Plutarch, On the Principle of Cold

Plutarch, bust from the museum of Delphi.

Again a treatise by Plutarch online at LacusCurtius: this time, the venerable author deals with the Principle of Cold (Περὶ τοῦ πρώτως Ψυχροῦ), and that turns out to be far more interesting than you would think.

First, Plutarch argues that an “element of cold” exists, and then, he Plutarch considers what that element may be. Since fire is obviously excluded, can it be air, as the Stoics believe, or water, as Empedocles holds? Or, indeed, may it be earth itself? This latter opinion is put forward by Plutarch as his own contribution to theoretical physics, but the essay closes with a recommendation to skepticism. The Sage of Chaeronea may not have regarded his attempted proof as cogent, as indeed it is not.

Einsiedeln Eclogues

Einsiedeln Abbey

… or Anything Except, continued: the Einsiedeln Eclogues are up, Latin, English, introduction, proofread.

Just two fragmentary poems, not even worth calling them “116″ — and not to be confused with the more famous item, and to me the far more interesting, the Einsiedeln Itinerary, which should prolly be going onsite soon too.

Gandhara Exposition, Bonn

"Thundering Zeus": coin of Antimachus Theos (c.170 BCE). Museum of Taxila.

At the moment, there is a nice exhibition of Graeco-Buddhist art from Gandhara in the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn. My friends Marco and Marlous and I drove 600 kilometers to visit it, and it was certainly worth that effort.

The story starts with Alexander the Great, who opened the road from the Mediterranean to the Punjab, settled many Greeks in Bactria, and destabilized the Indian subcontinent (more…). Order was created by the Mauryan Empire, which helped to spread Buddhism to the Punjab and Afghanistan. A bit later, the Bactrian Greeks crossed the Hindu Kush and settled in Taxila, the capital of the Punjab. A new culture was created, mixing Buddhist and Greek elements; it flourished in the age of the Kushan Empire – the first centuries of the common era.

A Buddha in Jaulian.

Marco and I visited Pakistan in 2004, and had seen many objects in the museums of Peshawar, Taxila and Lahore. It was certainly nice to be, in some sense, again at sites like Jaulian and Shahbazgarhi. The exhibition hall is a big square, with a circular room in the center of it, which is a bit like a stupa and contains statues of the Buddha and is surrounded by reliefs with scenes from his life. Some of these scenes, like Buddha riding on a ram, are inspired by Greek art and are unknown from outside the Punjab.

A Buddha from the Museum of Lahore.

The square that surrounds the circle is divided into several parts dedicated to certain aspects: the Greek conquests, art from the Swat valley, the Bamyan Buddhas, the iconography of the Maitreya. It is not an easy exhibition: you need to keep your mind to it, even though the explanatory signs are excellent. But an explanation of the main tenets of Buddhism would have been helpful.

The time in the Bundeskunsthalle was well-spent, although I stick to my perennial complaint about big exhibitions: that you are not allowed to take photos, and are forced to buy a catalog. The Bonn Gandhara catalog is fine, but as always, it does not contain photos of those particular details you want to study a bit better. Museums that obstruct study, have something to explain.

Jaulian, detail of a stupa

But this is just a minor criticism on a very interesting exhibition, which is really worth a visit. Entry to Gandhara: the Buddhist Heritage of Pakistan is eight euro. The exhibitions lasts until 15 March, and then moves to Berlin’s Martin Gropius Bau (9 April to 10 August). The catalog, lavishly illustrated with 400 photos, costs 29 euro.

Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels

Bust of Gallienus

Yesterday, I visited the Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire / Koninklijke musea voor kunst en geschiedenis in Brussels, one of my favorite museums in Belgium. I have been there quite often, but this was the first time that all the departments were open – including the National Archaeology department and the new department of Ancient Near Eastern Art.

The last-mentioned section is a sufficient reason to visit Brussels. There are splendid objects from all over the ancient Near East, including a relief from Naram-Sin, a Sasanian helmet, Palmyrene funerary busts, an astronomical map from Uruk, and a nice little tablet on which someone has written a multiplication table.

The department is, from a museological point of view, state of the art, which is perhaps a mixed blessing: the room is dark and the objects are shown in spotlights. Usually, this is disastrous: you can see the objects only from one point of view. However, the circular displays enable you to move around them, which removes this disadvantage.

The Greek, Roman, and Egyptian departments have not really changed over the past years, although I was unable to find again the nice case with ancient coins. They are quiet, spacious rooms, where you can study the objects at your leisure. One of the highlights is the model of ancient Rome, comparable to the more famous model in Rome’s Museo nazionale della civiltà romana. The mosaics from Apamea are another reason to go there.

The best thing to say is, furthermore, that photography is now permitted – you needed to have a permit and were not allowed to publish those photos. I am very glad that the museum has changed this policy: not only is it not enforceable in an age in which anyone can take a photo with a telephone, but the best way to raise interest in a museum’s collection is to make it as accessible as possible. People will now show photos to each other and tell them how nice this or that museum was. This little article is just one example of that word-of-mouth marketing.

I was there with Jasper of RomanArmyTalk, and we were happy to meet our Belgian friend Hans, who celebrated his birthday and offered us a drink. Thanks Hans!

115…

Sheep

… or Anything Except Proofreading Tacitus: the Eclogues of Calpurnius Siculus are up, in Latin and English, the usual editor’s introduction, etc. Proofread of course. Pastoral poetry: one of the seven actually is about sheep (#5); but to those of us not overly enamoured of sheep-verse, #7 is of interest as an atmospheric piece on amphitheater spectacles in Rome.

Dascylium

Magians performing a sacrifice

Dascylium (satellite photo), situated to the southeast of Lake Dascylitis on a bank of a river, was the capital of the Persian satrapy of Hellespontine Phrygia and the residence of the Pharnacid dynasty (Artabazus, Pharnabazus, Pharnaces, Pharnabazus, Ariobarzanes, and Artabazus), until it was captured by Parmenion, a general of Alexander the Great, after the battle of the Granicus (334). The site is famous for several fifth-century reliefs, showing Persian Magians performing sacrifices; they are now among the (many) highlights of the Arkeoloji Müzesi of Istanbul.

My new page is here. As I already announced, I am moving several pages of my website; I also moved Shushthar to a new location – so now there’s 121 pages left to do.

Fort Zenobia

The southern wall and the citadel

The big wars between the Roman Empire and the Sasanian king Shapur in the mid-third century proved that Rome’s defenses on the Euphrates were insufficient. The Palmyrene rulers therefore built Fort Zenobia, named after their queen/empress, and now better known as Halebiye. It was rebuilt several times, a/o by the Byzantine emperor Justinian. This reconstruction is described in some detail by Procopius (Buildings, 2.8.8-25).

On the opposite bank is a similar fort, poorly preserved, now called Zalebiye. This gained some fame as the place of an Israeli air strike in September 2007.

A view from the citadel.

Zenobia, which measures about twelve hectares, remains impressive: the fifteen massive towers and the praetorium are almost intact, just like Justinian’s fantastic walls. The southern wall is about 550 meters long and connects the citadel on the hill to the river; the northern wall is 350 meters long. The praetorium is adjacent to the northern wall, halfway up the hill: a multi-storeyed building with a very large hall that would have been called a knight room in more recent fortifications.

Less well preserved are the 385‑meter-long wall along the river, which had to contain the Euphrates, the bathhouse, the palaestra, the governor’s house, and the two basilicas. The East Basilica probably dates to the fifth century, the West Basilica was built by Justinian.

My new webpage is here. And it is little bit special, because it is the 3333th page on the site.

The Neronian Sacra Via

Map of the Neronian Sacra Via

The Via Sacra (or Sacra Via) in Rome is the road that connects the valley that is now dominated by the Colosseum, passing over the crest of the Velia, to the Forum Romanum. People celebrating a triumph used this road. What you can see today when you walk from the Temple of Caesar to the Arch of Titus is the road as it was in the age of Augustus.

However, it is possible to imagine what it looked like at a later stage. In an article originally posted in the American Journal of Archaeology (in 1923), Esther Boise Van Deman showed how the area was restructured during the last regnal years of Nero: a straight road leading to the Vestibulum of the Golden House (where the Colossus stood) with basilicas to the left and right – now the site of the Basilica of Maxentius and the Horrea of Vespasian. The article has been made available now by LacusCurtius‘ Bill Thayer, and you can find it here.

The Velia

Most scholars (like this one) believe that Velia is the ancient name of the ridge that connects the Palatine and the Esquiline; it is one of the eight places mentioned in the list known as Septimontium. In an article on the historical topography of the Velia, originally in the Transactions of the American Philological Association, H.F. Rebert shows that the name Velia in fact refers to a slightly different area, to the west of what is now believed to be the Velia. The article has been made available now by LacusCurtius‘ Bill Thayer, and you can find it here.

Doors

A cat opens a door (Side).

If you think that a door is just there to enter a house, you haven’t read James Yates’ article Janua, which was published in William Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities and has now been made available by LacusCurtius‘ Bill Thayer. I was impressed that there was so much to tell about the structure of a door, about customs (like knocking), and about religious beliefs. Yates’ piece was written in 1875, and much archaeological and anthropological research has been done since then, but I wonder if it is possible to add more information. So, enjoy it.