Berenike

Last year Smithsonian Magazine carried an article on the recent excavations at the Ptolemaic port of Berenike on the Red Sea, the Egyptian end of the sea trade with India, which have revealed more about the depth of the connections between the two regions.

Though the port was founded by the Greek Ptolemaic dynasty (320-30 BC), the trade was greatly expanded after Rome annexed Egypt in 30 BC.  THC wrote about this trade and the farthest reaches of the Roman Empire in The Farthest Outpost.  It's not just the extent of the trade and the navigation skills and knowledge needed for it, but the logistics of building an isolated port on the Red Sea, separated from the rest of Egypt by a vast desert requiring the establishment and maintenance of a safe and secure land-based transport system.

From the Smithsonian article:

In antiquity, this site, known as Berenike, was described by chroniclers such as Strabo and Pliny the Elder as the Roman Empire’s maritime gateway to the East: a crucial entry point for mind-boggling riches brought across the sea from eastern Africa, southern Arabia, India and beyond. It is hard to imagine how such vast and complex trade could have been supported here, miles from any natural source of drinking water and many days’ arduous trek across mountainous desert from the Nile. Yet excavations are revealing that the stories are true.

Archaeologists led by Steven Sidebotham, of the University of Delaware, have revealed two harbors and scores of houses, shops and shrines. They have uncovered mounds of administrative detritus, including letters, receipts and customs passes, and imported treasures such as ivory, incense, textiles, gems and foodstuffs such as pots of Indian peppercorns, coconuts and rice. The finds are not only painting a uniquely detailed picture of life at a lesser-known but critical crossroads between East and West. They are also focusing scholarly attention on a vast ancient ocean trade that may have dwarfed the terrestrial Silk Road in economic importance and helped sustain the Roman Empire for centuries.

“All the ancient sources talk about this place,” he says. One Greco-Roman text, known as the Periplus Maris Erythraei, or “Voyage around the Erythraean Sea”—which Bhandare, of Oxford, described as “a kind of Lonely Planet guide for the first century A.D.”—lists the port as a hub for maritime trade routes stretching south as far as modern-day Tanzania, and east, past Arabia, to India and beyond. But Berenike’s location was lost for centuries, until the Italian explorer Giovanni Belzoni, after nearly perishing from thirst in the search, rediscovered it in 1818 and hired a Bedouin youth to dig in the Isis temple with a giant seashell. A handful of European and American travelers followed, but the entire area fell back out of reach for decades, designated off-limits by an Egyptian army keen to control the coastline close to Sudan.

And as archaeologists are busy analyzing the growing material finds, other scholars are reassessing literary sources to better evaluate the economic impacts of these intercontinental networks. They already knew that trade was robust. In the early first century A.D., before trade reached its peak, the Greek geographer Strabo described eastbound fleets of more than 100 merchant ships. Another key source, a contract known as the Muziris papyrus dating from the second century, is more specific, describing a loan between an Alexandria-based businessman and a merchant for a return voyage to Muziris. On the reverse side, the text details the cargo of a ship called the Hermapollon, which included 140 tons of pepper, 80 boxes of nard (an aromatic oil used for perfumes, medicines and rituals), and around four tons of ivory. Its value, after payment of the Roman Empire’s 25 percent import tax, was nearly seven million sesterces, which scholars have calculated was easily enough to buy a luxury estate in central Italy, or, if you prefer, to pay 40,000 stonecutters for a year. That translates into some vast fortunes.

The island of Socotra, mentioned in the article, is also the subject of a THC post. 

Berenike today: 

 

 

 

 

Tyre Land

pic.twitter.com/zpRVV0SUjb

— Daily Roman Updates (@UpdatingOnRome) June 11, 2024

When Alexander the Great reached Tyre in January 332 BC he found a rich mercantile city perched on an island a kilometer off the coast of modern Lebanon.  This is what confronted him.

 

Determined to obtain the submission of the city and deny the Persian Empire an important naval base, Alexander and his army laid siege to the city for seven months, eventually constructing a causeway across most of the gap and breaching the fortifications.  Like most sieges in ancient times where the attacker prevailed, it ended badly for the people of Tyre with those not killed sold into slavery.

Over the centuries the causeway changed the flow of ocean currents allowing sediment to collect and creating a land bridge between the island and the mainland.

Thinking About Rome

There's a social media meme going round in which guys are asked about how often they think about Rome.  As can be seen from THC's history it turns out to be quite often.  

Most recently I came across a painting of the Arch of Septimius Severus in 1742 by Canaletto and a photo of the arch from 1895 (via Imperator Cat on twitter).  The two provide a graphic illustration of the disrepair the Forum had fallen into after the 6th century when the drains were no longer maintained and the area subject to frequent flooding.

Severus was emperor from 193 to 211 and the Arch celebrates his victories over the Parthians in Mesopotamia and annexation of new lands.

Comparing the two pictures you can see the dramatic difference after the flood sediment and debris were removed during the 19th century.  In the painting the top of the arch on right is barely visible, while the photo shows the arch fully revealed.  Examining the height of the people around it, the sediment was 10-15 feet deep.

And, to tell the truth about how often I think of Rome, it is pretty frequently because this 33"x46" map hangs in the room where I am writing this is a constant reminder.

There are several things that make this map, which depicts, in great detail, the Roman road network and cities, exceptional.  First, is the date portrayed, 211 AD, at the death of Severus.  Most maps depicting the geographic height of the empire use 117 AD, right after Trajan's conquest of Mesopotamia.  However, Trajan's conquest was fleeting, with the lands abandoned within a year or two, along with a portion of the Dacian conquest from a dozen years before.  In contrast the boundaries in the 211 map all existed for a minimum of fifty years, with most enduring for centuries.

The map also shows the Severan advance into the deserts of Libya (the emperor was a native of Leptis Magna in that province) and reflects the most recent discoveries and research on Roman boundaries.  Until recently it had been thought the the Roman border in Arabia went north from the Red Sea and through the center of today's Jordan.  However we now know the Roman lands included much of what is now northwestern Saudi Arabia which is reflected in the map.  The map also depicts the 21st century discovery of a Roman garrison on the Farasan Islands near the southern end of the Red Sea (discussed in The Farthest Outpost).

This wonderful map was prepared by Dr Michael Ditter in Germany.  Dr Ditter has created a series of maps of the ancient world which you can find at his website.

As to what I think about Rome, I recommend you read Ciceroing.

Fading With Age

Long before living memory our ancestral way of life produced outstanding men, and those excellent men preserved the old way of life and the institutions of their forefathers. Our generation, however, after inheriting our political organization like a magnificent picture now fading with age, not only neglected to restore its original colours but did not even bother to ensure that it retained its basic form and, as it were, its faintest outlines. 

What remains of those ancient customs on which he [Ennius] said the state of Rome stood firm? We see them so ruined by neglect that not only do they go unobserved, they are no longer known. And what shall I say of the men? It is the lack of such men that has led to the disappearance of those customs. 

Of this great tragedy we are not only bound to give a description; we must somehow defend ourselves as if we were arraigned on a capital charge. For it is not by some accident—no, it is because of our own moral failings—that we are left with the name of the Republic, having long since lost its substance. 

- Cicero, De re publica (On The Republic or On The Commonwealth); via Laudator Temporis Acti

De re publica was composed by Cicero (106-43 BC) between 54 and 51 as a series of dialogues set in the prior century.  The sixth and final book of De re publica is The Dream Of Scipio (Somnium Scipionis), of which I've previously written in Mastering The Tides Of The World, a post that also describes Cicero's fate amid the wreckage of the faded Republic.

Large parts of the dialogues have been lost over the ages.  The quote is from the fifth book of the dialogues which focuses on the role a citizen should play in government.

Cicero wrote the dialogues during the last years of the Republic.  From the time of the Social War (90-88 BC) the Republic staggered on, its long-standing institutions not capable of addressing the social tensions arising from the city's domination of the Mediterranean.   As it was being written, Caesar was conquering Gaul and shared in the triumvirate of Pompey and Crassus, the latter dying at Carrhae in 53 in his failed quest to conquer the Parthians.  

Caesar would cross the Rubicon in 49, plunging Rome into civil war.  Pompey was killed in 48. Emerging triumphant in 45, Caesar would be murdered a few months later, followed by Cicero's death the following year.  The Republic was dead.

You can read more about Cicero in Cicero And His Friends and Ciceroing.

Rome On The Caspian

The most eastern Roman inscription ever found:
In the late first century AD, the centurion Lucius Julius Maximus of the Twelfth 'Thunderbolt' Legion carved this inscription into a rock near what is today Baku, Azerbaijan. Lucius and his Legio XII Fulminata had apparently been… pic.twitter.com/eZ9v0gNMkA

— Gareth Harney (@OptimoPrincipi) July 25, 2023

 

Albania (not the current country on the Adriatic, but an ancient nation on the southwest shore of the Caspian Sea) was a client state of Rome, off and on, for many centuries, from Pompey's expedition in 65 BC to the reign of the Emperor Heraclius in the first half of the seventh century AD.

The inscription reads:

'(In the reign of) Emperor Domitian Caesar Augustus Germanicus, Lucius Julius Maximus, centurion of the Legio XII Fulminata (carved this).'

The reference is to Domitian who was emperor from 81-96 AD.

It is possible that the town of Ramana, a little north of Baku and just a few miles from the Caspian, may have been founded by the Roman legions and derives its name from Romana.  It was noted in 1903 that older inhabitants referred to the place as Romani.

Legio XII Fulimata was created by Julius Caesar in 58 BC as part of his campaign to conquer Gaul.  It was transferred to the East around 40 BC where it participated in Marc Antony's campaigns against the Parthians.  The legion was defeated at the outbreak of the First Jewish-Roman War in 66 AD at Beth Horon, near Jerusalem.  It served the rest of its existence on the Eastern Frontier where the last mention of the unit is around 400 AD, stationed at Melitene, in modern Turkey, along the Euphrates River.

On the map below, Baku and Ramana are on the peninsula on the eastern side of Albania.

Though this is the easternmost Roman inscription found, Roman soldiers involuntarily found themselves further east.  Thousands of Roman captives from Crassus' army at Carrhae in 53 BC and those surrendered along with the Emperor Valerian in 260 AD, were transported much further east by the Parthians and later the Sassanians to work on construction projects.  It is also possible some served in garrisons on the far east frontiers in Central Asia and there are tales (and controversial archaeological and genetic findings) of Roman soldiers ending up within the empire of China, protecting towns in the deserts of what is now Xinjiang.

The Vastness

Three previously unknown Roman forts have been identified in the bleakness and isolation of the Arabian Desert.  First located via Google Earth, they are in the southeast part of present-day Jordan, adjacent to Saudi Arabia.  As reported in Sky News and elsewhere, the discoverers and authors of a new study believe the forts were built in support of the Roman takeover of the Nabataean kingdom after the death of its king in 106 AD.  

The discovery is another example of the realization in recent decades that the Roman expansion into Arabia went much further than thought by earlier scholars.  On the map above, you can see Dumat al Jandal in the far southeast, an oasis deep within the desert.  We now know that Roman centurions were stationed here during the second century AD to monitor and police trade routes between the Persian Gulf and Nabataea.

More on the history of the Nabataean Kingdom and the Roman penetration into Arabia and the Red Sea can be found in The Farthest Outpost.

Lost Secrets Rediscovered

Fascinating article in Antigone, a relatively new Classics journal on Greek and Roman times, about the rediscovery of ancient texts on Greek astronomy.  The article, How Lost Secrets of Greek Astronomy Were Rediscovered, by Peter J Williams, describes how this all came about.

Originally the rediscovered text was thought to consist of:

Lines from Aratus' (315-240 BC) poem the Phaenomena, used to teach the constellations.  

Drawings of the constellations

Stories from Eratosthenes (276-195 BC), the first person to accurately measure the circumference of the Earth, of how the constellations arose 

Listing by Eratosthenes of the stars in each constellation

More recently the researchers have discovered parts of the lost star catalogue of Hipparchus (190-120 BC), regarded as the greatest astronomer of the ancient world.

The story of the rediscovery starts with two wealthy Scottish widows and twin sisters, Agnes Smith Lewis (1843–1926) and Margaret Dunlop Gibson (1843–1920).  The sisters were residents at Cambridge University and also traveled widely in the Middle East.  While in Egypt they purchased an ancient manuscript, Codex Climaci Rescriptus, which likely originated at St Catherine's Monastery, located at the foot of what was reputedly Mt Sinai.  The Monastery has been the source of many ancient manuscripts in the form of palimpsests.  A palimpsest is a document on which something has been written over an existing manuscript, a common practice in the first millennium because of the shortage of papyrus and lack of paper.

When brought back to Cambridge it was visibly apparent that writing existed beneath the more recent literary work written in Syriac.  Scholars determined that it contained about 100 pages in Aramaic and Greek of biblical and philosophical texts.  But nine pages remained indescipherable with the techniques of the time.

This changed in 2010 when the Cambridge college sold the manuscript to the Green family (founders of the Hobby Lobby chain) who donated it to their new Bible museum in Washington DC.  In 2012 the author of the Antigone article, who is Principal of Tyndale House in Cambridge, the UK's largest institute dedicated to the research of the Bible, agreed to assemble a team to work on the undertext.  The museum undertook rounds of digital imaging, including multispectral imaging to help the researchers.

Over the next five years, painstaking progress was made in deciphering the text.  Then, in 2018, as Williams writes:

" . . . in 2017 the museum commissioned imaging and processing provided by a combination of the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library, the Lazarus Project of the University of Rochester, and the Rochester Institute of Technology. 42 images of each page were captured using different wavelengths and light filters and then programmers processed the images to make particular text more visible to researchers. In 2018 the image-processing specialists joined our textual scholars for a week at Tyndale House and we were able to give real-time feedback on the particular pixels or ink we wanted enhanced. Progress sped up. 

One of the programmers, Vasilis Kasotakis, using Principal Components Analysis and Independent Components Analysis struck on exactly the right formula, so that suddenly a creature like a fish appeared on his screen where nothing significant had previously been visible. He let out an exclamation and everyone in the room crowded round to see his discovery."

The researchers began to understand they were reading an integrated text in which when the Aratus poem mentioned a constellation, Erathosthenes text about that constellation was inserted.  

But it was not until 2021 that Williams was able to decipher key passages which turned out to be previously unknown text from the work of Hipparchus - the oldest known astronomical measurements!

Who knows what else awaits discovery?  Williams writes:

There may also be more parts of the manuscript still in St Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai, where there are at least 160 palimpsests, most of which have not been studied.

• 
  

Good Counsel

I have no fault to find with those who have proposed a reconsideration of the question of the Mytilenaeans, nor do I commend those who object to repeated deliberation on matters of the greatest moment; on the contrary, I believe the two things most opposed to good counsel are haste and passion, of which the one is wont to keep company with folly, the other with an undisciplined and shallow mind.

via Laudator Temporis Acti

The quote is from Thucydides' account of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC), and concerns the Mytilenaean Debate of 427.  Mytilene was a city on the island of Lesbos, and had been an ally of Athens.  After war between Athens and Sparta broke out in 431, the leaders of Mytilene feared that Athens would become more repressive and they reached out to Sparta.  The Athenians discovered the plans to revolt and eventually compelled the Mytilenaeans to surrender unconditionally.

The Athenian Assembly, comprised of all male citizens of Athens, met to discuss the fate of the people of Mytilene.  The assembly quickly voted to sentence all the males of Mytilene to death, while selling the women and children into slavery.  According to Thucydides, the Athenians immediately executed about a thousand Mytilene prisoners who had already been brought back to Athens.

Second thoughts on the punishment arose and the assembly convened for further debate between those who advocated upholding the initial resolution and those seeking a milder solution.  It was Diodotus, ostensibly quoted by Thucydides above, who cautioned the assembly regarding "haste and passion" (alternatively translated as "haste and anger"), advising that the issue should be what was in Athens' best interest and questioning whether the prior day's decision would deter future revolt or make it more likely.

After lengthy discussion, Diodotus' argument carried the day and the assembly voted to execute only the leaders of the revolt.  Though a more moderate approach carried the day, as the war progressed the Athenian assembly made increasingly brutal decisions in dealing with revolts and enemies, and even with Athenian generals and admirals who were seen as failures.

Throughout the History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides ponders issues of diplomacy, motivation, and the passions of democracy and the authoritarianism of oligarchy and their relative merits.  As you read the book, you find his commentaries on the human condition remain relevant today.

Floor Plan

It is remarkable how so many long-buried Roman mosiac tiled floors have been discovered in recent years in the Near East, Anatolia, North Africa, the Balkans, Italy, France, and this one in London.  I particularly like the juxtaposition in this photo between ancient and modern.  This one is thought to date from 175-225 AD.  Imagine how many more await discovery!  For more on this find read here. 

Ciceroing

Robert A. Kaster, The Appian Way: Ghost Road, Queen of Roads (2012; rpt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), pp. 101-103:

Marcus Tullius Cicero is unavoidable in my line of work, and not the sort of man who provokes mild emotions in those who make his acquaintance. Loathing and affection are the only choices. By now I have spent enough time in his company, through teaching and writing, to work past the first of those feelings and arrive at the second. Certainly, he is everything that those who loathe him say: an egotist who was impossibly high-maintenance as a friend; often blinkered and bloviating as a statesman; moody, inconstant, and self-dramatizing as a man; and—what finally did him in—not nearly as clever a political player as he thought he was, or as his enemies actually were. Yet he was also a loyal friend in his turn, and witty company, a man who (I think) really did try to do what he thought was right, and who along the way wrote some of the best prose ever composed in any language, with the same impact on the future of Latin that Shakespeare and the King James Version of the Bible have had on English. But above all he left himself exposed and accessible, and that is the thing in the end that moves me beyond simple respect.

A chief reason Cicero is so easy to loathe is that he left so much of himself on view. We know him better than we can know any human being in Western history before Saint Augustine, because no one in the West before Augustine left so large a written legacy of such a personal kind. The texts, and the body of commentary that has grown up around them, fill ten feet of shelving in my office, and my collection is not especially large: speeches, rhetorical treatises, philosophical tracts, and above all the correspondence, over twenty years' worth, that he carried on with family, friends, and enemies. Of course most of the writing is carefully calculated, intended to present the writer in the best possible light in whatever circumstance prompted the writing: that is one of the jobs that rhetoric is supposed to do, and Cicero was a master of the craft. But even though the writing may not offer a transparent window on his soul, it does give excellent access to his lively mind. You see the wheels turning, you come to understand the move that's being made and anticipate the move that's coming next, and in so doing you reach across more than twenty centuries in a way that is exhilarating and moving.

I've referred to Cicero (106-43 BC) in a number of posts, most recently in Mastering the Tides of the World, and even wrote about his birthplace.  Last year I read and wrote about Cicero And His Friends: A Study of Roman Society in the Time of Caesar, Marie Louis Antoine Gaston Bossier's study from the late 19th century, a book which prompted me to liken Cicero to the John Adams we see in the Jefferson-Adams correspondence of 1812-26, and I've read Robert Harris' trilogy of novels about Cicero's life and the last years of the Republic.

Coming across the quote from Kaster at Laudator Temporis Acti (the source for the Official Motto of this Blog - "The Value of Useless Knowledge") spurred me to think further about my interest in Cicero and, more broadly, in the Roman Republic and Empire.  For Cicero himself it is, as Kaster points out, that we can see him fully formed as an individual person in a way unlike other figures before him, and for several centuries thereafter (Augustine writes more than 400 years after the death of Cicero).  Certainly his writings seem, to an extent, relevant regardless of date, and his personality, with its strengths and glaring weaknesses evident in a way we can only infer in his contemporaries.  But that relatedness can only go so far and, in that respect, ties in with my interest and perspective on Rome.

With my fascination with history going back to childhood, Rome has always loomed large for me, with its unique place in western history.  It's a combination of fascination, recognition of its achievements, and the sheer expanse and duration of its domination imposing, on its own terms, a period of peace and stability not seen before and which disappeared in the wake of its collapse.  Moreover, as it moved from Republic to Empire it proved adaptable in creating a devotion to a common culture out of a patchwork of religions, tribes, and other groups as described in this post.  But it is not a desire to replicate or restore such a system and I am as fascinated with the costs of the republic and empire as with its achievements.

The classical world of Greece and Rome, and Cicero, while the source of some of the key ideas that have powered Western thought over the centuries, also represents a very different ethos from the modern world. The classical historian Tom Holland gets at this in his most recent book, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World :

The more years I spent immersed in the study of classical antiquity, so the more alien I increasingly found it. The values of Leonidas, whose people had practised a peculiarly murderous form of eugenics and trained their young to kill uppity Untermenschen by night, were nothing that I recognised as my own; nor were those of Caesar, who was reported to have killed a million Gauls, and enslaved a million more. It was not just the extremes of callousness that unsettled me, but the complete lack of any sense that the poor or the weak might have the slightest intrinsic value. Why did I find this disturbing? Because, in my morals and ethics, I was not a Spartan or a Roman at all. That my belief in God had faded over the course of my teenage years did not mean that I had ceased to be Christian. For a millennium and more, the civilisation into which I had been born was Christendom. Assumptions that I had grown up with — about how a society should properly be organised, and the principles that it should uphold — were not bred of classical antiquity, still less of 'human nature', but very distinctively of that civilisation's Christian past.

Holland's point is that even the non-religious in the West have absorbed basic concepts of the universality of all people from the Christian tradition, in fact the very basis of the Western concept of human rights, something which did not exist in classical thought.  In advancing his thesis he does not downplay Christianity's contradictions and failures over the centuries but rather emphasizes that the aspirational starting places in classical and Christian thought are completely different.  I'm still mulling over Holland's thought-provoking book, which I recently read.

I write this as a non-Christian.  I'm Jewish.  On my first visit to Rome in 2006 I walked under the Arch of Titus, the Roman Emperor and conqueror of Jerusalem; the man responsible for the destruction of the Second Temple, located on the Temple Mount, and the subjugation of Judea.  As you pass through the arch you can't help but notice it is decorated with carvings of religious artifacts looted from the Temple and being carried away in triumph by Roman soldiers and if you are walking from the Forum through the arch you will be looking at the Colosseum, built in part with the labor of Jewish slaves captured in that war (66-70 AD).  The Emperor Hadrian (117-38 AD), a devotee of Hellenism and enemy of the Jews, decreed a temple honoring the gods of Rome should be placed on the vacant Temple Mount as a demonstration of Roman power, a decree that prompted one final great revolt, finally suppressed after three years, resulting in the banishment of all Jews from Jerusalem and the surrounding area and  changing the name of the province from Judea to Palestine.  Starting in the 4th century the Eastern Roman emperors placed increasing restrictions on Jewish life in Palestine, until finally in the aftermath of the great Roman-Persian War of the early 7th century, the triumphant Emperor Heraclius proclaimed the Jews would be forcibly converted. Before this could be undertaken in a large scale manner, an unexpected threat came out of the desert, sweeping the most prosperous part of the Roman Empire and all the Persian Empire away. The limited and scattered fragments of information that survive indicate those Arab tribesmen were supported by the Jews of Palestine.

So no big summation here, just some thoughts prompted by Cicero.  And I'll keep writing about Rome.  Speaking of which . . . 

UPDATE:  Found via Laudator Temporis Acti another quote from the Kaster book which captures my attitude:

Whereas earlier generations of British scholars and intellectuals tended to admire the Roman Empire as a forerunner of their own, the consensus in postimperial Britain has shifted, and there now seems to be broad agreement that the Romans were bastards. My view is that the Romans were what they were, and that understanding what they were does not advance by taking an attitude toward them, especially when the attitude is one of moral superiority.

The Pastoral City

 Came across this remarkable 1850 photo of Rome.

It looks like it is taken from inside the Colosseum, probably on its second level, and it pictures the area to the west of the structure. The stone sticking up in the lower right center is the remnant of the Meta Sudans, which was bulldozed at Mussolini's order.  Directly center is the Arch of Constantine (constructed in the early 4th century).  The modern road has been rerouted so it passes around, not through, the Arch.  Further down that road on the right is part of the aqueduct that carried water to the Palatine Hill.  The elevated ground in the distance behind the aqueduct is the Aventine Hill and the valley in between is where the Circus Maximus was located.  

The upper center-right of the photo is dominated by the Palatine Hill, home of the Imperial Palace.  During the time of the empire it was almost completely covered by palace buildings.  In 1850 the highest point has a monastery on it though you can see remnants of the palace as the hill slopes down to the aqueduct.  If you could see 90 degrees to your right the Sacred Way leading to the Forum would appear.

The other thing to note is how much of the hill was devoted to agriculture and pasture.  After the 6th century Gothic Wars, this area and much of the rest of the former imperial city ceased to be a place of dense urban habitation.  From Belisarius Enters Rome:

Large tracts of the ancient city, including the Forums, the hills (including the Palatine on which the Imperial Palace was sited), and the area around the Colosseum, were mostly abandoned except for the farms and vineyards that had sprung up among the ruins and for the churches and monasteries scattered among the ruins, most prominently the Lateran in the far southeast of the walled city, which until the 15th century was the seat of the Papacy; an area known as the disabitato. 

This is what the area between the amphitheater and the Lateran looked like in 1870.   Today it a busy and congested part of the city.

The disabitato existed into the 19th century with the expansion of the city into the Rome we know today only after the reunification of Italy in 1870.  The remaining densely populated part of the city was located on the Tiber in what was called the Campus Martius at the time of the Republic and Empire and on the other side of the river in the area near what became the Vatican in the Middle Ages.

At the time the photo was taken the population of the entire city was probably around 150,000 to 175,000 compared to about a million in 150 AD.  It was not until the 1930s that Rome's population exceeded that of the Second Century AD.

The photographer was Ludovico Tuminello (1824-1907).

Tunnel Of Eupalinos

In 1978, Mrs THC and I visited the Greek island of Samos.  We arrived on a boat out of Piraeus after spending a lovely afternoon and evening on the Aegean.  In those day, the ferries used in the Aegean were mostly repurposed ferries from the North Sea countries which could no longer stand up to the rough seas but were fine for the calm Aegean.

Spending our second night on Samos in the small town of Pythagoreio, named after the famed mathematician born on the island, we decided to splurge, spending $12 on a decent hotel (a big expense for us the time) and having an excellent dinner of freshly caught fish at one of the restaurants by the docks.

It was there we first heard about the water tunnel built under the direction of Eupalinos of Megara (a city on the Greek mainland), described as a wonder by the historian Herodotus in the 5th century BC, the location of which was rediscovered in the 19th century.

The 3,400 foot tunnel runs through and under Mount Kastro, carrying water from a spring to the city of Samos, then the capitol of the island (Pythagoreio was founded in the 19th century on the same site), probably in the 6th century BC.

Because only two men could work on excavating at the same time, the tunnel was started from both ends and through Eupalinos' knowledge of geometry was able to meet.

This animated video below provides an entertaining and instructive guide to how the tunnel, which may have provided water for a thousand years, was designed and constructed.

The ferry taking us back to the mainland arrived in Samos 12 hours behind schedule. We spent much of the time sitting in a crowded ferry terminal filled with cigarette smoke but afraid to leave because no one could give us any accurate information on when the ferry might arrive.  When it finally came into port we noticed the boat had a notable list but it did get us back to Piraeus eventually.  A few days later we departed Athens for Paris on the Magic Bus.

 

Deconstruction

 The Circus Maximus and the Imperial Palace, 200 AD and today.

Circus Maximus, with seating for about 200,000 spectators is located in the valley between the Palatine and Aventine Hills in Rome.  The Imperial Palace started in the 1st century AD, eventually expanding to occupy much of the Palatine.

Although some of the deconstruction over the centuries is due to the ravages of time, it was substantially aided by the use of the marble facing and stone interiors from both structures for constructing newer buildings in Rome.  Circus Maximus, located in a low area, was frequently flooded once the drainage system constructed by the Romans was no longer maintained, resulting in much of it being buried under tens of feet of mud, which has only recently begun to be excavated, revealing some of the remaining structure for the first time in centuries.

Romans Always Win!

 Graffiti is nothing new, nor is rooting for the home team.

A fav. photo of all time. Priceless. Roman-period Greek inscription from the Jibal Hisma mountain range in #Saudi Arabia. Signed Lauricius (possibly a soldier), which declared "[The] Romans always win!". Inscribed circa 2ndC AD to reflect Roman military success.Tks to @DrJEBall pic.twitter.com/HaPDYnTzbH

— Stefano Ambrogi (@StefanoAmbrogi1) April 17, 2021

The Jibal Hisma range is in the northwest corner of Saudi Arabia and the inscription is further evidence of the extent of the Roman Empire at its peak in the 2nd century AD.  This is what it looks like:

 

For more on the Roman occupation of this remote area read Madain Saleh and The Farthest Outpost.

The Danger Of Specialization

 From Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (2006), an intriguing book I read several years ago.  I was reminded of this passage when it was recently quoted in Laudator Temporis Acti, the blog which bestowed on THC its motto: The Value of Useless Knowledge.

Ward-Perkins wrote in response to a trend in classical and medieval history over the past few decades that looks at the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in the West as a mere transition period, not particularly disruptive, rather than as a catastrophic event from which it took centuries to recover which had been the consensus opinion of historians prior to the late 20th century.  Ward-Perkins' view was that the fall of the empire brought about a demonstrable decline in living standards for large parts of the population.  In this excerpt he explains why the dissolution of an interdependent, far-ranging geographically economy had such an impact.  With possible lessons for our time.

 

I have argued that the end of the ancient economy, and the timing of its collapse, were closely linked to the demise of the Roman empire. However, to understand the full and unexpected scale of the decline—turning sophisticated regions into underdeveloped backwaters—we need to appreciate that economic sophistication has a negative side. If the ancient economy had consisted of a series of simple and essentially autonomous local units, with little specialization of labour within them and very little exchange between them, then parts of it would certainly have survived the troubles of post-Roman times—dented perhaps, but in an essentially recognizable form. However, because the ancient economy was in fact a complicated and interlocked system, its very sophistication rendered it fragile and less adaptable to change.

For bulk, high-quality production to flourish in the way that it did in Roman times, a very large number of people had to be involved, in more-or-less specialized capacities. First, there had to be the skilled manufacturers, able to make goods to a high standard, and in a sufficient quantity to ensure a low unit-cost. Secondly, a sophisticated network of transport and commerce had to exist, in order to distribute these goods efficiently and widely. Finally, a large (and therefore generally scattered) market of consumers was essential, with cash to spend and an inclination to spend it. Furthermore, all this complexity depended on the labour of the hundreds of other people who oiled the wheels of manufacture and com- merce by maintaining an infrastructure of coins, roads, boats, wagons, wayside hostelries, and so on.

Economic complexity made mass-produced goods available, but it also made people dependent on specialists or semi-specialists—sometimes working hundreds of miles away—for many of their material needs. This worked very well in stable times, but it rendered consumers extremely vulnerable if for any reason the networks of production and distribution were disrupted, or if they themselves could no longer afford to purchase from a specialist. If specialized production failed, it was not possible to fall back immediately on effective self-help.

Comparison with the contemporary western world is obvious and important. Admittedly, the ancient economy was nowhere near as intricate as that of the developed world in the twenty-first century. We sit in tiny productive pigeon-holes, making our minute and highly specialized contributions to the global economy (in my case, some teaching, and a bit of writing about the end of the Roman world), and we are wholly dependent for our needs on thousands, indeed hundreds of thousands, of other people spread around the globe, each doing their own little thing. We would be quite incapable of meeting our needs locally, even in an emergency. The ancient world had not come as far down the road of specialization and helplessness as we have, but it had come some way.

The enormity of the economic disintegration that occurred at the end of the empire was almost certainly a direct result of this specialization. The post-Roman world reverted to levels of economic simplicity, lower even than those of immediately pre-Roman times, with little movement of goods, poor housing, and only the most basic manufactured items. The sophistication of the Roman period, by spreading high-quality goods widely in society, had destroyed the local skills and local networks that, in pre-Roman times, had provided lower-level economic complexity. It took centuries for people in the former empire to reacquire the skills and the regional networks that would take them back to these pre-Roman levels of sophistication. Ironically, viewed from the perspective of fifth-century Britain and of most of the sixth- and seventh-century Mediterranean, the Roman experience had been highly damaging.

Hadrian's Other Wall

Emperor Hadrian (117-138) is well known for ordering the construction of the 70 mile stone fortification across the north of England, now known as Hadrian's Wall.  The wall was part of a large strategy of retrenchment, placing the Empire in a defensive posture for the first time since the founding of the Republic in 509 BC.  

Hadrian's immediate predecessor, Trajan (98-117) conquered Dacia (Romania) and annexed Armenia and Iraq.  The latter two overextended the empire's reach and Hadrian withdrew as well as relinquishing the plains of Romania to the barbarians while retaining the metal-rich uplands.

Shortly after his accession, Hadrian also prompted the erection of another wall, this time in Germany.  It was less ornate and permanent, being primarily a wooden palisade rather than stone structure.  It seems construction began shortly after Hadrian returned from the East to Rome in 118.  Some new details on the construction and its timing have recently come to light as described in Following Hadrian (the blog by Carole Raddato, who has spent years traveling through the former Roman world, retracing Hadrian's journeys).

After the defeat of Varus' legions in the Teutoberg Forest in 9 AD, the Romans had largely abandoned the east bank of the Rhine but during Domitian's reign (81-96) had reestablished a presence in what is now southwestern Germany, from the hills around modern Frankfurt and then heading southeast, encompassing most of the current state of Baden-Wurttemberg, until reaching the Danube in Bavaria.  While some fortifications had been built, it was under Hadrian that the system became organized and a physical barrier constructed.

 

Using the trunks of oak trees, the palisade stood up to 10 feet above ground.  The logs were pointed at the top and secured by cross beams.  The initial wall ran for about 50 miles between the Main and Neckar rivers - roughly from modern Frankfurt to east of Heidelberg) and it took about 1,000 trees per mile.

(Schematic of palisade, from Following Hadrian)

Watchtowers were constructed about every 1/2 mile along the wall and the entire section runs straight for the entire 50 miles.  Later emperors added to the barrier, eventually reaching 350 miles in length with 900 watchtowers.  

Wood is not as enduring as stone, so the initial palisade required rebuilding 50 or 60 years later.  The entire area was held until about 260 AD, when increasing pressures from the tribes forced the Romans to abandon the region and pull back behind the Rhine and Danube.

This video provides more information and, in its second part, a mini-tour of the entire barrier.

Ironically, it may have been the very presence of Rome on the borders of Germania that sparked the strengthening of the tribes and encouraging the incursions that eventually led to the fall of the Western Empire in the fifth century.  The Roman presence and increased trade led to greater wealth among the barbarians and a consolidation of formerly fragmented and constantly warring with each other tribes into great confederations like the Alemanni, Burgundians, Franks etc, as many of the tribal names from the 1st century disappeared by the third.

 

Go Tell The Spartans

2500 years ago in August or September took place two battles between Greeks and Persians that determined the course of Western Civilization - Thermopylae and Salamis.  The first a legendary and stirring defeat and the death of Leonidas and his 300, the second the unexpected victory at sea by the desperate Greeks, events this blogger has touched on before.

From William Golding on the occasion of his visit to the pass at Thermopylae.  From The Hot Gates and Other Occasional Pieces (1965):

I came to myself in a great stillness, to find I was standing by the little mound. This is the mound of Leonidas, with its dust and rank grass, its flowers and lizards, its stones, scruffy laurels and hot gusts of wind. I knew now that something real happened here. It is not just that the human spirit reacts directly and beyond all argument to a story of sacrifice and courage, as a wine glass must vibrate to the sound of the violin. It is also because, way back and at the hundredth remove, that company stood in the right line of history. A little of Leonidas lies in the fact that I can go where I like and write what I like. He contributed to set us free.

Climbing to the top of that mound by the uneven, winding path, I came on the epitaph, newly cut in stone. It is an ancient epitaph though the stone is new. It is famous for its reticence and simplicity — has been translated a hundred times but can only be paraphrased:

'Stranger, tell the Spartans that we behaved as they would wish us to, and are buried here.'

The Greek, from Herodotus 7.228:

ὦ ξεῖν᾿, ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε
    κείμεθα τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.

An alternative translation: 

Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.

Tower Of Hercules

I recently was surprised to learn a Roman lighthouse built in the late 1st century AD is still operating at the entrance of La Coruna harbor on the northwest coast of Spain.  The oldest Roman lighthouse still in use, the lower 2/3 of the tower contains Roman masonry surrounded and topped by improvements made in the 18th century.

Either built or rebuilt during the reign of Emperor Trajan (98-117) the structural is thought to be modeled on the legendary Lighthouse of Alexandria.

The Big Sleepy Chill

With many thanks to Raymond Chandler and a tip o' the hat to Dashiell Hammett.

This is the time of year when folks like to complain about the heat, how tough it is on them, discuss how to cool off, or discourse on their favorite frozen concoction or confection.

Oh dear! How frightful! Well, as far as I’m concerned, fuggedaboutit. And I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter nights, and they’re a lot of long cold nights in the story I’m laying out. Some days I feel like playing it smooth. Some days I feel like playing it like a waffle iron. Today's an iron day.

Let’s talk about a really chilly summer, one that would have made sure you complainers didn’t get an AC bill as big as my hangover this morning. Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl’s clothes off.

And I’m not even talking about 1816, the Year Without A Summer, after Mt Tambora blew its lid like mine blew when I saw that mug on the street last night. He thought he had the drop on me but even on Central Ave. he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food cake. Wait, where was I? Oh yeah . . .

I’m talking about real chill; I’m talking about 536 AD.

So quit your yapping, put on your big boy pants, and listen. And remember, there are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. This truth isn’t gonna make you feel toasty, so you better make do with science.

It started on a night with the desert wind blowing. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.

Well, it may have not exactly been that type of night. Maybe it was a night when all around was soft and quiet, the white moonlight cold and clear, like the justice we dream of but don’t find. Or, it might not have even been night. Other than that it’s probably how it happened.

It was a volcano that started it. Maybe in Iceland where the land is as hollow and empty as the spaces between stars.

But, before we get to that . . .

We’ve always known something went seriously wrong with the climate in 536. For much of the Northern Hemisphere a strange cloud or “veil of dust” appeared making the sun noticeably dimmer during the day. The Byzantine historian Procopius wrote “For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year“. In China, snow fell during the summer causing crops to fail and people to starve. Korean documents record massive storms. Irish chronicles mention “a failure of bread from the years 536–539.” Michael the Syrian recorded “[T]he sun became dark and its darkness lasted for one and a half years […] Each day it shone for about four hours and still this light was only a feeble shadow […] the fruits did not ripen and the wine tasted like sour grapes.” The following winter in Mesopotamia was so brutal a chronicler wrote “from the large and unwonted quantity of snow the birds perished.” Dust fell from the sky. The wet air was as cold as the ashes of love. The streets were dark with something more than night. It was as cool as a cafeteria dinner. Most contemporaneous documentation states these conditions continued for years.

More recently confirmatory evidence of those terrible times has been uncovered. Tree ring studies in the 1990s confirmed the years around 540 were unusually cold and it is now calculated that summer temperatures fell 2.5 to 4 degrees F, beginning the coldest decade in the past 23 centuries. Archaeological evidence from Scandinavia shows that up to 75% of settlements were abandoned during those years.

Some places had it even worse. The Byzantines chose that year to invade Italy, trying to resurrect the glory days of the Roman Empire. Justinian’s general Belisarius landed in Naples that fall and marched into Rome unopposed on December 9. The Ostrogoths, after several years of chaos following the death of long time rule Theodoric, had retreated and the Byzantines thought the war was over. It wasn’t and what followed was two decades of battles, sieges, looting, famine, and devastation across the peninsula, on top of the horrible weather conditions. It was the Gothic War that spelled the real end of the classical city of Rome and of the traditional way of life in Italy. It makes you think maybe we all get like this in the cold half-lit world where always the wrong thing happens and never the right.

Some medieval historians say 536 was the worst year ever to be alive. I say that’s why they’re medieval historians.

For an agricultural society in which most people lived on the edge of survival the events had a terrible impact, shortening growing seasons, causing starvation, and weakening those who survived. After several years of cold, a new terror came to the Middle East, the Eastern Roman Empire, and western Europe with its origin in central Asia or China. Today it is known as the Justinian Plague, after the Byzantine Emperor of the times, the first confirmed outbreak of the bubonic plague. So many died so quickly the bodies were often left where they lay. Killing perhaps a quarter of the population, some believe its arrival and the high death toll are linked to a population already living on the brink of disaster. On the other hand, the problem with putting two and two together is that sometimes you get four, and sometimes you get twenty-two.

Living on the edge reminds me of another mug who complained to me yesterday about how tough things were for him. I told him, “You’re broke, eh? I been shaking two nickels together for a month, trying to get them to mate.” Some people.

More recently, ice core data from Greenland and other evidence has given clues as to the origin of the deluge of cold. While some thought it lay in a meteor strike, it now appears there was a massive eruption in 536, likely from a volcano in Iceland, and another huge eruption in 540 or 541 though its location is more uncertain.

So while you’re whipping up your favorite frozen concoction, or whatever it is you people do, take a moment to think about all those souls, living on the margins back then and how they chilled out.

As for me, after this, I need a drink, I need a lot of life insurance, I need a vacation, I need a home in the country. What I have is a coat, a hat and a gun. I’m putting them on and getting out of here.

Res Gestae

The Res Gestae Divi Augustus (Deeds of the Divine Augustus) is how Rome's first emperor wished to be remembered, and it was not as an emperor.  It is a rendering of his accomplishments, of which the original (now lost) was inscribed in front of his mausoleum in Rome.  Fortunately, copies of the Res Gestae were distributed throughout the Empire and nearly complete or partial copies have been found in many locations with the most complete version at a temple in modern day Ankara, Turkey.  An English translation can be found here.

Augustus is the towering figure in Roman history.  As Octavian, the 19-year old adopted nephew of the assassinated Julius Caesar, and as heir to Caesar's fortune, he was originally underestimated by both Caesar's opponents like Brutus and Cicero, as well as by the man who seemed Caesar's political heir, Marc Antony.  Over the next thirteen years, until 31BC, Octavian/Augustus outmaneuvered everyone, ending civil war, reuniting the Roman state, and emerging as its undisputed head, a position he retained until his death 45 years later.

Cleverly, he positioned himself as restoring the Roman Republic but, in reality, Augustus marked the final death of the Republic and came to be considered the first Roman emperor.  The Res Gestae can be read as a propaganda document, memorializing the role of Augustus as restorer of the peace, servant of the Republic and Senate, benefactor to the people and City of Rome, expander of Rome to unprecedented dominion, and recognized in that role by the submission of neighboring states and kingdoms.

The Res Gestae contains 35 paragraphs of accomplishments, in twelve of which Augustus emphasizes actions done in accordance with the wishes of the senate and/or people along with several instances where he declined honors:

Twice he is given an ovation for his victories, along with three triumphs but "when the Senate decreed more triumphs for me, I sat out from all of them".  He declined offers of dictatorship from both the senate and people.

Augustus reminds readers that at the end of the civil war:

. . . having obtained all things by universal consent, I handed over the state from my power to the dominion of the senate and Roman people.  And for this merit of mine, by a senate decree, I was called Augustus . . . After that time, I exceeded all in influence, but I had no greater power than the others who were colleagues of mine in each magistracy.

He spends ten paragraphs listing his bequests and building on behalf of the people, including large payments to the Roman plebs and towns, and the establishment of many military colonies in Italy and elsewhere.  Four times he "helped the senatorial treasury with my money", though in reality his accounts and those of the state were so intermingled it was difficult to tell where monies came from.   The rebuilding of many of Rome's temples and prominent buildings is described in great detail as well as the eight gladiator shows in which about 10,000 men fought and the 26 hunts of "African beasts in the circus, in the open, or in the amphitheater; in them about 3,500 beasts were killed".

The document relates with evident pride the punishment of his adoptive father's murderers:

I drove the men who slaughtered my father into exile with a legal order, punishing their crime, and afterwards, when they waged war on the state, I conquered them in two battles.

Note the statement that his activities were done by "legal order" and his enemies "waged war on the state", not Augustus.

Of more import to Romans, was his expansion of their boundaries.  Wars were carried on in Europe, Africa, and Asia during his long reign:

I often waged war, civil and foreign, on the earth and sea, in the whole wide world, and as victor I spared all the citizens who sought pardon.  As for foreign nations, those which I was able to safely forgive, I preferred to preserve than to destroy.

Like Caesar, Augustus was magnanimous in pardoning those who fought against him, apart from those who murdered Caesar.

About five hundred thousand Roman citizens were sworn to me.  I led something more than three hundred thousand of them into colonies . . .

The emperor is referring to the legions raised during the Civil War.  It was important to demobilize most of them, yet a settlement had to be found so the soldiers would be satisfied and not cause further disturbance.  This Augustus accomplished by establishing military colonies for settlement and paying generous stipends for their service.  The remainder were formed into 28 permanent legions (Rome's first standing army) and distributed among the frontier provinces.

I extended the borders of all the provinces of the Roman people which neighbored nations not subject to our rule.

He completed the subjugation of Spain and advanced the borders of Rome to the Danube in modern day Austria and Hungary.  The astonishing wealth of Egypt was added to the Empire and, in a humble-brag states that while he could have made Armenia a province he instead installed a local king who served as an ally.  There is no mention of the tragic misadventure in Germania, where three legions under Varus were slaughtered by the local tribes five years before the death of Augustus, a setback the led him to direct the remaining legions to fall back to the west bank of the Rhine.

Adding a whiff of adventure in the farthest lands he adds:

By my order and auspices two armies were led at about the same time into Ethiopia and into that part of Arabia which is called Happy [Felix], and the troops of each nation of enemies were slaughtered in battle and many towns captured.  They penetrated into Ethiopia all the way to the town of Napata, which is near to Meroe; and into Arabia all the way to the border of the Sabaei, advancing to the town of Mariba.

Neither of these expeditions resulted in permanent conquest.  The Ethiopia expedition, under Gaius Petronius, traveled well into modern Sudan before withdrawing.  The Arabian campaign was a disaster with an army commanded by Aelius Gallus advancing into modern Yemen before being destroyed by disease (for more on Rome in Arabia read The Farthest Outpost).

And those not directly ruled by Rome recognized the greatness of its domain:

Emissaries from the Indian kings were often sent to me, which had not been seen before that time by any Roman leader.  The Bastarnae, the Scythians, and the Sarmatians [from the steppes north of the Black Sea] .  .  . and the kings of the Albanians, the Iberians, and of the Medes [the last three in the Caucasus], sought our friendship through emissaries.

To me were sent supplications by kings: of the Parthians . . . of the Britons, Dumnobellaunus and Tincommius . . . King Phrates of the Parthians [Rome's greatest enemy] . . . sent all his sons and grandsons into Italy to me, though defeated in no war, but seeking our friendship through the pledges of his children.

He ends with this:

When I administered my thirteenth consulate [2 BC], the senate and Equestrian order and the Roman people all called me father of the country, and voted that the same be inscribed in the vestibule of my temple, in the Julian senate-house, and in the forum of Augustus under the chariot which had been placed there for me by a decision of the senate.

It was a masterful political performance that last more than a half-century.  On the surface, Augustus restored order and the role of the Senate and people while, in reality, he manipulated and controlled the state, drastically changing the course of Roman history.