We went to look at the American Modernism show at the Tampa Museum of Art but mainly to experience some avant garde, modernist — experimental, really — music presented by the University of Tampa’s  Minaret New Music Ensemble. One of the best parts of the event was Bradford Blackburn’s Ph.d. dissertation, Phrase and Rephrase 3/2, a concerto for Harry Partch Ensemble with live augmentation with Donald Martino on bass clarinet and cellist Lowell Adams. Our hearts were stolen, though, by microtonal guitarist, composer, and luthier Ron Sword.

This was one of the best things we’ve seen in Tampa. The park outside the museum is very lovely too and gets a lot of use, even on a cold Wednesday night.

Kermesse Jette

Chapter 3: The Vacation

They desperately needed to stop.

“Daddy, Daddy!” screamed Tony in a voice of desperate pleading.

They were on the Interstate, about twenty miles from the nearest gas station, and they had just left Burger Junction and Auto Palace. Tony needed to stop.

“Tony,” Mrs. Jones said calmly, turning around in her seat to hit the teen with a flyswatter her husband had given her as a Mother’s Day gift. “You have got to understand that we are trying our best to make it to the gas station as soon as you can, but Iowa is a big, spread out place. If you need to stop that bad, we’ll pull over here.”

The other children screamed with laughter, tormenting their brother with sadistic cruelty, the same kind they learned from their mom.

Tony became enraged, taken by anger. He began lashing out, kicking the dog and shouting obscenities. The dog bit him back. Fido is a pit bull.

Grandma’s house was just down this oak lined street.

“Des Moines is such a pretty town,” Mrs. Jones said. “But I hate your lousy mother.”

Mr. Jones didn’t hear her, as he was chomping on a Mars Bar, noticing that there wasn’t really an almond in every bite. He slammed on the brakes, rolled down the window, threw the candy out onto the street and pulled out a Heath Bar in retaliation.

“Litterbug,” said Toniya.

“Nazi Swine,” Mr. Jones replied laughing.

“Look there’s Grandma!” Little Boy Joey bellowed. “It’s a Miracle.”

Grandma was there alright, all 350 pounds or her. Mrs. Jones grimaced in disbelief.

“That fat hippo,” she said, giving the old woman the proverbial finger.

She put down her Mighty Mouseketeer Comic Book, and opened the door, proceeding to roller skate up the driveway’s slight incline.

“Your mom can really skate,” Mr. Jones pointed out to the three children.

TO BE CONTINUED

Chapter 2

Something very evil had clutched the residence at 704 Howser Street. Something that hung over the little home like a black widow’s veil. Indeed, something hideous. Sure, it had happened before, but not in Astoria. This was spooky.

Inside the home, she could feel the presence of the evil force as it hovered over her. She could feel it. None of the appliances were working properly, the children had taken up the practice of walking through solid walls while chanting “Go Wisconsin!”, and sirens were piercing the air, their source unknown. This was most definitely frightening.

Actually, this evening was not unlike the previous few.

Only too clearly came the images of the hamsters in the bathroom, and the sailors in the atticway. She also knew the house still reeked of cheap beer and nachos. The smell was overbearing.

Her mind reeled back a few days as she tried to recall the event that might have triggered all of this, but all she could remember was the fight she had with her husband after he replaced their conventional front door with a paper barrier.

As she thought of the incident, her husband, coincidentally, came crashing through the barrier. The tearing of the paper was loud enough that it could have been a truck driving through the door.

Next came THAT voice.

“Hey! I caught that ball!” He exclaimed.

Immediately she knew that Frostie’s Angels had lost the big ball game. Her husband kept babbling about the outcome of the final play, but when he settled down, he asked her where his supper was. She pointed to the recession of the ceiling/wall above the refrigerator. There he saw a drooping wad of spaghetti, clinging for its survival.

“What’d ya do dat fer?” He asked, pointing his finger at her. There was a brief pause.

“I think we got ghosts.” She said, erupting into tears.

“What have you been smokin’?” he retorted.

With those words, the kitchen floor began crackling and crumbling beneath him. Through the crevice that developed, a little green man burst onto the scene. Was this an alien visitor?

No. It was Gumby.

To be continued…

4 Tesems (bas) et 3 hyènes (haut), origine: tombeau de Ptah Hotep à Saqqara.

Notes in the sketchbook XXVIII
— A pink rain fell over meadows.
— The air is like green glass.
— The girl [observed] looked into the water, the water was clear [as] crystal, the girl was crying.
— Trees had their growth rings, the animals their veins.

Notes in the sketchbook XXXI
The storm roared.
I entered the house and saw all
A tall woman red small black cat [playing] on the green table.
Kraak, lightning strikes the vehicle – the beautiful little cats were playing with the woman, she smiled – ah ah [poor] man and horse are [is] dead. [The man cries] [sky] the angel of fear knocks at the window; the [poor woman] I could shake the red heart of the woman and black kittens knew the green table – what it [?], red and black and green? Three colors give it a thought? If we give to the red heart shape, the black that [one of three interspersed] small kittens, green form of [a large square plate ?...] the square.

I meditate on that thought.
The red heart of the woman breaks.
It [comes] springs a [blood ...] [a streak of blood] A stream of blood [across the sky due] which falls into the river, it flows through the now red green pastures grazed by sheep or black.
The storm has withdrawn his hand from the earth.
The blue sky [?] Ogle like a gigantic glass eye the scene [of] red, green, and black, this thought is not it terrible? [...] Do you understand what the painters paint?

Notes dans le cahier de croquis XXVIII

— une pluie rose tombait sur des prés verts.

— l’air resemblait a du verre vert.

— la fille [observait] regardait dans l’eau; l’eau était claire [propre] comme du cristal; la fille pleurait.

— les arbres montraient leurs anneaux de croissance; les animaux leurs veines.

Notes dans le cahier de croquis XXXI

L’orage grondait.

J’entrai dans la maison et vis tout

Une grande femme rouge; des petits chat noirs [jouaient] sur la table verte.

Kraak, la foudre a frappe le véhicule — les petis chats jouaient avec la femme, elle souriait — ah ah [le pauvre] homme et cheval sont [est] morts. [L'homme pleure] [ciel] l’ange de la crainte frappe a la fenetre; [la pauvre femme] je voyais trembler le coeur rouge de la femme et les chatons noirs su la table verte — qu’est-ce que c’est [?], rouge et noir et vert? Trois couleurs donnent elles une pensée? Si l’on donne au rouge la forme du coeur, au noir celle [de l'un des trois entremeles] des petits chatons, au vert la forme [d'un grand carre plat?...] du carré.

Je veux mediter cette pensée.

Le coeur rouge de la femme se brise.

Il en [sort] jaillit un [sang...] [une raie de sang] un flot de sang [en travers due ciel] qui tombe dans la riviere, elle coule maintenant rouge a travers les vertes prairies ou paissent des moutons noirs.

L’orage a retiré sa main de la terre.

Le ciel bleu [?] reluque tel un gigantesque oeil de verre la scene [de] rouge, vert, et noir, cette pensée n’est-elle pas terrible? [...] Comprenez-vous ce que le peintres peignent?

[1]

The Remorse of the Emperor Nero After the Murder of His Mother, John William Waterhouse, 1878

INTRODUCTION

An important distinction between Roman Emperor Nero and Chinese Emperor Kublai Khan (and his modern descendent, the William Randolph Hearst character entombed in Xanadu in Citizen Kane (1939) ), is that many of Nero’s ostentatious and ambitious construction projects – beyond and including the Golden Palace – contained spaces for the creation and display of art as well as libraries. In fact Nero’s baths offered one of the largest “public” libraries of the ancient world (Boese 2005, 102) (Staikos, K. 2000).

The purpose of this paper is to present a biography of Nero in relation to the development and subsequent destruction of First Century libraries in Rome, and to present an argument about how access to libraries and knowledge ebbs and flows, and how this access does not always correlate in predictable ways around what we normally think of as civilized and progressive behavior. Nero’s strategy – to earn the love and support of the Roman people by providing culture, food, entertainment, and the constant diversion of a capricious sociopath running the Empire – was successful; it was the senatorial class who actually despised Nero. As Christendom ascended, it adopted some of Nero’s tactics – the spectacular persecution of a minority, for one thing – while other beneficial societal institutions – the aqueducts and the libraries, for example – fell away (Kiefer, Highet, and MacInnes 2000).

One of the main sources for organizing this paper is the Robert Graves translation of Suetonius’s The Twelve Caesars. This is not a perfectly reliable source, of course, but as a primary source document written less than 75 years after Nero’s death by someone with direct access to Hadrian, it is a priceless catalogue of observations. More recent research reveals more facts about Nero’s libraries, who used them, and what of their contents survive.

NERO’S BIOGRAPHY

         Nero was born at Antium in December 37, and at first was named Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus. His father was Cnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, belonging to an extremely noble and ancient family, and his mother was the younger Agrippina, daughter of Germanicus and Agrippina the elder. When he had reached the age of two his mother was banished by Gaius (Caligula) who seized his inheritance the following year after the death of the child’s father (Staikos 2000).

            Under the emperor Claudius, however, the younger Agrippina, his niece, was recalled from exile, and arranged for her son to receive a good education. After she married Claudius in 49, Stoic philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the younger) became Nero’s tutor. Nero was betrothed to Claudius’s daughter Octavia, whom he married in 53. In 50, Agrippina persuaded her husband to adopt Nero as his son, so that going forward Nero was advanced in hierarchy over Britannicus, Claudius’s own younger son (Nero assumed the name Nero Claudius Drusis Germanicus). When Claudius died in October 54, Britaniccus’s claim to the emperorship were set aside, and with the support of the praetorian prefect Sextus Afraniaus Burrus, Agrippina secured the throne for Nero (Staikos 2000).

            Since he was not yet seventeen – younger than any of his predecessors in the Julio-Claudian dynasty when they came to the throne – the empire was at first governed by Agrippina, the sister and wife of earlier emperors and now the mother of a third. This unprecedented phase of female rule was underscored by the issue of the unique coinage during this reign, which displayed the heads of Nero and Agrippina facing one another. When the male-only imperial council (consilium princips) was in session Agrippina would listen from behind a curtain. As had become a Julio-Claudian custom, Agrippina used her power, position, and knowledge to eliminate possible rivals, notably, Marcus Junius Silas, who, like Nero himself, was a great-great grandson of Augustus (Mason Hammond 1956, 61-133).

            But Agrippina’s influence lasted only a few years; in 55 Nero asserted his ascendancy by appearing alone on the face of Roman coins, as Agrippina’s portrait and name disappeared. When early in the same year Britannicus died at a dinner-party in the palace – allegedly murdered by Nero – Agrippina was dismayed, since she wanted to keep Britannicus in reserve in case her son became difficult to control. Agrippina’s power waned further when the Nero transferred her to a separate residence, thus bringing her lavish Palatine parties to an end (Mason Hammond 1956, 61-133).

            The empire seemed poised for a period of stability with Nero ruling under the guidance under Seneca and Burrus. The late Claudius was deified (he was the first emperor since Augustus to receive this honor) as Nero promised to Augustus as his model for leadership. Nero also expressed the idealistic if somewhat unrealistic desire that the Roman Senate should exercise its governmental functions based upon representation, as in ancient times. Steps were taken to improve public order and reform treasury procedures. Territorial and provincial governors and their staffs were forbidden to extract large sums of money from the local populations for gladiatorial shows and other excesses; and Nero himself maintained a regular work schedule, paying particular attention to his judicial duties (Mason Hammond 1956, 61-133).

            Nero also entertained progressive leanings, leading him for example to abolish indirect taxes through out the empire, to abolish the stationing of soldiers in bars and theaters, to forbid the killing of criminals in public spectacles. All these ideas proved impossible to implement. Yet such proposals, even if they came to nothing, suggest that Nero, in the context of the quotidian brutality of Roman life, began his rule in a basically humane manner. For example, like his mentor Seneca, he expressed objections to taking life, and this aversion extended to capital punishment. There seems to have been a turning point in 61 when the city prefect, Lucius Pedanius Secundus, was murdered by one of his slaves, with the result that Nero, according to the law, had to have all four hundreds slaves of the Padeanius household put to death, despite strong pressure in their favor from the public (Mason Hammond 1956, 61-133).

            Setbacks of this kind seemed to diminish Nero’s interest in his administrative duties. Eventually Nero devoted himself more and more to the real interests of his life: horse racing, singing, reading, dancing, acting, writing poetry, and sexual activities. Seneca and Burrus attempted to guide Nero toward circumspection in order to prevent his behavior from becoming a scandal, yet Nero persisted in increasingly boisterous and lawless behavior, breaking into Roman shops and getting into brawls. Despite the fact that marriage with her was socially out of the question, Nero had a long relationship with an ex-slave Acte, who also provided advice on governance matters to Nero. Agrippina was unhappy that another woman was now in the palace. She deplored Nero’s non-Romanesque taste for the books, poetry, and the arts, and of the “effeminate” Greek dress Nero in which he dressed. Aware of her disapproval and more concerned with his personal safety than filial obligation, in 59, Nero had Agrippina murdered while she vacationed by the Bay of Naples. Nero reported to the senate that Agrippina had plotted against his life obliging him to have her killed. This matricide remains one of Nero’s greatest canonical sins, inspiring numerous plays and paintings. Yet at the time, the senators, who had hated her unconstitutional role and arrogant behavior, did not entirely regret her removal and Nero was relieved to find that general population and Praetorian Guard did not seem to mind too much either (Suetonius ca et al. 2000).

            In 62, however, a new phase of Nero’s reign began, when both Seneca and Burrus disappeared from the scene. First Burrus died, of seemingly natural causes. He was succeeded as praetorian prefect by a pair of colleagues, Faineius Rufus and the sinister Gaius Ofonius Tigellinus, a Sicilian who encouraged Nero’s excesses and became a Rasputin-like figure of intrigue in the palace. Seneca found Tigellinus  and the newly willful Nero too difficult to work with, so Seneca resigned to enjoy the enormous wealth which he had succeeded in amassing. Soon afterwards, Nero showed his newfound independence by changing wives in typical overkill fashion. He divorced Octavia, who, although harmless, was exiled and put to death in 62. Her place was taken by Poppaeia Sabina. Nero perhaps underestimated the senators’ unfavorable reaction to his activities in a different field, that of the arts. At first the emperor had limited his stage appearances to private stages, but in 64 he broke out from this restriction and launched his public debut at Neapolis. There, to the pleasure of the passionately Hellenic-culture-loving Nero, his audience were Greeks. In 65, in Rome, at the encore performance of the Neronian Games which Nero had instituted on the Greek model the emperor began singing and reciting verse for Roman spectators. The emperor subsequently invented “youth” games, at which Nero performed escorted by a gang of soldiers known as the Augustiani. Nero performed a sort of ad-hoc rapping poetry based upon phrases tossed out by his drinking companions. Nero did in fact write original verses and also executed more than a few paintings and sculptures (Chapman and Juvenal Satura 5. English 1629).

            These aberrations, as the senatorial class regarded them, did not usurp the empire as a whole, but the Romans began to experience incursions from its periphery. In Britain there were uprisings and revolts over taxations, including the legendary insurrection led by Queen Boudicca. Meanwhile, at the other end of the territories, Roman troops were routed and defeated in what is now Turkey and Armenia. (In 63, however, the Romans were able to place Tiridates, one of Nero’s protégés, on the Armenian throne.) Nevertheless the situation at Rome deteriorated. A crucial event was the Great Fire of Rome in 64. Nero tried to pin the blame for the conflagration on the city’s small Christian community (regarded contemporaneously as a dissident group of Jews); the martyrdoms of Saint Peter and Saint Paul were ascribed to these persecutions. Still the rumor persisted that not only had Nero sung his own poem “The Sack of Troy” while enjoying the spectacle of the flames but also that he had actually started the fire himself, in order to be able to annex some land he wanted for the erection of the Golden House (Mason Hammond 1956, 61-133).

            Nero had already constructed a mansion, the Domis Tranisotira, which would become the mere entrance hall to the new and vastly greater Golden House. Designed by Nero’s architect-engineers Severus and Celer, the Golden House was a series of separate pavilions and kiosks set amid a designed landscape including a large artificial lake stocked with many varieties of fish. When the Golden House was complete, Nero exclaimed: “Now I can at last begin to live like a human being!” (Suetonius ca et al. 2000).

            Meanwhile, however, Nero’s relationship with the senatorial class was deteriorating sharply. One of Tigellinus’s first actions had been to revive the treason law and to liquidate a number of possible suspects. In 65 what was regarded as a serious plot against Nero emerged. Known as the Pisonian conspiracy, its leader were Faenius Rufus – the other praetorian prefect – and the retired Seneca. Nineteen executions or suicides followed, and thirteen banishments. Faenius and Seneca were among those who died, as did Seneca’s nephew, the poet Lucan, who had been one of Nero’s closest friends. During the years that followed the government continued to punish suspects. Nero himself had gone to Greece to display his artistic and physical prowess, collecting works of art and manuscripts, and ostensibly liberating the Greeks whom he loved. In Rome, amid continuing executions, a shortage of food became so acute that the ex-slave Heleius whom Nero had left in charge of the capital went to Greece and summon Nero urgently back (Seneca and ProQuest Information and Learning Company 1653).

            In January 68 Nero made a return to the capital. By March, most of the territorial generals were in revolt against Nero. When Nero heard that the Senate, too, had turned against him and condemned him to be flogged to death, he decided, with the assistance of a secretary, to commit suicide on 9 June by stabbing himself with a dagger. His last words were: “Qualis artifex peseo;” – “What an artist the world is losing in me.”(Suetonius ca et al. 2000).

DID LIBRARIES DECLINE AFTER NERO?

            For the first five hundred years of its history, Rome had no public library. Within the oral culture of the first Roman civilization, public readings and recitations were the normal fare of the intellectual classes. But the “long prosperity of Caesar’s regime…tended to direct men’s minds toward cultural diverions,” and by 37 Asinius Pollio had founded the first public library, followed by construction of two large public libraries, the Palatina and the Octaviana, effectively gaining the approval of the intellectuals during his reign (Suter 2008, 193).

            The new empire brought about the “creation of new civic ideals,” including “a growing appreciation of literary and aesthetic interests.” Literary groups sprang up, and with the emperor being “regarded as the chief patron … in the more celebrated circles” influence spread widely. The book commerce followed Roman trade routes, taking Latin literature to all comers of the empire. The works of Martial, Pliny, Seneca, and Ovid were for sale as far away as Gaul, Spain, and Britain, and during Nero’s many travels to Greece even he managed to collect or order the purchase of volumes by favorite authors in translated form (Suter 2008, 195). 

            The Roman baths served as social clubs, providing among other things, recreational reading for their patrons and public meeting rooms for the presentation and discussion of new literary works. The libraries in the bath houses, particularly during Nero’s brief era, rivaled the public libraries in collections and level of activity. While the Roman libraries shared several features with those of Nineveh, Alexandria, and Pergamum – for example, a connection to a temple or palace, artistic ornaments, and management methods – these features were taken to an extreme in Rome. Public libraries were attached to the greatest temples dedicated to Apollo, Juno, and Jove. Following the example of Asinius Pollio when he founded the first public library, Nero’s libraries became virtual art museums, containing statues, busts, medallions, and inscriptions as well as walls covered in painted frescoes. Nero’s public libraries seemed to follow the same basic physical form. There was a spacious reading room surrounded by stack rooms. The stacks were always divided into Greek and Latin sections, often arranged and catalogued separately (Kiefer, Highet, and MacInnes 2000; Houston 1988, 258-264).

            Ammianus Marcellinus, a Fourth Century Roman historian who chronicled library history from the First Century through his own time, describes a decadent manner of life among his contemporaries, who flaunt huge chariots and foppish clothing, who ignore intellectual pursuits and devote themselves to gluttony and drink. Ammianus says serious studies in noble houses have been “replaced by partying, philosophers by singers, rhetoricians by actors, libraries by water organs.” Ammianus’s reports suggest that reading even in the class of Romans who had access to libraries was on the wane, though proof that public libraries ceased to exist after the time of Constantine is insubstantial (Hoare 1952) (Thompson, J. W. 1940). 

            Honorary and funerary inscriptions of the first two centuries mention several dozen men involved in the administration or staffing of Roman public libraries. Inscriptions of the third century, however, mention only a few, and later inscriptions none at all. Does this mean that there were no such administrators, and thus no such libraries? Similarly, a late catalog of the administrative posts held by  officials throughout the Roman empire, the Notitia dignitatum contains no clear reference to any library officials. Since the Notitia was compiled circa 400, it is possible to infer that there were no such functionaries at that time (Halpern 2007) (Thompson, J. W. 1940).

            The reason the libraries shut down may have had more to do with the threat of barbarian attacks upon Rome which began with territorial skirmishes in the 300s and culminated in Rome’s sack (a continuing catastrophe rather than a sudden cataclysmic event ongoing from around 410 to 450). There is no convincing evidence that the Christian emperors thought it advisable to close the old public libraries. The apparent continued use of the library in the Forum of Trajan, the most likely  candidate for such closure, indicates rather the opposite (Hoare 1952) (Houston, G. W. 1988).

Though Ammianus refers only to libraries in private houses, there is evidence that the functions of the public libraries of Rome were breaking down by about 380. However, a significant number of libraries were still in existence in the early part of the fourth century, and at least one, in the Forum of Trajan, seems to have been open as late as 455. We do not yet know exactly which libraries were still open in the fourth century, or how they were eventually destroyed (Houston, G. W. 1988).

CONCLUSION

            Nero’s delusions about being an artiste along with his desire to please and secure the support of the Roman public resulted in the somewhat unintentional creation of some very popular and accessible public libraries in First Century Rome. Immediately following his death, Nero was, naturally and deservedly, the subject of much sorrow and resentment for the early Christian emperors. Over the past millennia, Nero, despite the intentions of moralizing writers and artists to depict him otherwise, has become a sort of model for the brooding, crazy antihero, a motif not more perfectly refined (and notably lacking the homicidal violence) until Oscar Wilde created a blueprint for a differently performed troubled soul.

            Unlike the heroic and devoted Cassiodorus or the forward-thinking Augustus, Nero’s benefit to library culture was almost completely accidental. However, there is no doubt that, during his brief time as emperor, there was at least the possibility that, as library historian and scholar Immanuel Wallerstein observed, “contrary to what most modern scholars have thought, that around one could still go to one of a number of public libraries in Rome and read a good book, or a bad one.”

VITA

NERO

Nero was born in Antium in 37.

His father was from a patrician Roman family, and his mother was Agrippina, daughter of a famous general, Germanicus. Agrippina later married the emperor Claudius, who adopted Nero. Stoic philospher Seneca was Nero’s tutor. Nero later had Seneca executed (Suetonius ca et al. 2000).

Agrippina poisoned Claudius, and in 54, at age 17, Nero became Rome’s teenaged emperor (Halpern 2007).

Historical rumors persist about Nero’s relationship with Agrippina, but what is certain is that Nero married Octavia at age 18, divorcing her (and having her executed) in 62. He remarried Poppaeia Sabina in 63, and also had (amid many other dalliances with people of both genders) a long relationship with a former slave, Acte (Halpern 2007).

In 55, Nero has a new Roman coinage struck featuring his and Agrippina’s faces, and also images referencing his interests in music and chariot racing.

During the early years of his reign, Nero opposed capital punishment, reduced taxes, and built numerous public bath houses equipped with public libraries that were truly open to the public, not just the senatorial class( Dix 1994, 282).

At first he was guided by his mother but as he grew older, Nero wanted to break free of her influence. In 59, he had his mother stabbed to death (Suetonius ca et al. 2000).

By 60, Nero had fallen into violence and disrepute, gambling, drinking, engaging in excessive sexual and violent behavior, and developing the “Roman candle” form of burning at the stake for which he remains famous (Suetonius ca et al. 2000).

Wild animal shows demonstrated the emperor’s ability to collect exotic animals from all over the world and bring them to Rome. Killing them displayed the emperor’s power over nature itself. This had a devastating effect on wildlife around the Empire. Lions were wiped out in Mesopotamia and the North African Elephant became extinct (Halpern 2007).

In 61, Nero set off on a musical tour of Greece, where he sang in competitions, always winning first prize. He even won the chariot race at the Olympic Games although he fell out of the chariot before the end of the race (Suetonius ca et al. 2000).

Nero believed he was a magnificent poet, writer, musician and singer. When he went to Greece he observed: “The Greeks alone are worthy of my genius. They really listen to music!” (Chadwick and De Courtivron 1996).

His Greek audiences loved their singing emperor, but Rome’s upper classes were shocked by Nero’s behavior (Suetonius ca et al. 2000).

In 64 fire destroyed the center of Rome. Nero blames the fire on groups of early Christians, but the impression persists that Nero set the fire himself in order to secure valuable real estate in the center of the city upon which to build his Golden Palace (Dix 1994, 282).

In 65 Nero learned of a plot to overthrow him. Suspecting everyone, he had dozens of leading Romans arrested and executed. This lead to a widespread rebellion in 68, when senators and military commanders rose against him. Nero threatens to kill himself several times, and then does so (Suetonius ca et al. 2000).

Nero’s death was followed by a period of civil war. After ten years of unrest, Vespasian founded the Flavian dynasty (Mason Hammond 1956, 61-133).

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Suetonius ca, Michael Grant, Robert Graves, and Sabine MacCormack. 2000. The Twelve Caesars. Classic biography. London: Penguin ; Penguin Putnam.

Suter, Keith. 2008. “Protecting the world’s cultural heritage.” The Contemporary Review 290, (1689).

Thompson, J.W. 1940. Ancient libraries. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1940.

Wallerstein, I. 1978. Libraries and our civilizations: a report prepared for the governor of the state of new york. New York: Governor’s Conference on Libraries.

Pere Ubu by Dora Maar, 1936

Authorship by Dora Maar gives this photograph authentic historic and even feminist credibility but I chose it because my main interest in art overall is the representation of animals. This is a very interesting view of a creature commonly seen in Florida (and all over), an armadillo (though this armadillo is of a different species than the nine-banded creatures who sadly cannot navigate traffic).
There is something primitive and otherwordly about armadillos and whatever Maar’s intent may have been in elevating such a seemingly lowly creature into this eerie portrait it is quite a lovely study. Since Maar was interested in primitivism, this seems apt.
With respect to technique, placing the pale, scaly armadillo against a grainy dark background removes it from a natural setting and allows for contemplation of the texture of its skin. The shadows on its chest accentuate its claws. There is no way to tell, framed in this manner, how big the armadillo is, whether he is, as Maar’s title suggests, “king” sized, or tiny like a fetus, which the armadillo also resembles.

Representation of three-dimensional forms through the single-point, single-plane perspective of the cathode-ray tube projection used for most views and projections of Internet urls has long been problematic for designers of Web pages intended to convey concepts of collected information. Understanding three-dimensional objects with only one viewpoint can be deceptive. In the context of viewing information displayed on Web pages, either for casual browsing or deep contemplation, users understand the limitations of what is seen and unconsciously process the limitations in experiencing volume, texture, space, gravity, mass, and weight, inherent in computer screen displays.
The technology created in 2001 by Pennsylvania-base CubicEye.net thus seems at first a movement toward unconventional and forward-thinking information display yet proves ultimately to be severely limited in scope, execution, and fundamental concept.
According to a story from an August 13, 2001, business news wire routing service for press releases, “The CubicEye metaphor of content management and delivery is based on effectively harnessing the mind’s ability to quickly and easily utilize spatial context.” What this means, basically, is that CubicEye displays linked, related Web pages in a perspectival format that appears to create depth as it theoretically reveals the content of numerous pages upon a single computer screen.

In fact CubicEye presents a visual organization system that is biologically, as well as logically, counterintuitive; this is likely the reason this “new” technology has not taken off. Viewed in light of Edward Tufte’s theories of graphic display, CubicEye is fails several of his stated criteria for good Web page organization and design. While CubicEye does show a lot of data, it does so clumsily and with a great deal of redundancy. The human eye cannot distinguish easily which marks, texts, and colors are critical to comprehension and which are irrelevant.

Some of Tufte’s principles are not directly applicable to the CubicEye program since the pageview system is user-generated and not limited to a specific collection of data or search parameter. Thus the “blame” for unattractive, unfriendly displays lies partially with the information manipulator. However, some violations of Tufte are inherent in the CubicEye interface. Some text by default will run along a vertical axis; graphics, when displayed out of their intended plane, are repulsive and ugly; and incongruent, viewer-deficient color combinations are unavoidable. Examples replicate an old-fashioned Autocad type of architectural rendering, shows how confusing a perspectivally disoriented amalgam of discrete Web pages can be when viewed using CubicEye’s system.

As an aside, when doing research for this project it was interesting to note that very few citations in mainstream or academic literature actually exist for CubicEye.net, disproportionate to its widespread word-of-mouth familiarity to library and information sciences students and educators. It turns out that CubicEye, along with more viable information organization programs and sites, was referenced in an edition of Library Technology Reports, authored by and subsequently repeatedly referenced by the American Library Association. The CubicEye.net site itself is today largely inert, citing just the few aforementioned press clippings.

Artists have long been fascinated by the presentation of the three dimensional in two dimensions and one plane. Tomasso Masaccio and Paolo Uccello were two painters of the early Florentine Renaissance who worked to develop realistic approximations of depth for use in painting. During the early Fifteenth Century, Masaccio and Uccello worked to develop mathematical parameters for the presentation of perspective. Masaccio pursued his research in the area of points of reference as experienced by the viewer while Uccello developed algebraic equations for the representation of depth perception in painting. The three primary directions for visual representation of depth are horizontal, vertical, and transverse, while the basic observational points experienced by the viewer are frontal, side, and planar.

The advent of computer imaging software has obviously made possible the presentation of not only depth but the visual rendering of 360 degree views and thus total virtual environments.
An interesting comparison to the work done by CubicEye is the output generated by another collaborative effort with the word the word “eye” in it, eyebeam.org, the technology and art collective. Eyebeam.org, a collective of artists mostly working in the “new media” of video and computer art have mounted extensive work employing ways of seeing and organizing information as leitmotifs. The work of one Eyebeam artist, Cory Arcangel, provides a counterpoint for CubicEye.net’s renderings in that it explores perspectival anomalies in computer animations and video games.

The work of one Eyebeam artist, Cory Arcangel, provides a counterpoint for CubicEye.net’s renderings in that it explores perspectival anomalies in computer animations and video games. Arcangel reinterprets the way information is organized for video game players by reducing, rather than increasing, the pieces of data available for inspection. One of Arcangel’s most well-known works, “Super Mario Clouds” was created by cracking open an old version of the popular Nintendo NES game and extracting all of the game’s visuals save the scrolling clouds of the background to the action. Exhibited as an installation on a large computer screen, the piece reveals itself as a devolution of the complicated narrative to the simplified, unstoried background. Arcangel’s other investigations have used the textual features of Nintendo games to compose random phrase fragments and unintended interpretations and perspectives of the video game “world,” reminding viewers of the two-dimensional nature of these created interfaces.

Eyebeam artist Cory Arcangel’s work is concerned with visual perception and perspectival anomalies as revealed through video games’ video game “world,” reminding viewers of the two-dimensional nature of these created interfaces.

When considering programs that seemingly offer new capacities for the organization and visualization of knowledge, library and information science students may actually find a gainful example in CubicEye.net, even though the site and technology itself offers a dubious product in terms of visual appeal and functionality. Examination of the site serves as an exercise in developing criticality around technology.
In an artist’s statement citing the motivation for his work, Arcangel said: “Modern software and hardware configurations often dictate a process of presenting the user with limitless options, thereby eliminating the need for invention. Exponentially growing options do not necessarily represent artistic progress or greater potential. In fact, they might do quite the opposite: mediocrity may stem from user-friendliness.”

References
“2ce launches CubicEye developer tools for 3D web and application interfaces” (2001), Business Wire.
Aiken, J. A. (1995). “The Perspective Construction Of Masaccio’s “Trinity” Fresco And Medieval Astronomical Graphics.” Artibus et Historiae, 16(31), 171-187.
Artists’ statements.(2001). Leonardo, 34(5, Ninth New York Digital Salon), 523-526.
Boxer, S. (2005, June 28). “Web Works That Insist On Your Full Attention.” The New York Times, pp. 1.
Houpt, S., Globe, & Update, M. (2004, June 17). “FrankenArt: The mix and mash future; it’s the new big thing: Take existing works, mess around with their content and form, and create your own art.” Breaking News from globeandmail.com.
Imagine Mining Art From Data.(2005, November 19). The Toronto Star, pp. H05.
Kemp, M., Massing, A., Christie, N., & Groen, K. (1991). Paolo Uccello’s ‘Hunt In The Forest’. The Burlington Magazine, 133(1056), 164-178.
Lavallee, A., & Journal, T. W. S. (2007, December 19). “Finding Art In Online Junk.” The Associated Press
McNamee,Tim Jonze with David. (2006, December 9). “Sonic Boom!: From Filmmakers To Fashion Designers, Graffiti Artists To Grime Acts – Retro Games Are Back In Business.” The Guardian (London) – Final Edition, pp. 4.
“Practical Applications Of 2D And 3D Information Visualization For Information Organizations” (2005) Library Technology Reports v41 i1 p55(10)
Ryzik, M. (2007, November 28).” Making Old Hardware Play New Tunes.” The New York Times, pp. 1.