Quite true. We should look in our own backyard to find the Diamonds of Golconda.

The style of ancient ruins. Romantic. Noble and tragic. And gives us a sense of "memento mori".

Here's some thoughts about ruins, romanticism, and religion:

"If you wish for a sharp test to divide the true romantic from the false (a valuable thing when considering the claims of a poet, a son-in-law, or a professor of modern history), about the best I can think of is this: that the false romantic likes castles as much as cathedrals. If the poet or the lover admires the ruins of a feudal fortress as much as the ruins of a religious house, then what he admires is ruins, and he is a ruin himself. He likes medievalism because it is now dead, not because it was once alive; and his pleasure in the poetic past is as frivolous as a fancy-dress ball. For the castles only bear witness to ambitions, to ambitions that are dead; dead by being frustrated or dead by being fulfilled. But the cathedrals bear witness not to ambitions but to ideals; and to ideals that are still alive. They are more than alive, indeed they are immortal because they are ideals that no man has ever been able either to frustrate or to fulfill.
"Ruskin used to beat his bosom because the ancient churches were being restored. He might have reflected that we do not hear so much about the ancient castles being restored. Castles are valued as ruins, as the homes of dead men; but temples, if they are valued at all, are valued as the homes not of dead men, but of immortal gods."
-G. K. Chesterton, "The Riddle of Restoration", Lunacy and Letters

That Chesterton quote obviously ties in with Spengler's polarity of the Castle (Time) and the Cathedral (Space) as the two prime estates.

THE PORTRAITURE OF CALIGULA: New website dedicated to the iconography of princeps Gaius Caligula. This is a non-profit site run by Joe Geranio...........portraitsofcaligula.com

Back to your main point: Yes, indeed, we must get back to appreciating our own country, our own (Western) culture, our own history, our own historic religions. I have often thought about this: Back in the days of Columbus, Western men went to the East to look for wealth (gold, spices, etc.), but looked to their own (Catholic) church for spiritual meaning. Today, in our decline, Westerners have all the wealth, but go to the East for spiritual meaning.

As for those touring Cuba, I say bluntly that anybody who admires Castro is a Communist and should be publically identified as such. The only ruins I want to see in Cuba are the ruins of Communism.

Great pictures, Eric!

There's a blog dedicated to "flash fiction" which I contribute to (in the comments section). The daily theme is based on a word, phrase or picture. Check out the pic on this day.

Then take a whirl at the full site of pics.

Awesome.

The Portraiture of Caligula:

Book Review on Die Bildnisse des Caligula. Deutsches Archaologisches Institut, Das romische Herrscherbild 1,4. Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag. 138 pp., 52 pls. ISBN 3-7861-1524-9. DM 190- Book Review from American Journal of Numismatics 3-4 New York 1992- By Fred S. Kleiner.
(Joe Geranio Http://www.portraitsofcaligula.com)
A half century ago the German Archaeological Institute inaugurated an ambitious project to collect and publish in a series of volumes entrusted to different scholars all the surviving portraits of the Roman emperors and their families. Progress has been unusually slow and the Romische Herrsherbild project is far from complete today. In fact, latest fascicle, on the portraits of Caligula, is only the first of at least ten planned volumes in part devoted to julius Caesar, Augustus, and the emperors, empresses, princes, and princesses of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, as well as to Galba, Otho, and Vitellius. Dietrich Boschung. the primary author, and Hans-Marcus von kaenel, who contributed a chapter on the numismatic portraits, were not even born when the series was begun. Both are students of the late Hans Jucker, to whom the Caligula portraits were originally assigned, but who had not completed his work when he died in March 1984. At that time his two proteges were given the considerable body of photographs and casts that Jucker had assembled over many years as well as Juckers's notes, and this enabled the two younger scholars to complete their manuscripts in the fall of 1986. The resulting monograph, published three years later, is appropriately dedicated to their teacher and the title page duly acknowledges that the volume was written "auf Grund der Vorarbeiten und Materialsammlungen von Hans Jucker." Like the earlier fascicles of part 2 and 3 of the Romische Herrsherbild series, the primary goal of the volume on the portraits of Caligula remains the collection of all surviving likenesses of the emperor and the reconstruction of the lost prototypes that lie behind the many replicas produced throughout the empire, sometimes at a great distance from the capital. The aim of such a "Replikenrezension" is to isolate the most faithful copies of each of the emperor's portrait "types" and to distinguish such "true" replicas of the master images created in Rome, usually in gilded bronze, from those copies, generally in marble, that depart, sometimes markedly, from the officially approved types. "Urbild", "Haupttypus" "Nebentypus," "Variant des Haupttypus," "Umbildung," etc. are terms that quickly become familiar to anyone studying Roman imperial portraiture. The portraits of the Julio-Claudian emperors and their families present special problems because so many of the Julio-Claudians look alike-in their official likenesses, that is, if perhaps not in life. "Bildnisangleichung" was sought for all members of the ruling dynasty and julio-Claudian portraits have such an intentionally homogeneous "look" that the isolation and identification of individual portrait types is at times exceedingly difficult. The problems are even more acute in the case of those like Caligula whose portraits were often recut after their deaths to approximate the appearance of their successors or, in some instances, of their divine predessesors. In the absence of surviving statues with inscribed bases naming the persons portrayed, scholars have for centuries turned to coins for labeled portraits of Roman notables. Thus it is no suprise that numismatic evidence has always played a large role in the study of Roman portraiture. The evidence provided by coins has, however, frequently been used uncritically by archaeologists and art historians. All too often publishing those publishing Roman portraits examne and illustrate as comparanda only a few randomly selected pieces, most often those reproduced on the plates of the British Museum's multi-volume catalouge or specimens readily available to them in local collections, whether they be comprehensive cabinets like those in London, New York, Paris, etc. or the small study collections in the possession of some university museum. Reliance on such a sample can easily lead the art historian astray. The coin portraits need to be subjected to their own "Replikenrezension" and to achieve this a die study is required. Only the earliest dies in a given series are likely to be faithful reproductions of the official (three-dimensional) model provided to the mint. All subsequent dies will be copies, occasionally with pronounced variations, of the profile portraits engraved on the first dies. For use in sophisticated modern studies of imperial portraiture, only coins struck from earliest dies in each series will suffice. The present editors of the Romische Herrsherbild series are cognizant of this and hope wherever possible to enlist numismatists and collaborators, although they anticipate that qualified scholars will not always be available (p.9). In the case of Caligula's portraits, Boschung was fortunate in having von kaenel as his partner. The latter is the author of Munzpragung und Munzbildnis des Claudius, AMuGS9 (Berlin 1986) as well as an article on Caligula's coinage, "Die Organisation der Caligulas." RSN 66 (1987), pp. 135-56, written at the same time as his Romische Herrscherbild text. Von Kaenel's chapter in Die Bildnisse des Caligula (pp.13-26) treats the official coinage ("Reichspragung") exclusively. Other coins bearing the portraits of Caligula (Provinzial-und Lokalpragung") are not examined. They are, in the opinion of von kaenel (and I concur), more valuable as documents of the "Rezeption" of imperial imagery in the provinces than as a means of defining the official portrait types themselves (p.16) Gold, silver, and aes coinage are, however, all studied. The portraits of Claigula on the aureii and denarii are all in right profile; those on the sestertii, dupondii, and asses are all in left profile. Von Kaenel concludes that all of the imperial issues reproduce a single official portrait type and that what variations exist are of a stylistic and not of a typological nature. Furthermore, since the two profile views are not mirror images, von Kaenel suggests that they faithfully reproduce the left and right side respectively of a single model in the round and he believes that the comparison with marble replicas of Boschung's "Haupttypus" confirm that the same same master "Vorbild" lies behind both the sculptured and numismatic replicas. According to von Kaenel, the Roman die engravers were provided with either a single head in the round to serve as a model for their miniature profile portraits or with two seperate relief portraits corresponding to the left and right sides of a sculptured head of Caligula's " Haupttypus." This is an important observation and it would be interesting to know if it is typical of Roman numismatic portraiture for left- and right-facing portraits of the same person to be rendered differently or whether the coinage of Caligula is exceptional in not emplying mirror images. Whatever the answer to the larger question, Caligula's coins unfortunatley cannot be cited as incontrovertilble evidence that Roman die engravers had models in the round from which some copied the left profile and others the right profile. Von Kaenel assumes that the coins he has collected and analyzed are almost exclusivley product of the imperial mint at Rome, but there is a growing consensus that while Claigula's aes issues were struck in the capital, the bulk if not all of his gold and silver coinage was produced at Lugdunum (Lyons). (See, sot recently, WE. Metcalf, "Rome and Lugdunum Again," AJN 1 [1989],pp. 51-70.) The fact that Caligula's left and right profile portraits on coins are different might mean that both mints worked from portrait models of the same type- the selection of one profile or the other could then be a knid of mint signature-but it could also indicate that one portrait was copied in the capital and another one Gaul. I therefore cannot agree with von Kaenel when he states (p.17 n.10) that the identification of Caligula's precious-metal mint has little significance fro the analysis of the emperor's portraits on coins. In the main section of Die Bildnisse des Caligula, Dietrich Boschung discusses the portrait sculpture of the emperor and the relevant literary and epigraphic evidence (pp. 27-103) and catalouges all known Caligula portraits, both in the round and on gems, including those refashioned as images of Claudius (pp. 105-24). Much of Boschung's discussion falls outside the realm of a review in a journal of numismatics and will not be evaluated here, but certain methodological issues properly deserve to be examined. It is Boschung's contention that virtually all the surviving portraits of Caligula are copies of a single lost masterwork (the verlorenes Urbild"). The vase majority of the replicas adhere more or less closely to what he dubs Caligula's "Haupttypus," while a small number are classified as belonging to either the emperor's first or second "Nebentyous." Within the "Haupttypus" Boschung distinguishes between a "Kerngruppe" of five replicas that are "sehr geuaue Kopien" and others that are "abweichende Repliken," "Varianten," or "Weiterentwicklungen" of the "Haupttypus." This is a departure from the schemes of other scholars who have studied Caligula's portraits, where the emperor's preserved likenesses are divided into distinct types. In adopting his scheme, Boschung may have been unduly influenced by von Kaenel's research on Caligula's numismatic portraits. Even if all of Caligula's coinage was produced at a single mint, and the mint was located in the capital rather than in Lugdunum, there is no reason to assume that the number of portrait types employed for the coinage nad the number of types used for statuary was the same. Although numismatic portraiture and portrait sculpture are closely related, they are not identical species. In any case, Boschung's attribution of almost all of the emperor's sculptured portraits to a single "Haupttypus" is questionable. The key elements in the definition of a portrait type are physiognomy and coiffure. The latter is the more objective criterion but cannot be applied in isolation because different Romans could and did not comb their hair in the same manner. Indeed, common coiffures are an essential ingredient of the "Angleichung" of Julio-Cladian dynastic portraiture. On the other hand, variations in hairstyle among portraits with similiar physiognimies are usually the chief means in distinguishing the various portrait types of a single person. It is not uncommon for new types to be created at important stages of a Roman's career; open any book on Roman portraiture and you are likely to read, for example, about an emperor's "accession type" as distinct from the type in use when the emperor-to-be was merely a prince. Boschung, however, argues that even very marked differences in coiffure, which ahve led to others to define seperate Caligulan portraits types, can be explained in terms of deviations from a common prototype. I am not convinced. Even Boschung does not assert that every Caligulan portrait is a replica of the "haupttypus," and so, as I have already mentioned, he defines a first and decong "Nebentypus" and "Varianten des Haupttypus" are strained at times. In fact, there is so much variety in the surviving portraits of Caligula compared, for example, tot he far more numerous likenesses in marble and bronze of Octavian/Augustus, that one wonders whether it is appropriate at all to impose the rigid Germanic type-system upon Caligulan material. Yet nearly all of the pages Boschung devotes to Caligula's portraits are filled with special pleading of that kind. If there is more than one type for Caligula's portraits in the round, but only a single type reproduced on the coinage, as von Kaenel suggests, one may ask a general question of some significance: How valuable is numismatic evidence for the study of Roman portrait sculpture? My anser is that the evidence furnished by the coins is crucial but of limited value. It is obvious that as the only source of consistently labeled Roman portraits, coins will always have to provide the basis for all identification of public figures portrayed in statuary, narrative releif sculpture, and gems. On the other hand, there is no reason to expect that every change in portrait type will be immediately reflected on the coinage and that the coins can in turn establsih the date of introduction of each new type. It is especially unlikely that changes in type would automatically be adopted at mints located outside Rome, even if their emissions are of an official character (like the "Reichspragung" of Lugdunum as opposed to official to "Provinzial-und Lokalpragung"). For the definition and dating of "Bildnistypen" the Roman coinage is of only limited assistance. Coins may also mislead us even with regard to the identification of portraits. It has often been observed that the earliest numismatic portraits of new emperors occasionally bear a striking resemblance to the obverse portraits of their immediate predecessors, no doubt because official portrait models of the new rulers were not yet available. In the case of provincial issues, the portraits of some emperors are very inconsistent and neither fidelity to life nor fidelity to establsihed portrait type can be assumed. Roman coins may be indispensable ot the student of Roman portrait sculpture, and I applaud the efforts of the editors of Das romische Herrscherbild to incorporate a significant numismatic section in each new volume, but the evidence the coins provide is unlikely to be as definitive as art historians would like.
Fred Kleiner- Boston University

The style of that! Hail to the Roman Empire! Classical Values!

"Do you vish to see zee Roman ruinss, zee Roman remainss?" asked the German. Germany and Rome. The Germans thought they were the Romans, but they turned out to be the Carthaginians instead, and America is now Rome. Imperium Americanum. Hail to the Empire!

Empire. Empire. Empire.

Under the Gods.