THE CITY OF WONDERS AT THE HEART OF A MOBILE WORLD

In the middle of the fifth century of our era, Hierios, son of Ploutarchos, the Neoplatonist philosopher, studied at Rome with Proclus. An anecdote of his stay tells us that ‘in the house called that of Quirinus’, he was shown ‘a miniature human head, on its own, rather like a chick-pea in size and shape … but in other respects a real human head, with eyes and a face and hair on top and a complete mouth, from which came a voice like that of a thousand men, it was so loud’. Here is not the place to examine the specific context of the bizarrerie of this story; but it is an appropriate place to begin. The period under discussion should be seen as that in which Rome the late antique city was formed. The display of astonishing wonders to credulous visiting intellectuals, in the mysterious setting of the city's ancient past – Hierios' tale is set in the Temple of Quirinus – is already characteristic of the second century. It derives ultimately from the establishment under the Flavian emperors of Rome's role as a cultural capital for the whole Greco-Roman empire. In this period too, Italy, at least Italy south of the Cisalpine plain, became more than ever a backdrop to the metropolitan theatricals of Rome, and should be considered alongside its largest agglomeration.

Augustus had started the process of making Rome, as a matter of policy, a worthy capital of the world. The wonders assembled in Rome, which could be experienced on journeys there, became one of the symbolic structures of empire.