LET'S 'ROME' THROUGH THE NEW SLAM EXHIBIT ON THE ROMAN EMPEROR TRAJAN!

Don't get me wrong: I love hearing about the debauched exploits of evil Roman Emperors like Nero and Caligula too but we often forget the "good" emperors (think: Marcus Aurelius, the " Stoic Philosopher King") who actually advanced Roman civilization. One of them was Trajan who built aqueducts, roads, and used public funds to support impoverished children. (And he wasn't nearly as hard on Christians as a lot of his peers.)

This travelling exhibit at the St Louis Art Museum features a plethora of nearly 2,000-year-old art and every day Roman artifacts, including statues, coins, mosaics and tableware. Many of its more than 160 objects have never been seen outside of Italy before this exhibition.

From the St Louis Art Museum website:

"Majestic marble sculptures and vivid frescoes, along with mosaics, glass vessels, and bronze artifacts, vividly chronicle life at the height of Rome’s empire in Ancient Splendor: Roman Art in the Time of Trajan. The exhibition speaks to the enduring power of art as a political and social tool, showcasing how the Emperor Trajan invested in art and architecture to shape civic life in the ancient Roman world.
The exhibition brings unprecedented loans—most of which have never before left Italy—to the United States from the renowned antiquities collections of the Vatican, Ostia Antica, the National Roman Museum, and the Naples National Archaeological Museum.
A soldier and an emperor who ruled Rome from 98 to 117 CE, Trajan was the second of the “Five Good Emperors” of the Nerva-Antonine dynasty. His military and imperial successes launched him to popular fame. He granted citizenship and the rights that came with it to people from the far-reaching provinces that his forces conquered, expanding and fundamentally changing the concept of what it meant to be Roman."

You need to purchase your tickets for the 1:30pm Saturday, March 21 tour ($20 adult; $16 Senior) at Metrotix: https://metrotix.evenue.net/events/ANCIENT

We'll meet at the entrance to the exhibit hall where it is being presented. “Lbi te videbo!”