Trascrizione
Funerary monument with dancing maidens
They dance light upon the notes of gentle music, keeping the beat with their unclad feet or the whirling of their mantles.
Their tunics ripple in myriad folds, shadowing the cadenced movements of each body. The cluster of grapes scrolled across the monument frieze evokes the world of Diònysus, the god of wine, intoxication, and of enthousiasmós, the state of supreme happiness and physical and spiritual communion with the divinity.
These are the five maidens that welcome us to the Tota Italia exhibition in the Scuderie del Quirinale. The exhibition narrates the Romanization of Italy. Encounters, conflicts and hybridizations in a period stretching from the 4th century BC to the Julio-Claudian age, the first century of our times.
The breathtaking cultural diversities of the pre-Roman world blended in every nook of the Italian peninsula. Languages and ideas were lost in the process but many others flourished. Under the banner of Rome, a new community was forged.