Archeological find of the Century? But where will we park? It may be the last great find of an already exiting archeological year in Rome -- or the traffic boggle of the Millennium. Archeologists are investigating the newly uncovered "country house" of Agrippina, on the Janiculum Hill south to the Vatican, and work has been stopped indefinitely on the "Giubileum Garage" that was supposed to be built on the spot to handle Holy Year parking. Agrippina was the granddaughter of Augustus, mother of Caligula, and wife of the popular soldier-hero Germanicus, whom she believed should have succeeded Augustus, but who was poisoned. Tiberius eventually exiled Agrippina to the island of Pandateria, modern Ventotene near Naples, where she died of starvation. You can read about her, her villa, and her intrigues in Robert Graves' historical novel I,Claudius or, more accurately and for free, on the Internet in Tacitus' Annals, which was the classical equivalent to the modern tabloids:

http://classics.mit.edu/Tacitus/annals.html

Or at a web site about Roman women: http://myron.sjsu.edu/romeweb/LADYCONT/art3.htm

If you have RealPlayer in your computer, you can hear excerpts from Handel's opera, Agrippina (or buy the recording) at: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000041JV/o/qid=938265637/sr=2-1/002-1730755-6606435