Neko Entertainment an independent premier video game developer and publisher announced today the upcoming release of Heracles Chariot Racing on WiiWare™, a racer that will drive players new and old to distraction. Featuring ten circuits in five mythological fantasy settings, players take control of one of eight gods or legendary creatures from Heracles to Poseidon as they race to become Champion Charioteer. Heracles Chariot Racing will be released on July 6th on WiiWare, first in the Americas, then later in Europe.

“We are excited to announce the upcoming release of Heracles Chariot Racing for WiiWare”, said Laurent Lichnewsky, Managing Director of Neko Entertainment,“With its blistering fast racing action, mythological tracks and enemies, split screen multiplayer modes, Heracles Chariot Racing is destined to become a WiiWare classic for players, both young and old”.

In Heracles Chariot Racing our hero Heracles has to undertake a challenge that none before him have survived– a chariot racing tournament. To win a series of sacred trophies and be crowned Champion Charioteer our hero has to race across mythological kingdoms against some of the most feared monsters in existence. The objectives are simple, survive the battles and race against some of the most fearsome and inventive foes in Greek mythology. Select a character and let fate, skill and ability decide the outcome!

Heracles Chariot Racing is an exciting journey into a mystical and colorful word of danger spiced with excitement, awesome weapons laced with humor. Featuring Championship, Single Player, Time Trial, Battle and intense 2 to 4 split screen multiplayer modes, players are the master of their own destinies, but with the divine actions of Gods they will require both skill and an element of luck to be crowned champions. Featuring 3 racing cups across 10 courses based on mythological fantasy settings including Nemean Lion, Realm of Hades, The Augean Stables, Stymphalian Lake and Mount Olympus, players select a character and race it out using fantasy weaponry including Zeus lightning rods, tridents, fireballs and more against their opponents.

Unfortunately, we don’t have a Wii at the Compound.  If anyone wants to send one our way, we’ll be glad to take Hercules and his chariots out for a test drive!

As peals of church bells rang out across the Eternal City this morning, Romans and visitors alike began making their way to the Pantheon for the celebration of the Pentecost Mass and the performance of a beautiful ritual that’s been going on for 1400 years in which a shower of red rose petals is dropped through the oculus of the ancient building and falls to the floor.

The Pantheon, as many eCoolers will know, was build by the Roman Emperor Hadrian between 117-125 AD.  It was dedicated to all the Roman gods and its 143 foot wide concrete dome must have put certainly on the must-see list for every ancient tourist to Rome.

In the year 609 AD — exactly 1400 years ago — the Pantheon became a Christian church   when the Byzantine Emperor Phocas gave it to Pope Boniface IV who rededicated to Santa Maria ad Martyres (St. Mary and all the Martyrs).

Thus, for almost a millenium and a half, the building has served as a Christian church with its big moment happening each year on feast of Pentecost, the fiftieth day after Easter, the day on which the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles and other followers of Jesus as described in the Book of Acts, Chapter 2 in the New Testament.

At the Pantheon each year, as at all Catholic churches, Pentecost is celebrated with a mass.  However, it’s what happens following the mass that is truly spectacular.  A team of firemen scale the dome of the Pantheon and sit poised above its oculus (the “eye” or opening at the center of the dome).

As the clergy leaves the church, the firemen throw thousands of red rose petals through the oculus and these flutter to the floor, a symbol of the Holy Spirit descending to earth.

Those who attend the mass ooh and awe as the flower petals cover the center of the building, then rush in madly to scoop them up, stuff them in pockets, or throw them into the air once again.

As many of you have probably discerned from this lovely photos, our trusty photographer, Susan Sanders, was there this year (as always). Upon her return to the compound, she showered the floor with the petals – it’s not quite the same as seeing them at the Pantheon, but at least we’re smelling sweet here today.

Pope Benedict XVI paid his first visit to Rome’s city hall on the Piazza del Campidoglio today.   Hew as welcomed by Mayor Gianni Alemanno (standing just below him and wearing the red, green, and white sash) and took in the view of the Forum Romanum from the balcony of the mayor’s office before attending an extraordinary sitting of the municipal council where he delivered an address asking for ethnic and religious tolerance in the city.

He then greeted citizens from the loggia on Palazzo Senatorio before traveling on to the nearby monastery of Santa Francesca Romana to celebrate the saint’s feast day.

Photos: La Repubblica

In the midst of Twilight mania (which, yes, is big in Italy too), we’re delighted to alert readers to a breaking story about a Venetian “vampire” recently excavated in a mass grave on the small island of Lazzaretto Nuovo that can be dated to an outbreak of the plague in 1576.

The news broke at a meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Scientists in Denver, when Matteo Borrini of the Universita di Firenze announced that he and his archaeoloical team had excavated the skeleton of a Renaissance woman whose skull was imaled through the mouth with a brick.

Why a brick through the mouth?  It seems that during the plague, it was commonly believed that the disease was spread by female vampires.

Borrini told a meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Denver that when Europe was in the grips of the plague there was a widespread belief that the disease was spread by female vampires.  Most likely, this idea can be attributed to the dribble of blood that often flowed from the mouth of plague victims.

Women who bled at the mouth at death were thought to be vampires. Furthermore, it was thought that when such “vampires” were buried, they would feed on their dead neighbors until they had gained enough strength to rise from the grave and to suck the blood of the living, thereby further spreading the plague.

Thus, it was up to gravediggers to identify possible vampire women and to impale them with a brick to keep them from feeding in the grave.

It was thought that these vampires, who were buried next to the bodies of plague victims, fed on their dead neighbors until they felt strong enough to rise from the grave and begin feeding on the living, perpetuating the cycle of contamination.

Borrini said gravediggers had shoved the brick into the woman’s mouth with such force that it had broken some of her teeth.

Photos: Matteo Borrini

While more traditional versions of the myth suggest that it was the Greeks who rolled the Trojan Horse up to the gates of Troy, DHL’s latest publicity campaign takes full credit for the timely delivery of that surprise gift package.

We love it.

Advertising Agency: Ogilvy & Mather, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Executive Creative Director: Till Hohmann
Art Director: Rafael Rizuto
Creative Director: Dalba Singh
Illustration: Keith Thompsom
Editor: Sascha Kuntze

We don’t know who created this, but whoever it is, we’ve got a crush on them!  Some crafty classics-loving individual has created a mock Facebook page for the Aeneid.  It’s wonderful and hilarious.  You don’t have to use Facebook to appreciate it, but you do have to know a bit about the Aeneid and the Trojan War.

There’s a lot more to it than we’re showing here. Click this link and then click on the image to enlarge it. Enjoy!  And beware of Greeks bearing gifts!

Though today the center of the Catholic world–and until 1517 the center of all Christianity–Rome is an increasingly multicultural city that is home to people of all religions.

While ethnic and religious diversity is not always warmly embraced in the Eternal City (see our post from last week about the publicity campaign sponsored by the CGIL labor union that encourages tolerance and equal rights for all), we at the eCool compound would like to believe that many Romans are accepting of others’ difference.

Thus, it warms our hearts to see pictures like these, which show hundreds of Roman muslims gathered in Piazza Venezia for prayer on the occasion of the Feast of Sacrifice, or Eid-Ul-Adja, a commemoration of the command given by Allah to the Prophet Abraham to sacrifice his first born son Ishmael or Isaac to him.

Via AFP:  The Vatican began its conversion to renewable energy system this week with the inauguration of an array of solar panels on a key building.

The 2,400 panels on the 5,000 square meter roof of the Paul VI auditorium, near St Peter’s Basilica, where popes hold general audiences, will convert sunlight into 300 megawatts of electricity a year.

This is enough for the year-round energy needs of the hall, which is also used for concerts and conferences, and several surrounding buildings, according to the Vatican.

The auditorium is one of the most modern buildings in the Vatican City and the system will save the equivalent of 80 tons of oil per year, or 225 tons of CO2.

The panels were donated by German company Solarworld, which recently hit the headlines with a plan to take over vehicle builder Opel.

Solarworld’s boss Frank Asbeck met the late pope John Paul II in 2002, and according to his own account asked for a papal blessing on his firm’s solar panels in the hope of stopping them being stolen while in transit.

Other buildings in the Roman Catholic Church’s city state will soon benefit from renewable energy sources as the Vatican expands its green ethos across its 110 acres.

It plans to have enough renewable energy sources to provide 20 percent of its needs by 2020, in line with a European Union target.

The next project will be a solar heating facility in its so-called “industrial zone”.

Pope Benedict XVI and his predecessor John Paul II both encouraged the Vatican to go progressively “green”.

Since summer 2007, the Vatican has been involved with a scheme to restore an ancient forest in Hungary, under a pact with Planktos-Klimafa, an eco-restoration company.

The reforestation scheme is aimed to make it the world’s first carbon-neutral sovereign state by offsetting its emissions through planting trees.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, states can purchase so-called emission credits to compensate for their excess greenhouse gases.

On a visit to Australia earlier this year, the pope warned his audience that humanity was squandering the earth’s resources to satisfy its insatiable appetite for material goods.

Writers of ancient myths were the first to sum up the difficulties between the genders, thousands of years ago recording a fact that has been recently rediscovered in our modern era – “men are from Mars and women are from Venus.”  Earlier this year, faithful eCool readers may have noted that the gender-based miscommunication between Apollo and Daphne was the result of mischievous Cupid’s arrows, but as is demonstrated in today’s Myth Remastered dispatch, other ancient lovers faced crises compelled by miscommunications all their own.

One such story is painted on the walls of the Villa Farnesina, a Renaissance “love shack” built by Agostino Chigi, the richest man in the Renaissance.  Chigi fancied himself a connoisseur of architecture and painting, as well as classical literature.  In keeping with these interests, he commissioned the artists Raphael and Sebastiano del Piombo to adorn his walls with the ancient Roman myth of Galatea, a beautiful water nymph, and the hulking Cyclops she rejected, Polyphemus (see above).

Raphael painted Galatea as a representation of ideal beauty and she seems almost to be an ancient marble sculpture brought to life (though Renaissance rumor had it that the Galatea was a portrait of Agostino Chigi’s illustrious courtesan Imperia and that Raphael had spent some quality time with this gifted woman while sketching her for the painting).  On the adjacent panel, the portrait of Polyphemus, painted by Sebastiano del Piombo, is the very antithesis of ideal beauty.  The Cyclops is an incredibly hairy hulk who appears a bit out of place in the loosely rendered landscape that he inhabits.

The story of this mismatched pair comes from Ovid, who tells us that Galatea was madly in love with a handsome young man named Acis, and that their relationship was an exclusive one:

    Son of river-nymph Symaethis
And Faunus was his father, a great joy
To both his parents, and a greater joy
To me; for me, and me alone, he loved.

Though Galatea swore her devotion to Acis alone, Polyphemus worshiped her.  Sadly, his affections were not returned, for she found this uncivilized beast repugnant:

He wooed me endlessly and, if you ask
Whether my hate for him or love for Acis
Was stronger in my heart, I could not tell;
For both were equal.

Over and over Galatea politely rejected Polyphemus’s advances, but he was not to be dissuaded.  To their family and friends, it seemed obvious that the relationship not meant to be – the two were utterly incompatible!  Galatea was a water nymph and Polyphemus could not swim and was even deathly afraid of the water.  Nonetheless, the Cyclops spent his days trying to lure his beloved to dry land.  She never took the bait.

In his efforts to win a date with Galatea, Polyphemus heaped praise upon her.  One day, in absolute desperation for her affections, the Cyclops composed a long speech in which he compared Galatea with all he found beautiful in untamed nature.  In another demonstrative discourse, he promised her that his love and devotion would bring her great benefits and he recounted the many gifts he intended to give her when she at last succumbed to his embrace:

No easy gifts or commonplace delights
Shall be your portion—does and goats and hares,
A pair of doves, a gull’s nest from the cliff.
I found on day among the mountain peaks,
For you to play with, twins so much alike
You scarce could tell, cubs of a shaggy bear.
I found them and I said ‘She shall have these;
I’ll keep them for my mistress for her own.’

But none of these tactics convinced Galatea to leave Acis and give her love to Polyphemus.  As is common in such situations, the Cyclops simply could not understand why the nymph he loved so much would continue to reject him. “What does she want,” he asked himself?  “I come from a good family. My father, Neptune is the king of the sea.  And, I’ve got a great career in front of me!  I’ve been cast in an important role in Homer’s Odyssey.  I’m going to be a star!”  Thinking that the problem might be with his looks, Polyphemus exercised vigorously and spent the rest of his time examining his reflection in pools of water, carefully tending the masses of hair that covered his body.  As he gazed at his likeness, it seemed impossible that Galatea would not find him attractive:

    For sure I know—I have just seen—myself
Reflected in a pool, and what I saw
Was truly pleasing. See how large I am!
No bigger body Jupiter himself can boast
Up in the sky—you always talk of Jupiter
Or someone reigning up there. My ample hair
O’erhangs my grave stern face and like a grove
Darkens my shoulders; you must not think me
Me ugly, that my body is so thick
With prickly bristles. Trees without their leaves
Are ugly, a horse is ugly too
Without a mane to cover its sorrel neck.
Feathers clothe birds and fleece grace sheep:
So beard and bristles best become a man.
Upon my brow I have on e single eye,
But it is huge, like some vast shield. What then?

Still, however, Galatea could not be seduced.  No longer able to stand the pain of unrequited love, Polyphemus tore through the woods and fields in a fierce rage, looking for the nymph and her lover.  When he discovered them frolicking together at the river’s edge, he gave a shout so loud it made Mt. Etna tremble.  Thus warned of his presence, Galatea dove into the sea, but before Acis could escape, the massive Cyclops tore a boulder from a mountaintop and hurled it at the youth. The stone crushed Acis, but in that moment Galatea implored the Fates to allow her to remain forever with her lover.

Her wish was granted:  as Acis’s blood began to flow from underneath the rock that crushed him, it turned into a clear stream of water.  Then, the boulder cracked open, and from the crevice emerged a tall, green reed from which a fountain of water gushed skyward.  Only an instant later, a young river god stood waist-deep in the water, his glistening face colored wave-blue like the finest of aquamarines.  Acis had been transformed into an immortal river god so that he and Galatea might spend eternity together.

As you may have learned from reading posts earlier this week, it’s Festa dei Noantri here in Trastevere, a week in which the Trasteverini celebrate the many ways in which they are unique in all of Rome.

Anyone who has spent some serious time in Trastevere could probably list 100 things that make this neighborhood a bit different (or maybe wackier) than other Roman hoods, but the one that’s being advertised this week is the special blessing of La Madonna Fiumarola.

If you’re thinking that the blessing of some Madonna or another is no big deal in a city as jam-packed with Virgins as is Rome, it’s time to think again. The photos of the procession taken by Susan Sanders, clearly demonstrate the respect and solemnity granted to the occasion.

Nonne (or grandmothers) assume key viewing positions well in advance of the procession, cooling themselves with folding fans as they body check anyone who might dare to intrude upon their territory. Rome’s mounted police lead the procession, clearing the streets of unsuspecting tourists and evening grocery shoppers, while the military band serenades onlookers and provides a snappy beat for the Virgin’s promenade.  This year, the mayor even showed up (see above, he’s the one wearing the tricolor sash).

Of course, it’s the young men of Trastevere who really shoulder the burden of the event, carrying the Madonna through the streets.  The statue, in combination with the litter on which it is carried, weighs hundreds of pounds, making their task an extraordinarily strenuous one.

At the ring of a bell, the white-clad porters hoist the Madonna to their shoulders, but they can only walk about 20-30 yards before having to return her to terra firma.  The next lift is taken on by a team that’s had a bit of a breather.  It’s hard work, but it insures the safety and the prosperity of the neighborhood for the course of the coming year.

For more photos of this event, as well as others by Susan Sanders, visit her Rome With A View photo blog.

For more on the 2008 procession, click here and here.

For the 2007 procession and a more detailed explanation of the history of the Madonna Fiumarola, click here.  And for the 2007 event finale, in which the Virgin took a trip down the Tiber River, click here.