Dea Roma

I.

I think the Piazza del Popolo became both instantaneously and very gradually my favorite spot in Rome. The statues here aren’t as ornate as at the Trevi Fountain or Piazza Navona, but I think this works in their favor. There is never the crush of bodies in Piazza del Popolo that these other places are plagued with; never the desperate attempt to photograph everything: a seven year old smiling with gelato dripping from his hand and onto his “I heart Roma” shirt, a newly engaged couple kissing in front of the Neptune’s lion, hidden in the center fountain, the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, at Piazza Navona. People snapping pictures before, if ever, actually looking at things.

The lions that surround the Flaminian obelisk in Piazza del Popolo were placed there in the 1800’s, a strange adaptation to the central structure, which is well over 2000 years old. They are supposed to be in Egyptian style to compliment the hieroglyphics on the obelisk itself, Ramses II, brought to Rome by Augustus in 10 B.C. It originally stood near Circus Maximus; now it is positioned behind me as I sit at the foot of Pincio Hill.

It is not the feral and masculine lions that fascinate me about Piazza del Popolo, nor is it the blatantly phallic obelisk, castrated somewhat, in my opinion, by the cross that Catholic Rome placed on top of it.

Instead, whenever I visit this piazza I sit by the fountain of Dea Roma. She is the only figure standing upright in the tableau, holding a torch high, tireless, broad shoulders and hips, strong calves – strong enough to stand poised through centuries, shield at her side. At her feet the she-wolf suckles Romulus and Remus in infant form. On either side of her lounge two male figures, Tevere, the river, and Aniente, about whom I can't seem to find much information. This doesn't bother me: it is the goddess who holds my attention.

“Roma” signifies strength, and because of this she is the patron goddess of the once-mighty Roman empire. She is the she-wolf, and like all women she is sometimes seen as virgin, as mother, as whore, her image and meaning always twisted to fit the needs of men in power. But who is she? There is barely any information about her, although it does seems like she actually was adapted from the Greek Athena, Athens’ patron, and the Etruscan goddess Minevra, from which the Romans stole the name “Minerva.”

I have sat by the Fontana Dea Roma at various times during the day and at night, wondering who she is.

I visited her in the late afternoon, my feet in the fountain, cooling off from a day of walking on hot stones, of tripping and nearly falling because the cobblestones are uneven, but what a waste it would be to walk through Rome with my head down.

I stared up at her as the sun was beginning to set and the heat from the day was finally starting to lift. I sat between the three churches that surround the square, two in the south couching the "trident" that leads into the center, and one in the north by the Porta del Popolo, where Nero's remains had to be buried on holy ground to keep his ghost from wandering. The churches are all Santa Maria’s: Santa Maria dei Miracoli, Santa Maria de Montesanto, Santa Maria del Popolo - more virgin goddesses.

What does it mean that ancient cities -Rome and Athens - so historically patriarchal, have chosen female figures as their patrons and protectors? And why must they be virgin goddesses? Why was it that the only women with power and influence in ancient Rome were the Vestal Virgins? Why is female power so closely related to virginity?

What is it about sex that makes a woman dangerous, so that having sex weakens and domesticates her, while abstaining entirely makes her powerful? Is it our ability to bring life into the world that makes men feel so threatened – and if so, why is it that this thing that is so mysterious it should be sacred and revered then twisted and deformed; sex as sin, an act that makes a woman a whore if she is not married, and confines her to the role of “mother,” and “wife,” ceasing to be plainly and miraculously “woman” anymore if she is.

I wonder if it really matters in the end anyway; if, ultimately, the labels men attach to women really carry any weight.

As the sun sets, the bells from all the Santa Marias start to ring. For the first time in my life, I think, I hear real church bells. At the church in Bayside the bell sounds are all from recordings; the tower in St. Robert’s is empty, or if not, the bells are still and rusty from neglect. But when the bells begin to ring in Piazza del Popolo, they ring loud. I feel it on the air and under my skin and I am perplexed because I’m not really religious anymore - I don’t understand where this feeling comes from.

It reminds me for some reason of being a little girl and going outside to play on cloudy days, shouting at the sun to come out so that I could stay there longer and sometimes it did. And when I was older and too shy to yell for the sun in the courtyard outside our apartment, singing softly under my breath for sunlight, a little pagan girl although I had just made my First Communion, so sure the sun was listening even if I couldn’t see the chariot.

Bells always sound like they’re calling you somewhere, but I don’t know where to go, so I sit still and watch her, occasionally catching the quick silhouette of bell-skirt moving out of the corner of my eye, feeling the sound pulsing across the square.

II.

It is quiet in the piazza in the early morning. It is almost 2AM and I have washed off the day, my hair still damp from the shower, a soft chill settling on my skin now that the sun has been gone for hours. I have my feet again in the fountain, which seems colder than usual in the absence of daylight. The impossible heat of Rome has finally broken. My right leg, practically from my toes to a few inches below my knee, is swollen to maybe two times its usual size, the result of being tackled FIFA style during an amateur soccer game. It’s been almost a week – six days, actually – since I was so thoroughly destroyed playing soccer, the second game I’ve played in maybe twelve years, and it seems that my leg is only getting bigger and more unfortunate looking. Because there is no ice in the St. John’s dorms, I have hauled myself out of the campus and, instead of visiting a bar or a club crawling with Italian men, am finally visiting a more legitimate site in Rome for the ice cold water and the opportunity to write.

There are sanitation workers circling the square, spraying water down and sweeping it up in large trucks. Sometimes they whistle when they pass any female stragglers in the piazza; mostly they leave us alone. A car with two Carabinieri drives by. They ask, in Italian, if I’m going to bathe in the fountain. I say no, and they laugh and drive away. I wonder what would happen if someone were to light the torch that Dea Roma is holding somehow. I think that could perhaps that could be a love story, something short and sweet, but dismiss it as juvenile and cliché, or maybe as a story I am still too shy to write.

I think of where I have been today. In Rome there are lions in the walls. I wonder what they are watching for, they even haunt the Jewish Ghetto with expressions so fierce and human I think they must be gods or spirits invading even this part of the city, where there are no figures on the walls, no Atlases holding up balconies strewn with flowers, hibiscus, nuova guinea. They do not peek or stare but watch, always with the same untiring expression, with warnings, all teeth and eyebrows.

There are gods in every stone. I must have seen hundreds by now; every corner, every fountain, regardless of how many crosses are placed on top, no matter how loudly the bells ring; bells which sound eerie and ancient anyway, older than the churches they ring from, beckoning people to cool, sacred places inside. I never listen in church, not to the priest at least, but instead to the echoes of chanting and song and people breathing and restless babies. There are hundreds of churches in Rome, temple ruins and ancient gods, but I return to Dea Roma.

I feel surrounded by the age of this place, the heat and the color. I exist in some fine line between the oppressive knowledge that there is more here than I will ever understand, and the comfort of knowing that at least subconsciously, I can feel it. I am within it. I am connected to it just by breathing.

Everything in Rome is moving. The air dances like a harem girl, captured and transported along roads that still exist now, the same as they did then, whenever “then” is…centuries ago, millennia maybe. Tomatoes strew on cobblestone in Campo de Fiori when the market is closing for the day. Uneven streets that demand you walk slowly if you don’t want to fall. People are moving, cars and bicycles, dogs trained to sleep on the street and look as thin as they possibly can, babies pre-programmed to beg in the hot sun and stone before they can even speak, tourists from a hundred different countries surrounding the Spanish Steps and the Trevi Fountain, the majestic atmosphere that is emitted somehow by Bernini’s fountain in Piazza Navona. But Dea Roma stands still, silent and proud, familiar to me in a way that I don’t yet understand, and perhaps never will; Dea Roma in this female city, endlessly and always a mystery.