Archeological find
of the Century? But where will we park? It may be the last great
find of an already exiting archeological year in Rome -- or the traffic
boggle of the Millennium. Archeologists are investigating the newly uncovered
"country house" of Agrippina, on the Janiculum Hill south to the Vatican,
and work has been stopped indefinitely on the "Giubileum Garage" that was
supposed to be built on the spot to handle Holy Year parking. Agrippina
was the granddaughter of Augustus, mother of Caligula, and wife of the
popular soldier-hero Germanicus, whom she believed should have succeeded
Augustus, but who was poisoned. Tiberius eventually exiled Agrippina to
the island of Pandateria, modern Ventotene near Naples, where she died
of starvation. You can read about her, her villa, and her intrigues in
Robert Graves' historical novel I,Claudius or, more accurately and
for free, on the Internet in Tacitus' Annals, which was the classical
equivalent to the modern tabloids:
http://classics.mit.edu/Tacitus/annals.html
Or at a web site about Roman women: http://myron.sjsu.edu/romeweb/LADYCONT/art3.htm
If you have RealPlayer in your computer, you can
hear excerpts from Handel's opera, Agrippina (or buy the recording) at:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000041JV/o/qid=938265637/sr=2-1/002-1730755-6606435