60. The Preserved Girl-Corpse of Ancient Rome
Episode 60: The Preserved Girl-Corpse of Ancient Rome
AMY: Hi everyone, and welcome to another Lost Ladies of Lit mini episode! I’m Amy Helmes…
KIM: And I’m Kim Askew… last week we did an episode on lost lady of lit Gertrude Trevelyan, and as we noted in that episode, while at Oxford she won a major award for a poem she wrote called “Julia, Daughter of Claudius.”
AMY: “It’s a major award!!!”
KIM: [laughing] “Must be Italian.” Anyway, her winning poem was a 250-line, blank-verse poem about a young woman from ancient Rome. She was discovered during the Italian Renaissance, and we’ll be discussing her “life after death” today.
AMY: Yeah, I hadn’t heard this story until we were doing research on G.E. Trevelyan, and of course, we’re always inspired to dig a little deeper when we stumble upon something interesting, and this case was no exception.
KIM: That’s right, and it’s funny you should use the term “digging,” because that’s how “Julia,” the young woman from Trevelyan’s poem, was actually discovered, supposedly, back in the spring of 1485.
AMY: Okay, so according to the website Medievalists.net, one historical account of this event came from a letter written by a man named Bartolomeo Fonzi, who was a scholar and professor of literature at the University of Florence during Renaissance times. So in a letter to his friend, he details that in 1485, some workmen were digging up some marble along the Appian Way six miles outside of Rome when they made a startling discovery. They hit upon a marble box, and when they opened it, they found quote, “a corpse, lying on its face, covered by a layer of fragrant bark two inches thick; all of the casket was likewise smeared with the same fragrant mixture like some sort of plaster.”
KIM: I’m thinking Raiders of the Lost Art, Part 6, right here.
AMY: Yeah!
KIM: I’m thinking about these workers cracking open this casket and it’s giving me the heebie-jeebies already. I would not be the one lifting that lid!
AMY: No way. Me neither. But somebody was undaunted enough to not only open the casket, but to start peeling away all this plaster-and bark within the casket. And underneath it all, they found the body of a young girl, but get this… physically, she was perfectly preserved! So I’m going to go ahead and read on from Bartolomeo Fonzio’s letter to his friend:
When this sweet smelling bark was removed, the girl’s face (to begin at the top) was rather pale and as if she had been buried that very day. Her hair, long and dark and firmly fixed to the scalp, was gathered in a knot and divided into twin tresses in girlish manner, all covered by a hairnet of silk interwoven with gold.
Then there appeared small ears, a short forehead, dark eyebrows, the eyes beneath shapely and bright. The nose was still intact, and so soft that if it was pressed by a finger it would flex and yield. The lips were a pale red, the teeth snow-white and small, the tongue from the roof of the mouth all scarlet. The cheeks, chin, and throat – you’d think they belonged to a living person. The arms hung down from the shoulders entire, and would followed wherever you led them. The hands were stretched out, the fingers rounded and tapering with translucent nails, and so firmly fixed that they could not be torn from the joints. Her breast, stomach and belly were equally broad, and appeared white when the fragrant bark was taken away. The nape of her neck, her back and buttocks retained their position and shape and graceful appearance. The beauty of her hips, thighs, shins, and feet likewise gave the impression of a living person.
And reading that, I just want to start singing, “Head, shoulders, knees and toes!” He really goes all the way down!
KIM: Yeah.
AMY: So he also sketched out a drawing of the girl laying by the casket. (He included that in the letter, and we can include a link to it in our show notes. So this girl was said to be maybe around 15-years old by one account, though I had also seen an anecdote that she could have been more like early 20s.
KIM: So that description you read where she looks like she’s only sleeping… it’s almost as if she’s Snow White or a vampire or something… were there any other sources to corroborate that this was a real incident?
AMY: Yeah, so several other writers did reference it, including Daniele da San Sebastiano, who wrote that this plaster-like pickling material that was in the casket was made up of “myrrh, frankincense, aloe, and other priceless drugs”, and he added she looked “so lovely, so pleasing, so attractive, that, although the girl had certainly been dead fifteen hundred years, she appeared to have been laid to rest that very day.” That was one of his quotes. She was also referenced in a late 1800s book by John Addington Symonds, who was a well-respected cultural historian and Renaissance expert of his day. So this isn’t just, like, a one-off anecdote.
KIM: Wow. So she was unintentionally exhumed during the Renaissance, but she actually lived during the era of ancient Rome. So who was she?
AMY: That’s kind of a mystery. Trevelyan refers to her as “Julia, Daughter of Claudius” in her poem. And that comes from one report that there was an inscription found alongside her that named her as such, but that’s not entirely certain. There was another rumor that this was the daughter of Cicero, named Tulliola (and that turned out to be definitely false; it’s not her). But the fact that she was buried coated in such expensive ointments meant she was certainly from a wealthy or famous family. There are actually a lot of tombs and mausoleums for patrician families of ancient Rome all along the Appian Way. But regardless of how famous she was during her lifetime, it paled next to the fame she received in death, after her body was unearthed.
KIM: Yeah, according to legend, tens of thousands of people made pilgrimages to come see this perfectly-preserved corpse. Her body was transported back to Rome accompanied by throngs of people, and it was put on display, apparently, outside the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the Capitoline Hill.
AMY: Right, and it was like a Medieval version of a Ripley’s Believe It or Not exhibit kind of thing. But no sooner had she been discovered and put on display than she disappeared again. The body mysteriously vanished.
KIM: I mean, obviously, a prince came along and kissed her, and they lived happily ever after!
AMY: Right. Yes, you’re right, that’s got to be it. No, actually… so there were some reports that Pope Innocent VIII was becoming concerned about the sensation this corpse was causing in the city. He was worried that “Julia” (we’ll call her “Julia”) was attracting an almost cult-like following and so he decided they needed to just make the whole thing go away. He ordered city officials to take the girl away and re-bury her outside the city walls. And then in another version of that story, she was dumped in the Tiber river.
KIM: You know, obviously it’s not unheard of for corpses to be mummified or preserved somehow. I mean, we know a lot about that from ancient Egypt.
AMY: Yes, exactly. But it’s also reminding me of a story (Kim: I don’t know if you heard this). It was from a few years ago. They found a glass-fronted coffin that was unearthed in 2016 in San Francisco in somebody’s backyard when they were renovating their house… the casket contained the body of a similarly preserved little girl (it was a three-year-old toddler who had died almost 150 years ago.) Do you know that story?
KIM: No, I had never heard of that. Wow.
AMY: Okay, so in 2017 scientists were able to identify who this little girl was, with the help of DNA. Her name was Edith Howard Cook. (This sounds totally made up, but it’s all true.) There are some news stories you can find online about this story, including pictures and truly… if you look at the pictures… so the coffin has a little glass window, and the girl has blonde hair and rosy cheeks and little pink cupid-bow lips. She looks like she’s just sleeping. It’s really kind of a haunting image. And if you check it out, it’s not gruesome; it’s not going to freak you out. It’s just really arresting to see it.
KIM: It’s just so interesting to think about how many preserved corpses there might be underground.
AMY: I know. You don’t think of that happening.
KIM: Yeah. I can also understand how the people who happened upon this preserved Roman corpse might have looked on this as some sort of miraculous or supernatural event. On the other hand, it also sounds a little bit like a headline from The National Enquirer or something like that.
AMY: Right, and Bartolomeo Fonzio, in his letter, kind of echos how incredulous the whole thing was in his letter. He wrote: “I only wish I could do justice in words to the beauty and attractiveness of the cadaver, which would seem amazing to posterity and quite incredible were it not that it was witnessed by the entire city.”
KIM: Okay, so we have Gertrude Trevelyan to thank for making us aware of this story… she was the first woman to earn the Newdigate Prize for this poem (previous winners included Oscar Wilde and John Ruskin, by the way). The poem ended up being published by Blackwell’s (a British publisher) and it was read on BBC radio. Trevelyan told the press that she’d actually written the poem as a joke.
AMY: Yeah, I love how cavalier that is. “I just scribbled that out. I’m surprised to have won” There’s an article about her winning the award in an issue of The Spectator from that year, but I couldn’t manage to find a copy of the poem anywhere on the Internet. So if anybody listening happens to find it, let us know, I’d be interested.
KIM: Yeah. And a little tidbit that we read about this, too, is that some people thought that she just won the award because she was a woman, whereas to other people, it was like “This is amazing that a woman actually won the award” — It must have meant that the poem was even better, you know? It had to be so much better to actually be able to win.
AMY: Right, I don’t think they were just like, “Oh, we should give it to a woman this year.” I don’t think they had that mindset back then.
KIM: No, definitely not. So this is one “lost lady” writing about another “lost lady” you could say, so it’s getting very meta up in here on our podcast.
AMY: Anyway, yeah, all this talk of Rome has got me thinking that you and I can maybe, sometime, when we have time to binge an entire series of TV together, I want to sit down and try to watch that old Masterpiece Theater program “I, Claudius.” Did you ever watch it?
KIM: No, I didn’t. I do remember my parents watched it when I was a kid, though.
AMY: Yeah, it was huge when it came out. Yeah, I watched a trailer for it on YouTube, and it looks a little okey and kind of campy, but in a good way. And it’s got kind of a big-name cast; you’ll recognize a lot of actors in it. And even if it’s campy, when has that ever stopped us, right?
KIM: I have one word — or is it two words? — for you: Thorn Birds. NO, campy never stopped us!
AMY: And Poldark — the original Poldark. That’s pretty campy.
KIM: Exactly. We love it
AMY: Then I’m also wondering, maybe we should try to figure out the exact formula of some of those unguents that “Julia” was coated in in her casket. Maybe we could make a fortune with some sort of age-defying skin care.
KIM: Yeah, we finally found a way to monetize things around here!
AMY: Totally! Coming soon: “Dead Romans.”
KIM: “Appian” by Bartolomeo Fonzi.
AMY: Yeah. I love it. I love it. Okay, so we’ll be selling that skincare line soon, everyone.
KIM: Anyway, we have a pair of fresh-faced young women at the center of the book we’re going to be discussing next week. The Inseparables is a long-lost novella about two best friends written by the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. The book has finally been published for the very first time 75 years after it was written. (Apparently it was deemed “too intimate” to be published in her lifetime.) Her daughter found the manuscript though, and got it on track to be released.
AMY: And we have an incredible guest next week to help us understand this book in more ways than one. Lauren Elkin who translated The Inseparables from French for the UK Penguin edition of this novel, she’s going to be joining us, and I’m sure she’ll have a lot to say about this book — you won’t want to miss it.
KIM: Yeah, so see you next week — and in the meantime, don’t forget to leave a review where you listen to this podcast, and drop us a line by email or on Instagram or our Facebook page if you’re feeling so inclined. We love hearing from you all!
AMY: Bye, everyone! Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew.