Off the Beaten Path..
Despite the rain on and off today, I was able to round up my students and get on with some cultural visits I had planned and organized for them this morning. In an effort to get the students familiar right away with the city and get them to move comfortably around I divided them in four small groups with six-seven people in each group, gave them a map and told them to meet me at the Colosseo where we would meet our guide and then walk to the three sites that I scheduled for us to visit that are off the beaten path. Our first stop was at the Chiesa di S. Stefano Rotondo, the largest circular church in Rome. Under the church there is a 2nd century mithraeum (Mitreo) related to the presence of the barracks of Roman soldiers in the neighborhood. The cult of Mithras was especially popular among soldiers. It was a great opportunity for us to visit the Mitreo as it is closed to the public due to currently being excavated. In addition, we found out from our guide that there is mass at the church of S. Stefano Rotondo only once a year on December 26, which is the Feast of S. Stefano. Our next stop was the Church of the 'Santi Quattro Coronati', which means the Four Holy Crowned Ones (i.e.martyrs), and refers to the fact that the saints' names are not known, and therefore referred to with their number and that they were martyrs, since the crown, together to the branches of palm, is an ancient symbol of martyrdom. According to the Passion of St. Sebastian, the four saints were soldiers who refused to sacrifice to Aesculapius, and therefor were killed by order of Emperor Diocletian (284-305). As our guide explained, the bodies of the martyrs are kept in four ancient sarcophagi in the crypt. Our last stop was the Temple of Claudius, which as it was explained to us when the emperor Claudius dies in 54 A.D. his wife Agrippina promoted the erection of a temple dedicated to him on the northern part of the Celio Hill.