In 1626, workers took aim at four spots marked on the floor of the largest church in Christendom, Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The structure’s immense dome hovered more than four hundred feet above them, for they stood at the intersection of the church’s nave and transept. They began to dig. These shafts, when eventually filled with masonry, would support a towering bronze tent (called a baldacchino) over the high altar. As shovels and picks hacked deep, the excavation took laborers back through layers of history. After breaking through the floor of the Renaissance church, they burrowed through the fill separating it from its fourth-century predecessor. They then cracked through that building’s pavement and struck an ancient cemetery (Fig. I.1). If authorities expected to find anyone’s remains, they were those of Peter himself or one of his papal successors, for they believed the key apostle and later popes were buried here.

In the Introduction, I referenced a coin minted under the emperor Titus (Fig. E.1). On one side appeared the figure of the emperor sitting amid a heap of weapons, a reference to his roles in the Jewish War, the capture of Jerusalem, and the construction of the building depicted on the coin’s opposite side, the Flavian Amphitheater. The coin adopts an unusual perspective, showing the Colosseum’s façade while also permitting a glimpse into the building. We spy the columns tracing the uppermost reaches of the interior and a few heads peeping out between them. Lower down two more rings of spectators are visible, the lower one pierced by an entrance and split into wedges by staircases. When we last examined the coin, we remarked about how only one individual appeared – the emperor – while everyone else was merely an undifferentiated head.

This chapter imagines Flavia’s experience of visiting Rome’s principal sanctuary of Isis, the Iseum Campense. It weighs the impact of the space’s architecture, artwork, and rituals and the community that Flavia found there.

This chapter traces the travels of Flavius’ sculpture from Rome, via Paris and New York, to Indianapolis. The artwork’s movements reflect changing historical tides, and also took on different meanings as it passed through each context and historical moment.

As part of an “object biography” of Flavius’ sculpture, this chapter traces reactions to its discovery and subsequent exhibition in the Palazzo Barberini, which raises issues related to the collecting of ancient art in Early Modern Rome and the sculpture’s role in presenting the Barberini family and its history to visitors to the palace.

This chapter takes stock of Flavius’ worldview as presented by his funerary ensemble, noting especially the close nexus of dining, death, and philosophy. Since Flavius’ outlook contrasts with Flavia’s potential beliefs as an adherent of Isis, the chapter assesses the phenomenon of “mixed marriages” in the Roman world.

This chapter reconstructs Flavius Agricola’s life and analyzes his self-presentation across a variety of different lines: the poetic form and references within his verse epitaph, his representation as a reclining diner, the apparent disjuncture between his youthful physique and older face, and the vessel he cradles in his hand.

This chapter considers the experience of visitors to Flavius’ tomb after his death, particularly as they drank alongside Flavius while he was portrayed doing the same.

Of the fifteen lines of Flavius Agricola’s epitaph, seven grant a subbiography of his wife of thirty years, Flavia Primitiva, and her son, Aurelius Primitivus. This chapter considers Flavia’s characterization, particularly as a chaste worshipper of the Egyptian goddess Isis, and weighs the potential appeal of this cult.

The emerging tribes of LPRIA in southern and eastern Britain had a long history of contact with the Roman world and were heavily influenced by Roman attitudes and actions because Rome saw all her neighbours as within her sphere of influence. Whether or not the British tribes still paid tribute, some of them had been subject to Roman control following the invasion of Julius Caesar in 55 and 54 BC (DBG V.22). This precedent meant, for the Roman emperors, that the island lay within their legitimate sphere of interest. This interest had already been shown by both Caligula (Suetonius, Caligula 44, 46) and Augustus (Dio 49.28, 2; 53.22, 5; 53.25, 2), who had contemplated and prepared for invasion. Such direct intervention following a long period of indirect contact had precedents, for the general pattern of Rome’s expansion saw her first taking an indirect interest, then a successively more active role before assuming absolute control. In the case of Britain this process was slow, since annexation had been delayed first by the civil wars, next by Augustus’ interests in Germany and elsewhere, then by Tiberius’ static frontier policy and finally by the troubles of Caligula. Notwithstanding this, the question should not be why Claudius invaded Britain, but why it had not happened earlier.