Provenance

COHORT 5

The Roman charioteer would say his era 

began at the dawn of the last two millennia

in a country touched by Mediterranean sun,

not on the silver screen of the last century,

all Technicolor sputter and gore, Charlton

Heston in Ben-Hur to generations of American 

moviegoers. What did they know of war or pain? 

Fifteen years before their fathers had stormed 

the beaches of Normandy, crawled on their

hands and knees through German forests

toward a dream of a better world. Instead 

the gilded past upstages the longer battles

of history, the saturated Hollywood drama:

flash of spear-tips in the sun, blood pooling

on the track, dust kicked up in the noonday

heat. The Romans cheered at crashes they

called naufragia, or shipwreck. After 

Augustus, races were marked with small

golden dolphins tipped at the end of each 

lap to indicate passage. Passage, as in ships

journeying across the wine-dark sea to

faraway ports. Halfway around the world 

these ships carried below the last remnants

of the empire, statues without origin or name.

Writing: Eliza Browning

Music: Stephanie Yen

Art: Helen Mak