Friday, March 14

Today started off with a tour of the Basilica of San Clemente, where we saw several layers of Rome’s development. At the ground level of the basilica is a beautiful, ornate 12^th-century church, with an early Christian basilica located directly underneath, in which the bones of Saint Clemente and the oldest-known Italian-language inscription, the latter of which contains an immensely rude expression that should not be said around Italians, can be found. Even below the Christian basilica is a temple dedicated to Mithras, the central deity of Mithraism, which is a religion brought to Rome from the Near East. All these layers date back to the first century A.D. Afterwards, we visited the Basilica of Santo Stefano Rotondo, a smaller, circular church dedicated to early Christian martyrs. On the walls of this church are paintings depicting the gruesome deaths of those martyrs. After lunch near the Coliseum, we headed over to the Circus Maximus, where we played a game of Jackpot with a pinecone (pictured below) and read ancient Roman pick-up lines by Ovid, before heading to the Baths of Caracalla.

pinecone Jackpot at the Circus Maximus

As we were making our way to the baths, we took many candid pictures of each other, with Henry “Mr. National Latin Scholar” Barker ’14 being the most affected victim (photo allegedly forthcoming). The gargantuan Baths of Caracalla amazed us all, being a sure highlight of the trip. Despite missing their ancient dome roofs, the Baths of Caracalla, with their remains, truly show the large amount of manual labor that was prevalent in the Roman Empire and the need for a dictatorial regime to be in place for such a mind-boggling structure to be constructed. After walking around the amazing baths, we sat outside and read a Seneca passage about how annoying it would be to live in one of these baths in ancient Rome. The day was capped off with a choice of Korean or Indian viands or burgers for dinner, gelati for dessert, and a goodbye to Lawrenceville School, which leaves tomorrow.

                                                                                    --Victor Liu ’17 and Max Klein’18

Post-dinner leisure at the Spanish steps