endlessrarities | Back to Wroxeter...

I thought tonight we'd try out a little compare and contrast exercise...

Viewers who watch British television may remember a series shown last year which featured the building of a Roman villa using Roman construction materials and techniques. More reality tv than historical re-enactment, I gave it a miss....

Evidently, the villa in question was built at Wroxeter, giving a splendid opportunity for visitors to the Roman city to get up close and personal with a realistic slice of Roman life:-

So far, so good. I was impressed.

Until I went inside, where the comedy value by far outweighed the historical accuracy.

First of all, the mosaic:-

Yeah, I can live with this. There are some pretty lousy Romano-British mosaics to be found in villas scattered around the country. There's a particularly goofy looking wolf somewhere, but I've never managed to track it down since my undergrad days - perhaps because the Establishment tries to keep it under wraps as an inferior example of 'Roman' art.

I don't know what our friends at Pompeii and Herculaneum would have made of it, since this is what they were more used to...

Okay, nuff said...

And then there's the frescoes...

Here's the first two for comparison, One is from Wroxeter, the other from Herculaneum. No prizes for guessing which is which:-

And the same goes for Comparison #2:-

Okay, that was uncalled for on my part. The second image here is of course a mosaic....

And the moral of this tale? Do what the Romans do. If you're going to build a villa, use a builder. The ones gainfully employed here did a damned good job. But for the interior decor??? Use a proper artist, for goodness sake! You know it's for the best!!