ANCIENT ROME

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Focus on Hercules teacher notes

Background information about objects showing Hercules. Includes teaching ideas for Key Stage 3 and 4.

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Focus on Roman objects teacher notes

Background information about objects from Ancient Rome. Includes teaching ideas for Key Stage 3 and 4.

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Secondary Teachers' notes: Studying Classics at The Ashmolean

Guide to using The Ashmolean for teaching Classics. Includes teaching ideas for Key Stage 3 and 4 .

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Felix Gem Jigsaw Teachers' Notes

Pupil activity sheet. Find out about this engraved gem which shows a key scene from the Trojan war.

Ashmolean Latin Inscriptions Project website

Free resources and activities to support the teaching of both Latin language and Roman life topics at a range of Key Stages developed by the Ashmolean Latin Inscriptions project.

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Focus on Pompeii and Herculaneum

Background information about objects from Pompeii and Herculaneum. Includes teaching ideas for Key Stage 3 and 4.

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Focus on Latin inscriptions

A selection of objects that offer a glimpse into the lives of Romans people throughout the empire and show how the Romans commemorated their dead. Includes teaching ideas for Key Stage 3-5.

Cast of Terme boxer

Terme Boxer, from Rome, third to first century BC (cast)

Originally cast in bronze, this plaster cast shows a naked boxer wears fist guards (caestus) bound on with thongs. He sits after a fight, looking upwards. He has a boxer's broken nose, and blood oozes from cuts on his shoulders, upper arms and swollen ears. These small gashes were originally represented by copper, inlaid into the bronze statue.

Fresco, Pompeii

Framed vignette painted in fresco on a green wall. AD 65-75

Fresco is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly-laid, or wet lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the painting becomes an integral part of the wall. In this image, Cupid reveals the contents of a gilded box to a seated woman. Found on 12 October 1829 in the House of Meleager, Pompeii. Probably given by King Ferdinand II of Naples to the British ambassador Sir William Temple.

Hercules statue

Roman, AD100-200, inspired by a Greeek bronze statue of 500–400BC

Hercules has just killed the Erymanthian boar, which terrorized the people of Arcadia in southern Greece. This was the fourth of his twelve labours. The hero stands in triumph over his quarry, carrying a bow, arms and a club.

TOMBSTONE OF CLAUDIUS AGATHEMERUS AND MYRTALE ROME at the Ashmolean

Marble tombstone

The doctor Claudius Agathemerus and his wife Myrtale Rome, about AD100

Although the doctor wears a Roman toga, his wife a fashionable wig, the poetic text and their names reveal their Greek origin. Greek doctors were highly respected in Rome.

The assassination and funeral of Julius Caesar

Painted by Apollonio di Giovanni (c 1416 - 1465); tempera and gilding on panel, 38.5 x 134.5 cm

Julius Caesar is seen on the left sacrificing to Apollo; he is then shown on his way to the Forum and, in front of the Pantheon, being handed the message of warning. To the right, his murder in the Senate is depicted and his body is burnt on a pyre in front of Trajan's column; above the wall his spirit watches.

The Felix Gem

Engraved sardonyx gem, AD1-50, probably made in Rome.

The scene depicted on this example is the Theft of the Palladion during the Trojan War. The hero Diomedes is shown on the right clutching the Palladion but in order to claim it he has killed the temple guard, whose feet are just visible on the ground. The bearded hero Odysseus gestures in horror at this act of sacrilege. The gods were so angered that many Greek warriors were killed before or on their return journey home to Greece.