Spring time in Rome. We’ve been having a blast running around Jeanne’s old stomping grounds, eating and drinking are way through the city. We found time to stop at the usual suspects: St Peters, Sistine Chapel, the Forum, and the Coliseum. We hired a tour guide for the forum. “Jim” is a retired American that has been living in Rome for three years. His wife is the head of a school in Rome, and he hangs out doing tours. He pointed out to us that in the Forum, the ruins are of buildings from different periods, and were not there all at the same time. Many of them are reproduced and aren’t necessarily the way they were originally, and the most of the area called the “Forum” was not part of the original Forum.

We also did a tour of the Coliseum with a Roman guide. He said he has seen the movie Gladiator three times and that historians say that the movie has over 100 mistakes, beginning with the war scene where Maximus has a German Sheperd as his mascot, which is a breed that was only created in the 19th century. The biggest faux pas though is they called the Coliseum the “Coliseum”, a name that was only first used in the 7th century. It was actually called the Theater Flavio. It was build in around 70AD by 40,000 slaves over a period 24 years. The slaves were not paid and received housing and food for compensation. The guide said they had no labor union issues at that time. After it opened, they had “games” everyday for a hundred days in a row, during which time they killed some 5000 animals and 8000 people.

So, we learned lots of interesting stuff, including that the Forum is not really the Forum, and the Coliseum is not really the Coliseum, and that being a slave or gladiator was a career limiting move.

We are in Cosenza now visiting with Jeanne’s relatives and there is lot’s mange, mange, mange (eat, eat, eat!). This is in the Calabria region of Italy with many mountains and about an hour’s drive to the sea. Andiamo…ciao!