Images

A portrait bust of Vespasian, from Minturnae (Minturno, Italy), 69-79 CE. (Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Rome)

A portrait bust of Vespasian, from Ostia, 69-79 CE. (Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Rome)

Statue of an emperor, heavily restored by Bartolomeo Cavaceppi as a portrait of emperor Galba. (Sala Rotonda Museo Pio-Clementino, Vatican Museums)

Colossal bust of the emperor Vespasian, 69-79 CE, from Rome. (Neues Museum, Berlin)

A map of Lake Titicaca in South America, located between Peru and Bolivia. For ancient Andean peoples the lake was a sacred site and considered the centre of the cosmos and place of original creation.

A traditional totora reed raft on Lake Titicaca. For several pre-Columbian cultures, including the Incas, the lake was considered the centre of the cosmos and place of creation.

The so-called Green Caesar, a posthumous bust showing Julius Caesar as a statesman dressed in a toga. Being idealised in contrast to earlier Caesar portraits, this portrait was adapted to the taste of the early Imperial Age. (Altes Museum...

Roman mosaic found at Hadrian's Villa depicting a pair of centaurs fighting wild cats, c. 130 CE. The mosaic is made of thousands of small, closely set tesserae (1-2 millimiters) called "opus vermiculatum." (Altes Museum, Berlin, Germany.)

The so-called Minerva Bowl, a silver cup from the Hildesheim Treasure (Germany), the largest collection of Roman silver found outside the imperial frontiers, 1st century BCE - 1st century CE (Augustan period). (Altes Museum, Berlin)

Tondo showing the Severan dynasty: Septimius Severus with Julia Domna, Caracalla and Geta, whose face has been erased, probably because of the damnatio memoriae put against him by Caracalla, from Djemila (Algeria), circa 199-200 CE. (Neues...