not enjoy it during the lifetime?
00:10:11
Speaker
and he had the expensive taste to match. Records show that he emptied the imperial treasury in a single year with extravagant games and spectacles. Extravagant spectacles, including Big Ship Tiny Lake. It seems Caligula may have built his ships, plural ships, on the Tiny Lake Nemi due to its alignment with the goddess Diana Nemarensis, or Diana of the Wood, a fitting place for a living god to build his pleasure barges.
00:10:41
Speaker
And so here Caligula had two ships, but put a pin in that number, built at enormous expense. The largest dubbed the Prima Nave. Amber, you want to flex that Latin? Prima Nave. First ships. Yes. Was an enormous vessel steered with oars 36 feet long. So like if the oars are 36 feet long, how big that ship?
00:11:08
Speaker
Don't say that. The second was a giant floating platform replete with marble palaces, gardens, and a system of plumbing for baths. The Roman historian Suetonius described the site of the ships. And I'm not going to be able to get through the sentence without laughing. So 10 banks of oars.
00:11:32
Speaker
I can't do it. I mean, this is very similar to when Calypso ate some glitter. The poops of which blazed with jewels, filled with ample baths, galleries, and saloons, presumably salons, you know, like resting rooms, and supplied with a great variety of vines and fruit trees. This is on a boat in a tiny lake. So dumb. So quick reminder, this is a tiny lake, 0.6 square miles. There were two.
00:12:01
Speaker
at least, of these massive fancy floating palaces built here. So the lake was about 90% boat.
00:12:11
Speaker
Related to this, like Western man's
Exploration and Recovery Efforts
00:12:17
Speaker
eternal folly. So cruises, like cruise liners are like sort of like pound for pound. One of the like single biggest drivers of like admissions, like they are like much bigger than flights.
00:12:38
Speaker
Anyway, back to Rome. On these ships, which again take up most of this tiny lake, Caligula was reported to hold parties where his wild and licentious appetites ran wild. Cool sentence.
00:12:51
Speaker
with later historians repeating scurrilous and outlandish rumors about relationships with the wives of his generals and senators, and even with his own sisters. At least to some extent, you can believe the stories because he built these ships in the first place. Not necessarily the incestuous stuff, just like the scale of the partying. Despite their expense, these opulent palaces were afloat for only the briefest time. So they were only in use for about a year. An exceptionally dry summer and there was no more lake.
00:13:22
Speaker
Caligula is actually what happened. About a year into the boat's use, Caligula's four-year reign came to an end. An alliance of senators and the Praetorian Guard ambushed him, stabbed him to death, thus perished Caligula. And attempts to restore the Republic after Caligula's death failed. Caligula's floating palaces, too, went the way of their creator. Their hulls were pierced and the immense ships were weighted with stones and sunk to the lake bottom.
00:13:49
Speaker
So what happened after that? So back to the top of this episode where I mentioned that medieval fishermen fishing in Lake Nemi kept saying, I think there's a shipwreck under here. I think there's a shipwreck under here. They did say it's like that.
00:14:10
Speaker
I'm Italian, it's a fine. In 1446, though, a young cardinal and nephew of the pope, sure, named Prospero Colonna, decided to probe for himself the rumors of an unlikely shipwreck at the bottom of Lake Nemi. Unlikely because, again, it's a tiny lake. So he sailed out onto the lake, and sure enough, he could just make out a sprawling lattice of wooden beams. So he and his men tried to send- Wait, he just looked into it and was like, huh, it's a boat. Yeah.
00:14:41
Speaker
Well, it only has to be nine feet deep. Those boats were probably mostly tall, you know, like probably sticking up out of the way. I don't know. I don't know how deep Lake Neme is, or at least how deep it was in 1446. We'll get to it. Prospero Colonna and his men tried to send down ropes with hooks on the end to retrieve parts of this mysterious structure, but at a depth of 60 feet. So it's at least 60 feet deep. It's 108 feet deep. It is now.
00:15:11
Speaker
Hang on. Hold that thought. They didn't have much luck. All they managed to do was tear off some planks. So, Kelowna had confirmed that the wreck existed. Minus a few planks now. But from there, the mystery only deepened.
00:15:27
Speaker
So fast forward. A hundred years or so, in 1535, Italian inventor Guglielmo de Lorena and his partner Francesco de Marchi returned to the wrecks with a new and exciting technology, a diving bell. So they descended through the murk and gloom and saw an enormous wooden superstructure far vaster than anything they had imagined.
00:15:49
Speaker
This is some James Cameron s***. Yeah, 1500s James Cameron. Giacomo Camaroni. I was going to say Giacomo, but that's not right. Is that Giacomo? Is it James? Giacomo Camaroni. Cool. The two fished around the bottom of the lake for artifacts and they managed to bring up sculptures made of marble and bronze scattered on the muddy lake bottom.
00:16:09
Speaker
And so many others tried to explore and survey the wrecks, but without much success. So after 1535, Amber, can you guess which famous Italian was the one to finally reveal the sunken pleasure barges? Can you think of a historical figure, an Italian one, one that might be, say, obsessed with the legacy of ancient Rome? I can. Mm. Yup. It's that one.
00:16:36
Speaker
The ships were an obsession for fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. He worked hard to include its archaeological remains in his cult of personality. They just love that. They love it. Fascists love the past.
00:16:52
Speaker
They do. Mussolini had embarked on ambitious projects around Rome. He was frequently described in propaganda dispatches as a new Augustus, because the old one went great, evoking the Roman emperor who rebuilt much of the city during his reign. It was only a matter of time before the dictator's attention turned to the mysterious ships at the bottom of Lake Nemi, because there were records by this point, records of the diving bell and records of previous attempts to survey the ships.
00:17:19
Speaker
So they're probably still like still visible. Yeah. So this is why I kept saying, I don't know what the lake was like then because in 1929, Mussolini ordered the whole of Lake Nemi to be drained. So engineers reactivated an existing ancient Roman cistern together with a modern pump that reduced the lake's water level by 65 feet.
00:17:45
Speaker
So in the mud, slowly emerging from the waters, the Italian engineers found not one, but two enormous shipwrecks. The excavations would take years, with the second ship not brought up until 1932. So now I can finally tell you how big these ships were. How big? Where were they? The ships were vast, among the largest ever recovered from the ancient world. The largest was 240 feet in length. The same length as an Airbus A380,
00:18:16
Speaker
So, like... Those have the roomy seats. Those are the ones with the aisle seats, like the middle row of seats. Yeah. And the seats are bigger. And measured 79 feet across. Oh my God. From inscriptions on lead pipes and tiles, it soon became clear that what had been discovered were in fact the floating pleasure palaces of the infamous first century Roman emperor, Caligula.
00:18:41
Speaker
Until the discovery of the Nemi Pleasure Barges, it was thought that the Romans were incapable of building such large vessels.
Artifacts and Destruction
00:18:48
Speaker
Why? I mean, they did, like, you know, concrete and aqueducts. They did underwater concrete. Yeah, I know. I don't know. And, like, roads to everywhere. Yeah, well, I don't know. I don't know why this was a particular sort of breaking point for believability.
00:19:05
Speaker
Historians had assumed that measurements of up to 164 feet given for grain carrying vessels in some ancient sources were exaggerations. I think primarily because they've never been found, these giant ships. Probably because they were broken down for parts after they served their usefulness.
00:19:23
Speaker
The Nemi ships show they may have been real although this is like a bizarre example like this is These ships are not good examples of like it's good examples of the technological capabilities of Romans like they could have but maybe they didn't normally because it's not like these vessels needed to be seaworthy although wait till the next paragraph because
00:19:55
Speaker
I mean, but it is truly that. Truly. Vast anchors, bronze mouldings, and marble statues came up from the depths along with ornamental ore rings and joints in copper and bronze. So like joints as in the things that held the planks of the ship together. Yeah. Yeah. They found carvings and mosaics, put a pin in those mosaics, even gilded copper roof tiles that would have shown spectacularly in the sun.
00:20:05
Speaker
Oh, that's so dumb.
00:20:21
Speaker
It's so tacky. It's hideous. The expense of the vessels would have been enormous. And here's a special little detail. The wooden beams of the ships were even coated with lead, a costly treatment designed to protect seagoing vessels from shipworms. Lake Nemi is a freshwater lake. Shipworms don't live in freshwater. They went ahead and coated these boats in lead, just because. They got an invasive species. Yeah, sure.
00:20:49
Speaker
So these are the ships that Mussolini found. And so for him, the recovery of these ships was a significant triumph, not to mention it came along with a whole bunch of shiny statuary and stuff. So as the mud-soaked wrecks rose out of Lake Nemi, it seemed a good metaphor for his promises to revive the legacy of ancient Rome in the modern day. Not a bad metaphor. It's a metaphor. He had a huge museum built in 1936 to house the wrecks so that the public could visit.
00:21:19
Speaker
But Mussolini, like Caligula, would soon face a fitting downfall, hanging from a lamp post. And the Nemi ships would follow him into the ashes of history, which is a real shame. I didn't realize that, um, he excavated them. That there was like actual like archaeology done. Yeah. Cause like, you know, sort of by contrast, I don't think like the Nazis did like,
00:21:46
Speaker
great archaeology. Not in a science-y way, more in an artifact-y grabby kind of way. Yeah, like it was like more, and I thought that Mussolini was more in the realm of like
00:21:58
Speaker
collecting and and sort of like really what this was but he did at least he at least built a museum for but but it was all about propaganda really yeah I don't know how I genuinely don't know how much scientific exploration went into this project or if it was just about excavating and then displaying
00:22:18
Speaker
So interesting. Yeah. And a real shame, because on the night of May 31st, 1944, less than four years since Mussolini entered the Second World War in support of Hitler's Germany, Italy was on the brink of defeat. The country had nearly capitulated and had been invaded by Nazis to prevent their resistance from collapsing. But the Germans were on a multi-front retreat across all of Europe and Allied troops were closing in. Incidentally, have you ever read about Mussolini's son?
00:22:48
Speaker
He was a really famous jazz musician, and he disavowed his father, and he eventually wrote a book called Something Like My Life as Mussolini's Son. I don't remember what it was called. But he was a really, really well-known jazz musician in the 40s and 50s. And his name was just like...
00:23:07
Speaker
I think he changed his name. He changed it, yeah. Yeah. But it was something like Rodolfo Mussolini. I did not Google this in preparation for sharing this fact with you. But that's really interesting to me because of how much the Nazis hated jazz. Because not only was it black people music, but it was chaotic and not ordered, and it was improvisational. That's very not German.
00:23:33
Speaker
So it's not known whether the fires in the museum started as a result of US artillery or German arson because Nazi troops frequently set fire to positions they abandoned, salting the fields kind of thing, blowing up bridges on the retreat and doing anything they could to slow the advances of the Allies.
00:23:51
Speaker
Either way, the Nemi ships burned. Only some bronzes survived, along with a handful of photographs of the colossal wrecks. So if you go to the links that we'll have in the show notes, you can see some sort of vintage photos of Mussolini himself touring the exhibits. So like Caligula, Mussolini met an ignoble end.
00:24:12
Speaker
less than a year after the ships burned, he was shot while fleeing Italy in disguise. And two days later, Hitler also took his own life. So today, the ghosts of the Nemi ships live on only in their photographs and the very few remaining artifacts that survived the fire. But wait, so it gets tackier. If it weren't for
00:24:33
Speaker
Mussolini lowering, dredging, sort of draining this lake. If it weren't for Mussolini pulling them out, the ships would have probably survived to some extent.
Cultural Legacy and Modern Implications
00:24:44
Speaker
Whatever damage they would have gotten from being underwater added to that. But yeah, they'd be there. Wow. Yeah.
00:24:53
Speaker
I mean, that's true for a lot of stuff from the ancient world, like through World Wars I and II. A ton of stuff got destroyed. A lot of stuff went missing. A lot of stuff was destroyed. Not just ancient artifacts, like Paycake Man, the Java Homo erectus skull. That's right. Was on a World War I, II. It was on a boat that
00:25:18
Speaker
was torpedoed probably. It just sort of went missing. That's another Clive Cussler book, isn't it? Oh god, is it? Oh no. I think so. Is that a movie? I don't want to watch it. It's not a movie because it didn't get off the ground.
00:25:30
Speaker
Again, I don't know why. So we're continuing in our funneling from exceptionally tacky to fascism, while that's a bummer, to tiny and tacky. It's like tacky fascism. Well, I want to see how you react to this because it's just absurd. So this last bit is from the Washington Post.
00:25:55
Speaker
When Mussolini launched his ambitious project to salvage Caligula's pleasure barges, Lake Nemi was only partly drained. And in the decades since, rumors have persisted that the remains of a third, 400-foot-long pleasureship lurk in the deepest part of the lake. First of all, how? The deepest part being 100 feet.
00:26:17
Speaker
Now, first of all, the idea of a third ship in that lake is very funny, but it's not completely out of the realm of possibility because local fishermen report getting their nets snagged in that area of the lake only to bring up Roman artifacts. So it's very possible that stuff from the two ships kind of got scattered over a wider area, but maybe. Alberto Bertucci
00:26:46
Speaker
Bertie Burt, the mayor of the town of Mimi said in 2017, quote, we know from documents from the 15th century that one of the boats went down in an area of the lake different to where the other two were found during the fascist era, end quote. OK, so the 15th century was 1,500 years after this happened. So like, how would you know where the boats went down? You don't know. I don't know.
00:27:10
Speaker
Luigi Datola of the Environmental Protection Agency of Calabria said that this gradually evolved into something more, saying, quote, We decided to dive further and search for the mysterious ship. Although it might seem bizarre that three huge ships would float upon such a small lake, yes, the fact that the vessels belonged to Caligula makes the scene likely, end quote. So just Caligula's reputation makes anything absurd seem just like, yeah, sure.
00:27:35
Speaker
The tola and his colleagues have used side-scan sonar and sub-bottom profiling. Sub-bottom profiling. I'm an adult. To search the mud at the bottom of the lake. He says that they've already noticed some features that look interesting and police divers will examine them for clues to the third vessel's location.
00:27:58
Speaker
OK, so this news was from 2017. I was unable to find any confirmation that a third ship of any sort had been found in Lake Neme. But I did find a little tidbit that makes for a nice, if silly, coda to this story from TheVintageNews.com.
00:28:18
Speaker
It was recently revealed that a large piece of marble mosaic that was part of a pleasure barge built for Caligula has served as a coffee table in the Park Avenue home of a New York City antique-stealer. Helen Virati said, quote, it was our favorite piece and we had it for 45 years, end quote.
00:28:35
Speaker
The Italian government, though, had other ideas. The multicolored mosaic was removed from the Fioretti home and is now back in Italy. It was once proudly displayed in an art museum devoted to Caligula's ships financed by Benito Mussolini. So there's the coming full circle. But the mosaic disappeared from the museum either before or during World War II, since the museum burned to the ground in 1944.
00:29:05
Speaker
Fiarati said she and her husband, journalist Nereo Fiarati, bought the mosaic from an aristocratic Italian family in the late 1960s. The sale was facilitated by an Italian police officer, and she said, quote, this was an innocent purchase, end quote.
00:29:24
Speaker
The Manhattan District Attorney's Office seized the mosaic as part of an initiative to return stolen Italian artifacts found in the U.S. using evidence supplied by art experts and the Carabinieri Police Force of Italy, specialists in hunting for artifacts. Other pieces had been returned as well, including ancient coins, books, and even an Apullian red figure vessel dated to around 350 BCE, which was found at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which was found. Which was found! Who's that?
00:29:52
Speaker
Just came lurking out of a corner. No, that's where you would find human remains. Too real.
00:30:02
Speaker
District Attorney Cyrus Vance, comic book character Cyrus Vance, said, quote, returning lost relics to their rightful owners is at the core of my office's mission to end the looting of rare cultural treasures and trafficking of stolen antiquities. These items may be beautiful, storied, and immensely valuable to collectors, but willfully disregarding the provenance of an item is effectively offering tacit approval of a harmful practice that is fundamentally criminal, end quote. So there we have it.
00:30:31
Speaker
This journey from absurd Roman pleasure barges, to fascist fanboys, to archaeological attempts, to low-key coffee table crime. That is the journey that I have chosen to take you on. And all on this tiny, tiny lake. Yeah, big boat, tiny lake. Yeah, you'd love to see it. I hate rich people. Ow.
00:30:58
Speaker
There are no heroes in this story. There are no heroes in this story, except perhaps the... The fisherpersons? Yeah, the fisherpersons. I think there's a boat down there. Yeah. They're just like, Mama Mia. I... No way. Yeah, I didn't joke. Did I name... Did I title this Sorry to Bartender? Yeah. Or did you? I think you did. I have no recollection of doing that.
00:31:31
Speaker
I squawked when I opened it. Because when I opened it, I only saw dirt after dark. I clicked on it, and I was just like, what a treat. But apart from your distaste for rich people,
00:31:48
Speaker
I thought so. I find it really fascinating that, so this is something that, um, this is something that, uh, the folks at, come on, help me out. I have no idea where you're going. So I can't help you with where you are. The, the guy that, the guy, no, the guy that like,
00:32:11
Speaker
basically tracks the co-opting of classical rhetoric and art and archaeology in the far right. I can't remember the Latin name for it. But it's based at Vassar.
00:32:32
Speaker
Facebook answer, Facebook Wellesley. It's at another seven-sibling school. People love harking back to the Roman Empire, pharaohs. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Google. People love talking about Rome, specifically Rome. Americans love talking about Rome. Because our founding fathers were educated in the classics.
00:33:00
Speaker
Yeah, so that, I mean, this like one of the lessons here, so you should never trust a classicist or a Greek bearing gifts. Yeah. Okay. Trojan horse. I know. Okay. But, but it is something that like, I don't know, like Mussolini being like so horny for like the Roman empire and like going out, like it just like, I don't know, it's so, it feels so on the nose. It's just like, read the room. Like it didn't work out great.
00:33:28
Speaker
Well, that's the thing. It's selective, it's entirely selective sort of blindness to everything that was, that didn't go well for the ancient Romans and focusing on, you know, his desire to return Italy to some form of glory, the thing that he could latch onto because Italy hadn't really had a period of glory except for, I guess, the Renaissance, which was kind of great. But even the Renaissance was founded in, was
00:33:58
Speaker
had its foundations in resurrection of the classics. It was the thing that he could latch on to, especially in terms of militaristic success and glory.
00:34:14
Speaker
And I, yeah, you know, I guess like it makes sense that like fascists love a pretty fashy thing, which was like literally fast case like the Empire. Yeah. And the people who and so developed fascism the first time. Yeah, I think it's yeah, like the yeah, I think that the the fact that after Caligula's
00:34:38
Speaker
removal from office. They attempted to- Because it mishapped with several knives. Yeah. They attempted to resurrect the Republic, right? They tried to- Sort of unsuccessfully, but the military was like, nah.
00:34:53
Speaker
But yeah, because they're like, we were the ones with the swords. We love this. Yeah. It's great to be us. And as long as we are still us, it's pretty great. I don't know. I think about fascists a lot. I think about fascism a lot. I can't think why. I think it's real. You know, I think that we should have Sacco and Vanzetti day and like celebrate Italian-American heritage that day and like completely cede Columbus Day over to Indigenous People's Day. Oh, 100%.
00:35:22
Speaker
Because those are the folks that are, apart from the Owen Benjamins of the world, who are just out there trying to own the libs and talking about why Columbus was good, apart from that very small percentage of people. A lot of people are attached to Columbus Day because of Italian American heritage. There's so many better Italians.
00:35:50
Speaker
I know I know and like I get it like I get why Italian Americans would want to have a day like about being Italian American because like for a long time like
00:36:04
Speaker
being Italian-American was very hard. Was being non-white, essentially. Yes. Yeah. And so like, I, and that's something I'm very aware of. Yeah. And, and so like having that is, is great. And that's why I think we should have Sacco and Ranzetti day, not only because like,
00:36:23
Speaker
solidarity, but also they did not commit a crime and they were murdered by the state because they were falsely accused because they were Italian. That is who we should be having Italian-American heritage for. Not the guy who was a slaver. Let's not.
00:36:48
Speaker
Yeah, remember how Queen Isabella was like, ooh, no, don't take slaves. And he was like, cannot hear you over the sound of me enslaving people. What? I feel like my I wish I had like new responses to things instead of like, I hate the rich. And also like, this is the wrong Italian.
00:37:10
Speaker
That's fine, you know, it's in your sack of things that you pull out, you know, it's in your arsenal. This is in my, yeah, you know, the old, like, turn of phrase, sack of things you pull out. I, by brain, short-circuited. Could you hear the grinding, like, noise? I was like, oh no, I don't know the words. Just seized up.
00:37:37
Speaker
I just wanted you to laugh at these silly, silly boats with me. Oh no, I can laugh and also hate the rich. Those things exist in me. But the thing that I'm really just like,
00:37:54
Speaker
I don't know, very struck by it is like Mussolini like did an archaeology. He did. And then it was like destroyed. I know. Well, of things of value to like human heritage. So there's that. Wow. I'm so glad we finally did this episode. Yeah, and I'm glad that I could sort of weave so many dumb things in there. It's just...
00:38:20
Speaker
All right, thanks for listening, everybody. I hope you enjoyed whatever this journey was. And we'll be back with you soon. Goodness knows. With what?
Closing Remarks and Credits
00:38:31
Speaker
But we hope you enjoy it. Thank you for your support, as always. I'm just going to include the next 40 minutes of Amber cackling to herself. Yep. Bye.
00:38:52
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV Traveling America, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, and the Archaeology Podcast Network. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.