Archeon (Alphen aan den Rijn)

The museum park Archeon in Alphen aan den Rijn (Netherlands; satellite photo) is always worth a visit. It contains many reconstructions of Dutch buildings from Prehistory, Antiquity, and Middle Ages. The first photo shows a 1:1 reconstruction of the mansio (inn) near the base of the Tenth legion Gemina at Ulpia Noviomagus/Nijmegen.

When it was opened in 1994, the park was intended to do archaeological research, which would be financed from the proceeds of the visits, but this turned out to be too optimistic, and for one winter, Archeon was closed. The water pipes of the reconstructed bathhouse of Coriovallum/Heerlen (second photo) were damaged beyond repair, and it is now no longer possible to have a bath and a massage in that building – which used -among Dutch archaeologists- to be a favorite way to celebrate birthdays.

After this crisis, the park was reopened on a smaller scale (1997). Gone is the reconstructed farm of Rijswijk-De Bult, gone are the plans to rebuild an entire castellum; but still, you can visit a lot of reconstructions of buildings that once dominated the towns in the Netherlands, like the small temple that was excavated at Ceuclum/Cuijk (third photo). The Roman bridge at Cuijk, which used to be the entrance of the park, still exists, but is almost impossible to find.

The fourth photo shows the “Voorburghuis”, from the capital of the Cananefates, Forum Hadriani/Voorburg. There is a nice reconstructed potter’s kiln next to it, that is still used to make ceramics. The little arch and low wall on the fifth photo are the enclosure of the sacred precinct of Trajectum ad Mosam, modern Maastricht.

When we visited the museum park, it was a quiet day in spring. The children that can under normal circumstances produce more noise than you can imagine, were at school, and those who were at the park, enjoyed the gladiatoral contests. So, the photos I can present here are without twenty-first century additions. This is what the Netherlands must have looked like at the beginning of our era.

The Canal of Corbulo (Fossa Corbulonis)

The Canal of Corbulo, or Fossa Corbulonis, was an ancient canal that connected the rivers Rhine and Meuse. It was constructed by general Corbulo, who was governor of Germania Inferior in 47, although construction may have lasted longer. The advantage of the canal was that rivers ships from the Rhine could reach the estuary of the Meuse without sailing offshore on the dangerous North Sea. At the estuary, called Helinium, seaworthy ships were ready to transport cargos to Britain. The canal is still in use.

Gn. Domitius Corbulo

Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo (7? – 67) was a Roman general, who is best known from Tacitus’ Annals. The historian greatly admires the man, who was indeed a capable commander – but not without faults. As general of the army of Germania Inferior, he defeated the Frisians, but was recalled by Claudius, who did not want to get involved in a full-scale war in Germania before the war in Britain was not over. After this, Corbulo reorganized the frontier zone: his men dug the Canal of Corbulo, which is still in use, and erected several castella and the first watchtowers along the limes.

During the reign of Claudius’ successor Nero, Corbulo was commander of armies in Cappadocia and Syria, and conducted several campaigns against the Parthian Empire, which were neither unsuccessful nor the big victories that Nero claimed they had been. In 67, Nero ordered Corbulo to commit suicide. (The bust is in the Louvre.)

F. Marion Crawford, The Rulers of the South

The Rulers of the South by F. Marion Crawford, which is now online at LacusCurtius, was published for the first time in 1901. It covers the history of Sicily from prehistory to the nineteenth century. The author viewed his book as “romantic history” and wrote in a pleasant, light discursive style, but it is essentially a military history, and faithfully follows its ancient sources. The title of the book, though, is well chosen: the rulers of the South are the subject matter rather than economic and social history, or art and literature. Yet even in a military and political history it’s impossible to ignore these other aspects altogether: there’s a good deal of information in this book – all the more inevitably in that, the author lived “half a life” in southern Italy, which we would easily divine even had he not told us so. He obviously loves Sicily in particular, especially Palermo, and his book gives us a very good feel for that city and some of the other towns and landmarks of the island.

New at LacusCurtius (6)

Bill Thayer added several new items to LacusCurtius. One of them is an article from the first volume of the English Historical Review (1886), on “The Tyrants of Britain, Gaul, and Spain“, written by E.A. Freeman who tries to offer a more coherent account than was available in his age. It is interesting to see how much of what we take for granted, still had to be established in the Victorian age. Bill has also added some stuff to his delicious pages on Umbria – if I single out Otricoli, it is not because the remainder is uninteresting, but because this blog concentrates on ancient history. Still, Bill’s Umbrian pages are worth a visit.

Battle of the Allia (387 BC)

It is admittedly not the best of my photo collection, but the picture of the Allia battlefield (387 BCE) is dear to me because it took some effort to reach a point from which we had a good view of the site. The battle, in which the Romans were defeated by a band of Gauls, was not terribly important, although later generations of Roman historians told horror stories about the sack of the city, which was the main consequence of the battle. But the army and the people were able to save themselves, and Roman expansion in Central Italy was not seriously challenged: during the next decade or so, Rome became the unrivaled master of Latium.

A Fake Source on Justinian

LacusCurtius’ Bill Thayer often puts online old articles, which are referred to in -for example- in Samuel Platner’s Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome. You can find those old articles in Bill’s Antiquary’s Shoebox. This time, he has made available a really interesting piece of research by James Bryce, in which he proves that Theophilus, author of a Life of Justinian, is not reliable.

In a nice piece of detective work, Bryce shows that the text, which is quoted and accepted as genuine by well-known, professional historians like Edward Gibbon, was not -as was commonly accepted- a manuscript from the Vatican Library, but a document in the library of the Barberini family. He also shows that the manuscript was written in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, and contains Slavonic legends about Justinian. As such, it tells more about medieval ideas about the Byzantine emperor than about the man himself. (The photo that accompanies this blog article, is an ivory showing Justinian, also from the Barberini collection, but now in the Louvre, Paris.)

New at LacusCurtius (5)

Bill Thayer has added the Greek text of two discourses by Dio of Prusa to LacusCurtius: Discourse 72 (on personal appearance) and Discourse 50 (on Dio’s past record).

Not directly relevant for the study of ancient history, but quite interesting nevertheless: a page on the Church of the Guardian Angel at Calcinelli di Saltara, part of Bill’s delightful Gazetteer of Italy.