According
to the old legend the Romans had a code of conduct obliging the one who takes
an oath to put his hand in the Bocca della Verità (Mouth of Truth) at the
church of Saint Mary in Cosmedin. If they were not telling the truth the mouth
would close and bite off the liars hand.
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| Firstness: The entity - http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/Bocca_della_Verità |
The
Bocca della Verità is at least 2200 years old and weighs about 1200 kilos. It
is a Pavonazzetto marble disk depicting a head, where the eyes, nostrils and
mouth are carved all the way through the 19 cm thick stone. According to
studies, it probably represents the god Océanus. He is the source of all
rivers, the entire sea, all springs and all deep wells according to Homer
(Iliad 21. 194 ff). This is why most scholars presume it to be the original
drain cover of the ancient temple of Jupiter or the temple of Hercules. The
temple was built using a similar circular domed rotunda or vault roof
construction as the Pantheon with an oculus, round open space, in the middle.
That would also explain the 2 holes on the side of the stone, which could have
been used for the horizontal fixing on a vaulted roof.After the demolition of
the temple the Bocca della Verità was placed in the narthex or portico of the
Santa Maria in Cosmedin church around 1650 where it stayed ever since and became
known as a place to take the test of truth.
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| Secondness: The Relation - http://retroblogrome.com/ the-roman-trickery-of-bocca-della-verita/ |
To
put this in perspective, the temple of Hercules is directly across the street
from the Cosmedin church. In 1953, the general public was introduced to the
Bocca della Verità in the Audrey Hepburn film, Roman Holiday. I won’t go
into the significance and details of this scene. If you haven’t seen the movie
yet, then you really should! It is a classic. It’s Audrey Hepburn. It is filmed
in Rome.
Over
Thanksgiving I break I traveled to Roma to visit my sister who is completing
her study abroad semester. We did a lot of sight seeing and ate a lot of pizza
and gelato. It was a fantastic week. Of course there are long lines to see the
world famous ruins and art in Rome. We decided to go see the Mouth of Truth on
a whim and didn’t think there would be a line. On the contrary there was a line
extending out of the church. We waited and waited and when we got close enough
we realized everyone was talking about Roman Holiday and imitating the
scene in front of the Mouth.
Since
the line was pretty long, I had a lot of time to think about Charles Sanders
Peirce. I was thinking about the profound effect a popular film had on this
artifact. All of these people were excited to imitate this scene and reproduce
an iconic moment. Maybe it was the intense sugar high from all of the gelato
but I started thinking in Peircean triads.
First
we have the entity; the Mouth of Truth. Second, we it’s relation to the film.
Third, we have fanatical representation of an image. Now the artifact embodies
new meaning in relation to the film. According to Peirce “Now Thirdness is
nothing but the character of an object which embodies Betweenness of Mediation
in its simplest and most rudimentary form; and I use it as the name of that
element of the phenomenon which is predominant wherever Mediation is
predominant and which reaches its fullness in Representation” (Peirce 244).
The
Thirdness depicted below is not the image itself, but the element of image that
represents the Mediation of the Roman Holiday phenomenon. Moreover,
there are certainly hundreds of these images taken everyday representing this
same Thirdness. It is interesting to see how meaning of an entity can change
given each new relation to new entities or new meanings. Peirce certainly discusses
this phenomenon but I hadn't thought too much about it in archaeological
tourism.
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| Thirdness: Representation |
References:
Peirce,
Charles S., and James Hoopes. Peirce on Signs: Writings on Semiotic.
Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina, 1991. Print.
Post by Becky Fisher
