Il Re di Pietra e Chaucer

A prohemie, in which discryveth he,
Pemond, and of Saluces the contree,
And speketh of Appenyn, the hilles hye,
That been the boundes of West Lumbardye,
And of Mount Vesulus in special,
Wher as the Poo out of a welle smal,
Taketh his first spryngyng and his cours
That eastward ay encresseth in his cours
To Emele-ward, to Ferare and Venyse;
The which a long thyng were to devyse.

(Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Clerk's Tale," from The Canterbury Tales)

A dir la verità, questo racconto mostra un uomo molto cattivo, ma a Saluzzo sono tutti buoni come il pane!

Comparing the Profiles of Caesar's Heads given by the Pantelleria Marble Bust and by a Coin of 44 BC

Comparing the Profiles of Caesar's Heads given by the Pantelleria Marble Bust and by a Coin of 44 BC: Here we want to show an interesting fact concerning the profile of the Caesar’s head, which is portrayed in the Pantelleria marble bust. It is the same of the portrait of Caesar given by a coin of 44 BC. The coin was struck just after Caesar's refusal of the crown offered by Mark Antony during the Lupercalia.

The Profiles of Caesar's Heads given by Tusculum and Pantelleria Marbles

The Profiles of Caesar's Heads given by Tusculum and Pantelleria Marbles: Here we want to show a comparison of the profiles of Julius Caesar’s head, as portrayed in Tusculum and in Pantelleria marbles. These profiles are in good agreement and are in good agreement to that given in a coin of 44 BC, struck one month before Caesar’s assassination.

Sikandar the Destroyer - Gaza

From Wikipedia
Upon arriving, Alexander camped near the southern side of the city and deemed the southern walls as the weakest.[4] Near these weak points, Alexander built the mounds that were eventually used to enter the city.[4] It is alleged the mounds were built quickly, despite the engineers' belief they could not be completed due to the nature of Gaza's fortifications.[5]

One day during the siege, the Gazans made a sortie against enemy siege equipment constructed on site, and Alexander led his shield bearing guards into counterattack. Alexander's shoulder was injured in the attempt.[5] According to Arrian, the rest of the mound was completed shortly after, around the whole of Gaza.[5] At some undefined period after this, the siege equipment from Tyre arrived, and was put into use also. It was after this that major sections of the wall were broken by the Macedonians.[5] After three attempts to enter the city, the Macedonians finally entered the city. The Gazans fought bitterly.

Batis refused to surrender to Alexander. When Gaza was taken, the male population was put to the sword and the women and children were sold into slavery.

According to the Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus,[6] Batis was killed by Alexander in imitation of Achilles' treatment of the fallen Hector. A rope was forced through Batis's ankles, probably between the ankle bone and the Achilles tendon, and Batis was dragged alive by chariot beneath the walls of the city. Alexander, who admired courage in his enemies and might have been inclined to show mercy to the brave Persian general, was infuriated at Batis's refusal to kneel and by the enemy commander's haughty silence and contemptuous manner.

As a result of the Siege, Alexander was allowed to proceed south into Egypt securely, without his line of communications being threatened from the North by Batis from Gaza.

The Green Caesar

The Green Caesar is a portrait of Gaius Julius Caesar made of green slate kept in the Antikensammlung Berlin with the inventory number Sk 342, which was probably made in the first century AD

Sardis and Croesus

From Wikipedia

Sardis or Sardes was an ancient city at the location of modern Sart in Turkey's Manisa Province. Sardis was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Lydia,[1] one of the important cities of the Persian Empire, the seat of a proconsul under the Roman Empire, and the metropolis of the province Lydia in later Roman and Byzantine times.
The earliest reference to Sardis is in The Persians of Aeschylus (472 BC); in the Iliad, the name Hyde seems to be given to the city of the Lydian chiefs and in later times Hyde was said to be the older name of Sardis, or the name of its citadel. It is, however, more probable that Sardis was not the original capital of the Lydian, but that it became so amid the changes which produced the powerful Lydian empire of the 8th century BC.

Map of Sardis and Other Cities within the Lydian Empire

The city was captured by the Cimmerians in the 7th century BC, by the Persians in the 6th, by the Athenians in the 5th, and by Antiochus III the Great at the end of the 3rd century BC. In the Persian era, Sardis was conquered by Cyrus the Great and formed the end station for the Persian Royal Road which began in Persepolis, capital of Persia. Sardis was the site of the most important Persian satrapy.[2] During the Ionian Revolt, the Athenians burnt down the city. Sardis remained under Persian domination until it surrendered to Alexander the Great in 334 BC.


The early Lydian kingdom was very advanced in the industrial arts and Sardis was the chief seat of its manufactures. The most important of these trades was the manufacture and dyeing of delicate woolen stuffs and carpets. The stream Pactolus which flowed through the market-place "carried golden sands" in early antiquity, which was in reality gold dust out of Mount Tmolus. It was during the reign of King Croesus that the metallurgists of Sardis discovered the secret of separating gold from silver, thereby producing both metals of a purity never known before.[3]This was an economic revolution, for while gold nuggets panned or mined were used as currency, their purity was always suspect and a hindrance to trade. Such nuggets or coinage were naturally occurring alloys of gold and silver known as electrum and one could never know how much of it was gold and how much was silver. Sardis now could mint nearly pure silver and gold coins, the value of which could be — and was — trusted throughout the known world. This revolution made Sardis rich and Croesus' name synonymous with wealth itself. For this reason, Sardis is famed in history as the place where modern currency was invented.
Disaster came to the great city under the reign of the emperor Tiberius, when in AD 17, Sardis was destroyed by an earthquake, but it was rebuilt with the help of ten million sesterces from the Emperor and exempted from paying taxes for five years.[4] It was one of the great cities of western Asia Minor until the later Byzantine period.

Sikandar the Destroyer - the battle of Granicus

From Wikipedia

The Battle of the Granicus River in May 334 BC was the first of three major battles fought between Alexander the Great and the Persian Empire. Fought in Northwestern Asia Minor, near the site of Troy, it was here that Alexander defeated the forces of the Persian satraps of Asia Minor, including a large force of Greek mercenaries led by Memnon of Rhodes.
Total casualties for the Greeks were between 300 and 400. The Persians had roughly 1,000 cavalry and 3,000 infantry killed, mostly in the rout. The Greek mercenaries, under the command of Memnon of Rhodes, who fought for the Persians, were abandoned after the cavalry retreat. They attempted to broker a peace with Alexander but to no avail. As a result, after the battle Alexander ordered the mercenaries to be enslaved. Out of the 18,000 Greek mercenaries, half were killed and 8,000 enslaved and sent back to Macedon [It would be better to tell that 10000 were killed, and 8000 enslaved, ossia 10000 Greci passati a fil di spada dopo la battaglia].  They were bound in fetters and sent away to Macedonia to till the soil, because, though they were Greeks, they were fighting against Greece on behalf of the foreigners [actually, they were fighting against Alexander].

Alexander sent 300 Persian armours to the Parthenon of Athens as an oblation to Athena, with this epigram: "Alexander, son of Philip, and the Greeks, except of Lacedaemonians, from the barbarians who live in Asia". («Ἀλέξανδρος Φιλίππου καὶ οἱ Ἕλληνες, πλὴν Λακεδαιμονίων, ἀπὸ τῶν βαρβάρων τῶν τὴν Ἀσίαν κατοικούντων»-"Alexandros Philippou kai hoi Hellēnes plēn Lakedaimoniōn apo tōn barbarōn tōn tēn Asian katoikountōn")

I barbari che vivono in Asia?!  

Kardo and Decumanus - Torino

Romans planned their military castra with a precise regular scheme, based on two main axes, crossing at right angles at the center of the settlement. These axes are known as Decumanus (D) and Kardo (K). Sometimes, a castrum evolved in a colonia and then in a modern town. Torino is an example of this evolution, that was born as a Julius Caesar’s castrum. Today, the Decumanus is Via Garibaldi. In this Google Earth map, we can easily see the rectangle of the Roman town, composed of several insulae. The modern town had maintained this layout during its expansion.

Silhouettes. Tusculum bust and coins - 1

This article https://www.carotta.de/subseite/texte/articula/CesareTuscolo_CorriereDelTicino.pdf  published on the Corriere del Ticino in 2017 tell us  some information about the Tusculum bust, a portraiture of Julius Caesar, today at the Archaeological Museum of Torino.
This is a translation from the article written by Francesco Carotta entitled Il Cesare Incognito.

"The story of the discovery of the Tusculum bust has some humor in it. The marble head was found in Tusculum by Luciano Bonaparte. Luciano made profit with the antiquities, in particular those emerging from the ruins of that pleasant town among the Alban Hills (near today's Frascati), where the Roman nobility had built the villas, a famous one was that of Cicero. He used these antiquities to refund his huge debts. However, he did not realize that he had in his hands an original portrait of Caesar, which would have allowed him to restore his financial health. The bust then remained unsold and passed to the House of Savoy. With some others items of Lucien Bonaparte's collection, the bust was taken to the Castle of Agliè, where, a century and a half later, in 1940, archaeologist Maurizio Borda, comparing the profile with some coins of Caesar, recognized that Caesar was portrayed in it."

Maurizio Borda, vissuto nella prima metà del XX secolo, fu archeologo, ricercatore e docente universitario, storico e incaricato presso la Direzione Generale delle Antichità e Belle Arti di Roma al Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione. In qualità di archeologo, si occupò degli scavi della città di Tusculum negli anni dal 1952 al 1955. Attribuì a Giulio Cesare un ritratto in marmo riscoperto proprio a Tusculum, ritratto che oggi viene considerato l'unica rappresentazione certa del dittatore. Sistemò il primo Museo Tuscolano del dopoguerra aperto nel 1954 nel castello della curia vescovile di Frascati, poi i vari reperti del museo furono spostati alle Scuderie Aldobrandini.

Let us use the coin of August 43 BC. AR Denarius 43 BC. Rome mint. L Flaminius Chilo. Laureate head right within pelleted border. From a picture of the profile of the Tusculum bust, we can obtain a silhouette (in red). Superposing to the coin, we have a remarkable coincidence.

Julius Caesar - Coin - 44 BC

Magnifico profilo. Testa piccola.

Wreathed head of Caesar right, behind crescent; before, CAESAR·IM downwards; behind P M upwards. Border of dots. As explained by http://www.humanities.mq.edu.au/acans/caesar/Career_Coins.htm

it was struck just after Caesar's refusal of the crown at Lupercalia.

On the Lupercalia, let us read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lupercalia and https://www.etymonline.com/word/february

It is possible that the world Lupercalia derived from lupus, "wolf," though both the etymology and its significance are obscure [1]. Lupercalia was a very ancient, even  pre-Roman pastoral , annual festival,[2] observed in Rome on February 15, to avert the evil spirits and purify the city. Lupercalia was also called "dies Februatus", purified (literally "februated day") after the fumes of purification (https://www.etymonline.com/word/february). 

The Lupercalia had its own priesthood, the Luperci, whose institution and rites were attributed either to the Arcadian culture-hero Evander, or to Romulus and Remus. The Luperci were young men. They formed two religious collegia based on ancestry; the Quinctiliani (named after gens Quinctia) and the Fabiani (named after gens Fabia). Each college was headed by a magister. In 44 BC, a third college, the Juliani, was instituted in honor of Julius Caesar; its first magister was Mark Antony.[10] The college of Juliani disbanded during civil wars, and was not re-established in the reforms of  Augustus. 

Descriptions of the Lupercalia festival of 44 BC attest to its continuity. During this Lupercalia, Julius Caesar refused three times a golden crown offered to him by Mark Antony.[17][18]