College students are invited to explore Roman daily life with exciting virtual events, including downloadable board games of chance and strategy, ancient Roman recipes, and live events including nightly trivia challenges and daily talks with Villa curators, educators, and conservators.
Highlights include a Roman skin care and cosmetic makeover with historical makeup artist Rebecca Butterworth, who will attempt a makeover based on the 2,000-year-old mummy portrait of a Roman-Egyptian woman on display at the Getty Villa, and a dessert tutorial with food archaeologist Farrell Monaco, who will recreate a 2,000-year-old dessert of honeyed dates from a book of recipes by first-century gourmet Apicius.
Another highlight of the week, especially for those familiar with OGL-SRD5/Dungeons & Dragons 5th ed., will be a brand-new tabletop role-playing adventure, Land of Myth: Homer’s Odyssey™, based on Seven Thebes Ltd’s Land of Myth: Age of Palaces™. Students will be the first to play the roles of familiar and new Homeric characters as they join Telemachus on his search for his father Odysseus and encounter dangers and adventures with a new twist. Virtual events will be both live and pre-recorded. A calendar of events is available at Ancient Rome @Home.
About Rebecca Butterworth
Rebecca Butterworth creates videos exploring the history of makeup. They provide an opportunity for her to tell the intimate stories of historical characters who don’t often appear in mainstream history. Her work with Mac Cosmetics, on many films, and as Director of Makeup for Millennium FX, a leading British SFX company, has given her extensive experience in makeup and special effects.
About Farrell Monaco
Farrell Monaco is an experimental archaeologist and food writer whose research centers on food, food preparation, and food-related ceramics in the Roman Mediterranean. She has worked as a team member on Roman food archaeology projects, including at Pompeii. Farrell is well known for her experimental archaeology projects where she painstakingly recreates Roman recipes using instruction and ingredients sourced from the archaeological, written, and pictorial records.