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Before I return us to the Round Room, let me say a little more about Laocoön (pronounced lay-AWK-oh-wahn).  He was the high priest of Troy, and he warned his fellow Trojans: "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts."  The attacking Greeks had brought the Trojan horse to the gates as a ploy to get inside the city walls, and Laocoön tried to warn his people not to bring it inside.  But the gods wanted the Greeks to win, so they sent huge snakes to crush Laocoön and his two sons to death.

We see them at the height of their terror, when they realize that, no matter how hard they struggle, they—and their entire race—are doomed.

The figures were carved from four blocks of marble pieced together seamlessly, and are powerful, not light and graceful.  The poses are as twisted as possible, accentuating every rippling muscle and bulging vein.

Laocoön—the most famous Greek statue in ancient Rome and considered "superior to all other sculpture or painting"—was lost for more than a thousand years.  Then, in 1506, it was unexpectedly unearthed in the ruins of Nero's Golden House near the Colosseum, on Palatine Hill.  The discovery caused a sensation.  They cleaned it off and paraded it through the streets before an awestruck populace.  No one had ever seen anything like its motion and emotion, having been raised on a diet of pretty-boy Apollos.  One of those who saw it was Michelangelo, and it was a revelation to him.  Two years later, he started work on the Sistine Chapel, and the Renaissance was about to take another turn.

Next we come to the Belvedere Torso.  Standing face to face with this hunk of shaped rock makes you appreciate the sheer physical labor involved in chipping a figure out of solid stone.  It takes great strength, but at the same time, great delicacy.

The Belvedere Torso — compared to
The Piracus Apollo

This is all that remains of an ancient statue of Hercules seated on a lion skin.  Michelangelo loved this old rock.  He knew that he was the best sculptor of his day.  The ancients were his only peers—and his rivals.  He'd caress this statue lovingly and tell people, "I am the pupil of the Torso."  To him, it contained all the beauty of classical sculpture.  But it's not beautiful.  Compared with the pure grace of the Apollo, it's downright ugly.

But Michelangelo, an ugly man himself, was looking for a new kind of beauty—not the beauty of idealized gods, but the innate beauty of every person, even so-called ugly ones.  With its knotty lumps of muscle, the Torso has a brute power and distinct personality despite—or because of—its rough edges.

Next we enter the Round Room, modeled on the Pantheon interior.  It gives some idea of Roman grandeur.

Romans took Greek ideas and made them bigger, like the big bronze statue of Hercules with his club, found near the
Theater of Pompey (by modern-day Campo de' Fiori).  That is where Pete and I stayed on our first visit to Rome.

It is amazing these days to see people using only their iPhones to photograph such beautiful art treasures.
The quality has improved so much, and you can instantly send your photos to friends and family.  Thanks
to Apple, we are never more than a click away from anywhere in the world, our legacy to posterity.

The mosaic floor once decorated the bottom of a pool in an ancient Roman bath.  The enormous Roman basin decorated Nero's place.  It was made from a single block of pure porphyry marble stone imported from the desert of Egypt.  Purple was a rare, royal, expensive, and prestigious color in many cultures.  This was the stone of emperors ... and then of popes.  Now it's all been quarried out, and the only porphyry available to anyone has been recycled.

The statues were all pretty amazing.  And the Egyptian columns leading to the next room were absolutely majestic.



The Egyptians had a vast array of gods with animal heads but human bodies.  This is Anubis - God of Embalming.
Anibus invented embalming to embalm Orisis, the first mummy.  He is the guide of the dead.  The Egyptians embalmed
their dead, especially their pharaohs, to preserve them, since they thought this helped them to live for ever.



In this next room there were two large porphyry marble coffins.  Only one is pictured.  They were made (though not used) for the Roman emperor Constantine's mother (Helena), and daughter (Constanza). Helena's coffin (shown) depicts a battle game showing dying victims in their barbarian dress.  Helena and Constanza were Christians—and therefore outlaws—until Constantine made Christianity legal in A.D. 312, and they became saints.



I loved the Egyptian section of the museum.  Nothing is so amazing as looking at the body of one who
lived thousands of years ago, yet his body has been preserved through the art of embalming to withstand
many millennia.  This certainly challenges any preconceived ideas one might have about life after death.
It certainly doesn't seem to be a material one.



These statues once adorned a Pharaohs tomb.  In our travels over the years we have seen similar statuary in other
museums, such as the Louvre in Paris, the British Museum in London, the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, the New
York Museum of Natural History, etc, etc.  And don't forget the Cairo Museum, with Tutankhamun and the vast
wealth of treasures found in his tomb.  It seems that if one is to see ALL of the treasures of ancient Egypt, or for
that matter ancient Greece, one must travel all over the world to do so.  I'm just really glad that Pete and I love to
travel, and have experienced so many of these things first hand, and can share them with you.



 The relief fragment in the upper right is from the Old Kingdom (2573-2134 BC).  Most of the others on in Room IV.



This is a statue of the goddess Diana the Huntress.  It is said that the bulls were sacrificed
and castrated, and that the testicles were draped over the statues as symbols of fertility.



I'm not sure, but I think the net might be to protect tourists from fragments that may fall
from the ceiling.  The Vatican is pretty old, and renovations seem to be an ongoing thing.

There is so much to see in the Vatican Museum.  There is just a little more to go before we leave the museum and enter St. Peter's Basilica, and take you on a climb to the top of the dome for some fantastic views of Rome from this amazing vantage point.  But this will come in the next chapter.