When designing the new exhibition space, museum leadership selected the theme of “terrifying judgment.”
Episode 4: In which Roma and Mars discover California exists, and hatch a really terrible plan to rescue a statue.
This episode of Real Housewives of Mt. Olympus brought to you by the latest archaeological news on SmithsonianMagazine.com – and by CLAS-A 301 Classical Archaeology.
MARS, ROMAN GOD OF WAR: I want to invade California.
MINERVA, ROMAN GODDESS OF STRATEGY: Do you know what California even is?
MARS: I think it’s a place across the sea. I want to invade it. They have our stuff.
MINERVA: What stuff?
ROMA, GODDESS OF ROME: The treasures of mortals past, born from the bosom of Italia. The humans call them “artifacts” or “antiquities.” The mortals make art, then they all die and the art is buried, then after many centuries new mortals dig up the art, and they take the art in ships across the sea and put them in temples to the Muses called “museums.”
MARS: Come to think of it, we should kill all the Muses while we’re at it. Just to be sure.
ROMA (glaring): Anyway, my people have fought many battles to bring back these treasures, and have erected a new museum in my city to display the spoils of our battles. We must fill this museum so that the world will tremble at the greatness of Rome!
MARS: We will start with California. There they have a statue of a victorious youth, in a temple called the J. Paul Getty Museum. I estimate we will need 1,000 ships, manned by many legions.
Dude, it is not your hair that is drawing attention.
MINERVA: You two are idiots. Do you have any idea how long it would take to sail a trireme from Italy to California? And then what, you pull up your fleet at Laguna Beach and march to Bel Air?
MARS: Yes?
MINERVA: These are legal battles. You send legions of lawyers. And then they argue for like 20 years and maybe get the stuff back. It’s a whole different system. If you want to get this Getty guy to give back your statue, what you’re going to have to do is file a brief…
MARS: Look. Roma and I have one mode, and it’s invasion. My motto is “if it’s a problem, kill it.” I literally do not know how to solve a problem in any other way. When I wanted to establish the city of Rome, the only thing I could think of was invasion. So I had my one son Romulus make a small wall, just so my other son Remus could jump over it and “invade the city,” and then Romulus killed his twin brother Remus and that was that, boom, city.
ROMA: Oh god, was that how I was born? That story doesn’t even make any sense…
MINERVA: I don’t think that’s a sustainable growth model.
ROMA: I was born out of incoherent fratricide?! WHY?
MARS: Look, if you have a better idea, I’d love to hear it. Mine worked for like 1,100 years.
MINERVA: I just said a better idea. Legal wrangling. It will take years, but it won’t involve triremes through the Panama Canal.
MARS: What’s the Panama Canal, and how soon can I invade it?
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Be sure to check in on the continued repatriation adventures of Minerva, Mars, and Roma. To explore the politics of returning artifacts across international borders, look for CLAS-A 301 Classical Archaeology, coming up Fall 2024, no pre-reqs or previous experience required. Or for more exploits of the Roman gods, and how their myths shaped Ancient Greek and modern societies, enroll in CLAS-C 205 Classical Mythology, coming up Summer I and II 2023 and Fall 2023, and earn GEC credits while you’re at it! Can’t get enough of Ancient Greece and Rome? Earn a Classics Minor in just 15 credits!
