The Roman temple of the Capitoline Triad in Brescia, Italy that was built in 73 AD by the Emperor Vespasian on top of an earlier Republican temple. This is a UNESCO world heritage site.
A Roman carnelian gemstone with an engraving of Asclepius and Hygeia (male and female deities of health). There is an inscription that looks like it has the Greek letters HEIOΛ although the museum’s description didn’t mention it. This dates to 60-50 BC, was set into a modern gold ring and is on display in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria.
A Roman marble sarcophagus fragment "unearthed in the pool section of the nymphaeum structure. It is a fragment of a marble sarcophagus measuring 95x95 cm with figured and inlaid decoration on three sides. The upper and lower panels bordering the depictions on the embossed sarcophagus are decorated with lotus palmette motif. The figures are depicted in a specific mythological plot from left to right. The main scene in the frieze relief is probably a helmet wearing and honouring scene of a soldier who defeated the enemy or is believed to have won a victory. Iconographically and stylistically it can be dated to the 3rd century AD." Per the Silifke Museum in Silifke, Turkey where this is on display.
A Roman bronze statuette of Jupiter (the chief Roman deity) that dates to the 2nd-3rd centuries AD, was found locally and is on display in the National Museum of History and Art of Luxembourg.
A portion of an early Byzantine mosaic from a church with peacocks and a Greek inscription in situ in the ruins of Hadrianopolis in Paphlagonia, which is now in the Karabük province of Turkey. I asked Κώστας Κόκκορας, who I thank very much for his help, to translate this:
"ΥΠΕΡ ΕΥΧΗΣ ΣΑΝΨΑ ΚΑΙ ΠΑΝΤΩΝ ΤΩΝ ΔΙΑΦΕΡΟΝΤΩΝ ΑΥΤΩ
In fullfilement of the vow of Sanpsas and all his relatives"
He also added: "The male personal name Sanpsas is completely unknown to me. It is not attested in any other inscription...The name is definitely not Greek. Perhaps derived from some native Anatolian language, though it sounds more to me as Semitic."
The Roman ruins of Ostia is close to the Rome Fiumicino airport, and I was able to take this picture right before landing. That ancient river port city on the Tiber, near Rome, is an excellent place to explore for a day.
A stunning gold bracelet in the form of a snake from an intact Hellenistic tomb in Philippi, Greece.
"The tomb preserved an underground rectangular chamber, that consisted of a roofed space with arch. It had an arched entrance to the south with a single leaf door from one-piece marble that was found intact in its place.
Inside the chamber there are five small niches in the lateral walls, two on the east and the west and one on the north. On the northwest corner there is a marble offering to the dead table while on the floor of the chamber was found a small cist grave, not looted, on the cover of which is preserved the engraved name of the deceased ΕΥΗΦΕΝΗΣ ΕΞΗΚΕΣΤΟΥ (Euephenes grandson of Exekestos). This tomb contained a gold chaplet, gold diadem and other gold jewelry, which must have been sewn upon the clothes of the dead and also black-glazed plates and other pottery. These finds date the tomb in the 2nd century BC.
The construction of the building and the finds of the un-looted tomb lead us to the conclusion that the 'Macedonian tomb' belonged to an important family of the Hellenistic society of Philippi. Its accession to the posterior Christian temples displays that it was most likely associated with an event concerning Apostle Paul, founder of the Philippi church, or some other Christian martyr of the 3rd century's AD pogrom." Per the archaeological museum of Philippi. As the tomb is from the 2nd century BC, it could have been made during the Antigonid dynasty in the Kingdom of Macedonia, or after the Roman conquest of that area in 168 BC through the Third Macedonian War.
A Roman “Bust designed to sit on a support. It portrays a young woman known as "La Gitana" ("The Gipsy") because of her hairstyle with side curls. The earlobes are pierced to accommodate earrings. 1st C. AD” Per the Museo Nacional de Arte Romano in Merida, Spain where this object is on display.
From the Roman "Domus of via Arena. Wall frescoes. The archaeological excavation carried out in Via Arena 20 in 1963-65 brought to light the portion of a domus. Large, although fragmentary, portions of frescos belonging to three different rooms have been discovered in the collapsed layers of the building...
The walls of one of the rooms show a complex decorative scheme on a yellow background, with large vertical brown bands. Inside the yellow fields different species of birds, including a peacock, are depicted singularly. The walls are framed on top by a rich vegetal frieze on a yellow background; small animals and birds are portrayed on its bottom part, under the spirals...
The subjects and style of the frescoes from Via Arena are widespread in the late 1st century AD in the north-Italic and provincial areas, where the experiences of Rome are received and reworked." Per the Civic Archaeological Museum in Bergamo, Italy where this is on display.
A Roman road made of basalt above a sewage system which is next to ancient buildings in Tarsus, Turkey. It is possible that the Apostle Paul (also known as Saul of Tarsus) walked through there as it dates to the 1st century AD and he was born & lived there for a number of years off and on: in a strict Jewish household growing up, later after Jesus's death and his conversion (there are no records of him meeting Jesus in the flesh), and also likely stops during his missionary journeys.
A Roman coin of the Emperor Julian II (aka Julian the Apostate, 355-363 AD) minted in Sirmium in modern-day Serbia between 361-363. He was the last non-Christian Roman emperor and tried to revive paganism although his short lived reign as Augustus was brought to an end after being wounded in battle in what is now Iraq. The coin is called a double maiorina, has a bust of him on the obverse and bull on the reverse with the legend: SECVRITAS REI PVB / ✱BSIRM. The first part means "Security of the Republic" with the second part denoting the workshop and mint. This is in my personal collection.
A Roman scale armor portion of the type called “lorica squamata” in a rather decent state of preservation. Roman soldiers had several types of armor, with various advantages and disadvantages. This was found at Kastel Pfünz, set up during the reign of Domitian for Cohors I Breucorum and destroyed by Germanic tribes in the mid 3rd century AD. It is on display in the Museum für Ur- und Frühgeschichte in Eichstätt, Germany.
A Roman clay oil lamp with a menorah. It along with a few others found locally in Ostia was dated to the 2nd-5th centuries AD and is on display in the on-sight museum within the ruins of Ostia. That ancient river port city on the Tiber, near Rome, is an excellent places to see art and architecture from different centuries and religions as people & goods from all over the empire and beyond travelled to there.
A Roman marble portait found locally. "It was unearthed from Columned Street Excavation of the 2018 Season in Soloi-Pompeiopolis ancient city. Portrait wears roman dress (Toga) and depicts a middle-aged person with voluminous curly hair and a full beard. The bust with its forelooking and gaze is a depiction of ruler or philosopher who lived in Soloi-Pompeiopolis" per the Mersin Archaeological Museum in Mersin, Turkey where this is on display.
"The passers-by through the Archaeological Underpass in central Plovdiv step on a well preserved Roman road. They also go by the home of a wealthy Roman and can enter it to see some of the most remarkable Roman mosaics preserved in the eastern Balkans. Eirene, the goddess of peace, is elegant. Her face was composed of fine tiles and smalt in white, black, red, ochre, yellow, green and cyan, and looks as fresh as it did to the owners of this sumptuous home 1,600 years ago. The sensation of vivacity in her beautiful face was achieved by using the opus vermiculatum technique. It involves the utilization of small stone tiles that are smaller than those used in the classic opus tesselatum method and whose irregular shape helps to achieve better similarity to real-life images. The mosaics in this sumptuous townhouse preserved not only the name of the goddess but also the name of its owner, Desiderius. The opulent mosaics in the Eirene Building take up 160 square meters and decorate the four representative rooms in the building's eastern area. The house also has a peristyle (an open, colonnaded courtyard), one the favorite pastime locations for every well-to-do Roman. The Eirene Building took up a whole insula (the block between four grid streets) in the town thus asserting both architecturally and visually the social status of its owners. The Erene Building probably dates back to the 3rd century. Its sumptuous mosaics were produced in the second half of the 4th and the early 5th centuries. The residential building was abandoned in the 6th century. Its remains were discovered in the 1980s when the modern underpass was under construction." Per the archaeological site in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.
A video of a Roman Boxer aka the “Pugilist at Rest” statue showing the man naked after a fight. One of the most famous statues ever found in Rome due to its extreme realism using the lost wax technique in which various parts were cast and then welded together. It is mostly made of bronze although copper inserts were used for the blood, lips, nipples and parts of the glove. Note the sweaty mustache, combat wounds on the right eye, swollen ears, broken nose from previous fights, and cuts on the face. Although some people deem the statue to be an old Greek one, the official museum book states "the statue can be dated to the 1st century BC...Even the gloves, although similar to those of the Hellenistic era, are of the type worn by boxers of the imperial (Roman) era." On display in the Palazzo Massimo - National Roman Museum in Rome.
The Church of the Acheiropoietos in Thessaloniki, Macedonia, Greece is a three aisled Christian basilica from the early Byzantine era (built around 450-470 AD) although it has some Roman mosaics below the floor level. This remained a church until 1430 when the Ottomans converted it into a mosque, and it became the main mosque of the city for centuries until 1912. After the area became part of the Greek state, this building had several humanitarian uses such as housing victims of the great fire as well as Greek speaking people forced to leave Asia Minor after the population exchange until it was reconsecrated as a church in 1930. It is now a UNESCO world heritage site.
Mummy masks and a portrait all from Roman-Egypt that are now on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, USA.
A Roman mosaic with a lot of marine life and fishing nets on the floor of the Bardo Museum in Tunis, Tunisia over which tourists walk. I didn’t see a description for this one.