Salvete! Hoping my American readers are having a very pleasant Thanksgiving weekend. To my international readers, an excellent late November weekend to you as well!

Here is a new process shot featuring the monk Anastasius for the first time. I also included the model for the mural in this panel, as proof that such stern and foreboding images of Jesus have precedent outside of Giancarlo's and my imagination.

Also, I'd like to give another quick shout-out to a Giancarlo project featured on Kickstarter.  This is a fascinating-looking sci-fi romp called Forgotten Planet with British writer Pete Rogers, featuring some of the unintended consequences of downgrading Pluto from its status as a planet. This project has about two weeks left on KS. I fully recommend checking it out and, if you have enjoyed Giancarlo's amazing work on  Amiculus thus far, supporting even more of it in this exciting action-adventure book-in-progress. 

Well, Giancarlo is taking the week off from Amiculus for work in Milan, so no new art in this update. 

Well, now, wait a minute, that's kinda' mean, leaving you guys high and dry like that, so hey, what if we move forward with more...

1) Family Ties of the Caesars: No Roman emperor was directly followed by his natural son until Titus succeeded Vespasian in A.D. 79. But that doesn't mean they didn't keep it in the family, especially among the Julio-Claudians, the first imperial dynasty. While Tiberius was unrelated to Augustus except by adoption, Caligula was both great-grandson and great-grand-nephew to the first emperor. Claudius was Caligula's uncle and cousin. And Nero was Claudius's grand-nephew, his second cousin, and his stepson, not to mention his own mother's lover. Mercifully, the Julio-Claudian line ended before the emperors started appearing in their portraits with gills and webbed feet. 


2) Are You Not Entertained? Some say the Roman gladiatorial games grew out of an Etruscan funeral tradition, where slaves were made to fight to the death upon the demise of their master.  If so, it didn't take long for them to lose any ceremonial meaning once someone learned you could sell tickets to them. 

 Naturally, once you had enough of a crowd to fill the Colosseum, you had to up the ante on the thrills. Game masters and rulers did this in a number of ways, using large numbers of fighters (10,000 gladiators in the largest games), exotic animals (from lions and tigers to giraffes, ostriches and even a whale) and just plain silliness (women fighting dwarves). Celebrity death-matches were few and mostly fixed: the emperor Claudius was the guy who fought the whale, which was likely beached at the time. 

Upon Constantine's conversion to Christianity, gladiator matches were seen as the sadistic, horrible, wretched, gory yet still terribly-exciting spectacles they were, and, after another 200 years, were immediately banned. Christian Rome was forced to subsist on a sober entertainment diet of deadly riots at the chariot races and live sex in the theater, which, everyone agreed, couldn't compare with an old man poking at a humpback with a pointy stick.


3) And Speaking of the Theater...Modern drama owes a lot to Roman theater, which built upon the more stylized Greek foundations to create a more realistic, naturalistic structure to comedy and drama that writers such as Shakespeare relied upon for many of their works. That said, what started out as a continuation of a proud Greek theatrical tradition eventually devolved into lewd, debauched spectacle by the high empire, replete with circus acts, gratuitous nudity and sex, fake blood and viscera by the bucketful and, worst of all, mimes. (Shudder.) 

Actors themselves were valued in Roman society at the same level as prostitutes and gladiators, and different emperors dealt with actors differently. Augustus banned all men of status from the stage, except for a dwarf named Lycius (dwarves again!) who had a very powerful stage presence and speaking voice. Justinian I, on the other hand, married Theodora, a nubile young actress previously known for kinky animal acts involving swans. Can't imagine what his reasoning must have been.

Other emperors dabbled with the profession themselves. Nero had the most overt artistic ambitions of any emperor, as previous fun facts have demonstrated. Toward the end of his life, it is said he became obsessed with becoming a mime. He was soon after deposed and driven to suicide. Not that I'm suggesting there was a connection or anything.


 

I mentioned in a previous fun-fact the draconian measures the Byzantines would resort to in order to depose their emperors, namely, by way of mutilation. Emperors needed to maintain a semi-divine perfection, and blemishes such as missing one's tongue, ear or lower jaw were kind of disqualifiers from the profession. However, here is a fun-fact about the emperor who broke the mold on this convention.

Justinian II (A.D. 685-695, 705-711) was a scumbag among scumbags. He was despotic, egomaniacal, and an uncompromising religious zealot to boot, trampling foes and allies alike for the first ten years of his reign, even attempting to kidnap the Pope when he pissed him off. Finally, when the inevitable revolt came, his usurpers cut off his nose and banished him to the Crimea, where he was to spend the rest of his life pondering the error of his ways. 

Only how can you err when you are blessed with a divine mandate? This is how Justinian saw it, and after strapping on a golden nose to replace his real one, he raised an army and sailed back to Constantinople to reclaim his throne. Caught in a storm, his men begged him to pray to God and offer forgiveness to his enemies and save their lives. He instead swore that if God calmed the seas, he would destroy every enemy who came before him. The storm stopped. And everyone thought to himself "Oh, THIS can only go well..."

With the help of several of his former barbarian foes, Justinian besieged Constantinople, slipped into the city, captured the usurpers, and set to work carrying out God's will in spectacular and gory fashion. His enemies utterly crushed, Justinian was restored to the throne, and there was much rejoicing, sort-of. 

And that's where it ended, right? Well, no, of course not. Because when Justinian said every enemy, he meant every enemy. And he saw enemies everywhere. So the merry slaughter continued. Had to keep God happy, after all. 

Fortunately for western civilization, he only managed to make it a little ways through the Constantinopolitan phone book before another rebellion rose against him. Justinian was executed, his family was put down with extreme prejudice, and the policy of institutional mutilation favored blinding from here on out. Because when you put out a guy's eyes and exile him to the ends of the earth, it's a lot harder for him to find his way back, no matter how much of a bad-ass he is.