June 9

Bright and early in the morning, we headed off to the Galleria Borghese where would be able to see some statues by Bernini. I'm going to talk about my favorite Bernini statue I saw, Hades and Persephone. This statue is amazing. I would encourage anyone who goes to Rome to take a trip to the Borghese Gallery just to see this. The amount of detail is incredible. One part of the statue that really stood out to me, and probably everyone who sees the statue, is the area where Hades is grabbing Persephone's thigh. It looks exactly as how it would if you saw someone actually grabbing someone's flesh with force like that. It's incredible to think that someone was able to perfect such a delicate task. Also, just in case no one knows the greek mythology of this story (I didn't) here it is:

Persephone was the daughter of the goddess Demeter. One day Persephone was dancing with her friends in a sunny meadow, having a good time, picking flowers.

Suddenly Persephone's spooky uncle Hades burst out of the ground and grabbed her and pulled her into his chariot! He took Persephone (purr-SEFF-oh-nee) under the ground to his kingdom, the land of the dead, and told her that he wanted her to be the Queen of the Underworld and marry him.
Persephone was very sad there under the ground. She wanted to go up into the sunshine again. But Hades would not let her. Persephone was so sad that she would not eat nor drink.

Meanwhile, back up in the land of the living, Persephone's mother Demeter was looking everywhere for her and could not find her. She cried and cried. Finally she went to her brother Zeus, who was also Persephone's father, and asked him to help find Persephone. Zeus, sitting way up there on top of Mount Olympus, was able to see where Persephone was. He told Hades to give her back.

But Hades said he would only give Persephone back if she had really not eaten or drunk anything from the land of the dead. Persephone had not eaten much, but it turned out she HAD eaten six pomegranate seeds. So they agreed that Persephone could spend six months a year above ground with her mother, but she would have to spend the other six months in the land of the dead with her uncle/husband. And that is how it has been since then, according to the story: that's why we have the seasons.

If you look at Persephone's story another way, you can see that it is a way of talking about how grain grows. Persephone represents the grain. Like grain, she comes up out of the earth in the spring, and dances in the meadow with her friends. Her mother Demeter is glad to see her and makes the sun shine. In the fall, though, Persephone dies as the grain comes ripe and is harvested. She has to go back under the ground again, as men plant the seeds under the ground. Persephone's mother is sad and cries, like the rain in winter. Then every spring she comes up again.

After going to the Galleria Borghese, we proceeded to go to the 250 year old St. Priscilla catacomb. This was the first time that I will have been in a catacomb, so I really did not know what to expect (picture above on left). Although we got there after the catacomb was supposed to close for a couple hours, we were able to get in. A catacomb is an underground cemetery where thousands of people would be buried. In this specific catacomb, there are about 40,000 niches. These catacombs would consist of up to 20 kilometers of space. This catacomb was used to bury people from the second to the fifth century.