SPQR Blues Chapters I-V

I absolutely love 1950s/early-1960s sword-&-sandals movies. I was surprised yesterday to discover one I hadn’t seen before, called 79 AD: The Destruction of Herculaneum.

I KNOW, RIGHT?

It’s described on IMDB as “Intrigue at the Roman Emperor’s court prior to its destruction by Vesuvius” (ok, sure, why not) and is also known as Anno 79: La distruzione di Ercolano.

It features a lovely actress named Mara Lane, who was so kind as to have a similar bone structure to Iusta’s. She also obligingly posed in a Roman bikini, because it’s a sword-&-sandals movie. I wandered across the photo on a website called Peplum (a fancier term for sword-&-sandals cinema) while searching for something entirely different.

Iusta gets a pin-up today, in honour of Mara Lane. And because when child actresses grow up they always seem to want to do a slinky photo shoot.