skepticlawyer

Here are two of my graphics, originally designed to go with the ‘Pasts Imperfect‘ piece. I haven’t figured out how to put them on the front page as yet, but if you click on the links below you can have some enjoyable fun pretending to walk around the Roman Forum in the late evening. Once I figure out how to display this sort of stuff properly (like, on the front of the blog), I’ll make more of them.

Navigable Quicktime of the Roman Forum

Scroll left for a view of the Arch of Septimus Severus, right for the Rostra and the Templum Pacis. Rotate 180º for the Temple of the Divine Julius. Nowhere is the peculiar relationship of past to present more apparent than in the use of sophisticated graphic design software to create ‘authentic’ views of antiquity: the ‘past’, clearly, is constructed ‘under conditions and constraints determined by the present’.

Alternative navigable Quicktime of the Roman Forum

Paradoxically, our technological ‘permanent present’ has given us the opportunity to apprehend more clearly than ever before how different aspects of the past looked, if nothing else. Scroll over the Forum from the Temple of Saturn, across the front of the Templum Pacis and the Temple to Concordia for a side view of the Arch of Septimius Severus. Turn 360º for a close view of the Tabularium and a very close view of the columns fronting the Temple of Saturn (you’re standing in the cella).