A bronze currency bar, called an “aes signatum,” Rome, mid-200s BCE. These bars, stamped by the government to prove their authenticity, were used before smaller coins in Italy. This one is inscribed in the ancient Umbrian alphabet, which is descended from Etruscan.
every now and then i have to think of the roman family from two thousand years ago that buried their little daughter in a boy's athletic-themed sarcophagus and i weep a little because that's the softest declaration of love i can possibly imagine
oh rome as heterotopia (a physical site in which diverse, discontinuous, and ambiguous slices of time and space can be accommodated) we’re really in it now