Sarvestan Palace

The great dome

The small, fifth-century Sasanian building east of Sarvestan (satellite photo) is usually called a palace, but no one knows what the building really is. It may have been a hunting lodge or a religious site; but it may as well have been a palace, because it resembles the Qalah-e Dokhtar and the palace of Ardašir at Firuzabad. Whatever the function of the ruin near Sarvestan, it is well-preserved, and worth a visit. It will take an afternoon, if you rent a car in Shiraz. And if you don’t like to go to Iran, your photos are here.

Godin Tepe

Godin Tepe from the southeast

The excavation of Godin Tepe, close to Kangavar along the road from Hamadan to Behistun, in 1965-1973 was important, because until then, the chronology of Iran’s Bronze Age and Iron Age was poorly understood. Hasanlu, Tepe Nush-e Jan, and Godin Tepe changed all that.

Today, there is not much to see. The Median mansion that once stood at the top, was destroyed when the archaeologists excavated the lower strata of the hill. Still, it is worth to interrupt your trip along the main road at Godin Tepe and climb to the ruins on the summit: the view of the plain is really splendid. The Median prince who built his house over here, knew what he was doing. There is more here.

Closing Museums and University Departments

A good teacher

Today, I was invited to sign a petition (this one) against the closing of the Canterbury Roman Museum. I’ve not been there yet – perhaps I will go there in April – but because the man who wrote the recommendation is someone I have come to appreciate, I signed the document. In other words, what mattered was the person who recommended this cause.

I was reminded of a similar invitation, which I received in October 2009. The University of Sheffield was about to close its Biblical Studies Department. I read all kinds of reasonable arguments why the department ought to remain, but I never read why the university had decided to cut the financing in the first place. This surprised me. Scholars ought to act like scholars always. They cannot try to be unbiased in the library while accepting bias when their institution’s under attack.

The fact that counterattack is more difficult, makes an institute vulnerable. (Everything of value is almost by definition vulnerable.) Scholars may regret that, but only if they live according to their vocation, they can inspire people. Because of the Sheffield theologicians’ disingenuity, I could not support their cause. What mattered was, again, the person who recommended the cause. If scholarship is, these days, not sufficiently funded, it may have something to do with the scholars’ inconsistency, which has caused a lack of credibility.

Commemorating the dead (or not)

The Colosseum

I already blogged on the Christian martyrs venerated in the Colosseum, and pointed out that there is no evidence that Christians were killed on that terrible place. The evidence, in fact, suggests the opposite. No Medieval list of martyrdom sites mentions the Colosseum. There is actually more evidence of Jewish martyrdoms: the Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 39a) mentions an emperor ordering a rabbi to be thrown into an arena full of wild animals. It’s not much, but more than we can say about Christian martyrs.

Yet, you will not find a Jewish memorial in the Colosseum, and not because our Talmudic scene deals with an amphitheater, not the amphitheater of Rome. The reason is much more profound.

Christians will go to the places where people have been killed and say their prayers, believing that God will hear them. The Omnipresent is also present where atrocities have taken place. To some extent, secular people share this idea: even though they will not say a prayer, they erect monuments on crime scenes. In Rome, the memorial of the Fosse Ardeatine massacre is a case in point.

This is not the way Jews look at things. Places like the Colosseum are somehow outside the realm of God’s goodness. This means that there are better places to say your prayers, and even if we had absolute certainty that out rabbi faced martyrdom in the Colosseum, there would still not be a Jewish monument. The locations of the horrors are not the place of worship, and are best abandoned.

I am not saying that this view is better than the Christian/secular view. Nor do I think that we should abandon the Colosseum altogether. Yet, the Roman archaeological authorities, who have always been able to present their many treasures in an often beautiful fashion, ought to be capable of creating a more dignified atmosphere at the Colosseum – without shouting tourist guides, without exceptionally amateurish reenactors, without souvenir shops. Unfortunately, the only thing I’ve heard from the tourist authorities, a proposal to organize gladiatorial contests in the Colosseum again, was singularly revolting. Rome should be capable of inventing something better.

Common Errors (27): Christians in the Colosseum

The Colosseum

During the reign of Marcus Aurelius (r.161-180), the Roman Empire started to experience increased pressure on its frontiers. Germanic tribes started to organize themselves better and in the East, the Parthians were replaced by the Sasanian Empire, which was more aggressive than its predecessors had been. The Roman emperors took countermeasures and tried to gain divine support by persecuting religious minorities, like the Manichaeans, the Jews, and the Christians. By ancient standards, this was a logical decision: the fact that they did not worship the gods of the state, offered sufficient explanation for Roman military defeats.

The Persecutions were very serious, and you do not need to be a Christian to abhor from the state’s violence against its own citizens. It is always fitting and proper to commemorate the slaughtered innocents. For this reason, pope Benedict XIV (r.1740-1758) dedicated the Colosseum to the memory of the Christian martyrs killed in the arena. The problem is that this is probably not a historical fact.

There are several texts about the martyrdom of Roman Christians. We know that Sebastian was executed on the Palatine and that Agnes suffered in the Stadium of Domitian. But no one is mentioned as being killed in the Flavian Amphitheater, as the execution theater was officially called. In the Acts of Justin, Chariton, Charito, Euelpistus, Hierax, Paeon, Liberian, and their Company, we read that these people were led “to the usual place”, which has been taken as a reference to the Colosseum, because we do not know which alternatives exist. However, this is poor evidence, and the fact that the Colosseum is not mentioned in Medieval catalogs of martyr shrines can mean only two things: if Christians were killed in the Colosseum, it was forgotten in the Middle Ages, or there were no Christians killed over there.

Of course, this does not mean that Benedict’s cross must be removed. It is part of the history of the Colosseum, and besides, it is never wrong to spend a thought about the terrible things that happened on this terrible place.

<Overview of Common Errors>

Bishapur

The statue in Shapur's cave

Today, I moved the pages of Bishapur, one of the places I like most in Iran. During my first visit, we were especially interested in locations that were Alexander-related, so we visited a lot of Achaemenid sites; yet, we all agreed that Sasanian Bishapur, for which we had not been prepared, was among the highlights of our trip. The six rock reliefs and the city are really spectacular. I already blogged about the recently reopened museum.

I’ve returned several times, and on each occasion, I discovered something new or met someone interesting. But the best memories belong to the climb to the cave with Shapur’s statue, one of the most splendid places in the world – not the cave with the statue, which is interesting but not very special, but the valley. It is the most beautiful place of Fars. You’ve just not been in Iran if you haven’t climbed that rock and enjoyed the scenery.

The Bishapur pages are something of a jubilee: Livius.org has now reached its 3500th page. I also added a very brief article on the Persepolis Treasury Tablets, and a third page of Amsterdam stone tablets, which brings the grand total to 3502.

And because there’s something to celebrate, here is the last version of my Google Earth markers (1437 sites).

Two Poorly Understood Sites

Rujm al-Malfouf

To be honest, I wanted to call this topic “two mysterious sites”, but as we all know, ancient historians must avoid clichés like “mystery”, “lost city”, and “treasure” – that would be the equivalent of “gathering war clouds”, “ghosts from the past”, or “child of nature”. Yet, today I have to introduce two sites that are, well, quite mysterious:

• Takht-e Rostam: a stone structure near Persepolis (Iran)
• Rujm al-Malfouf: an Ammonite Iron Age fort in Amman (Jordan)

Go there to learn more, and understand less. Two other items: LacusCurtius‘ Bill Thayer has added an article on Roman fire worship to his Antiquaries’ Shoebox, and on his blog, Bill Heroman refers to a common mistake about the Temple of Herod.

Petra

The Tomb of Sextius Florentinius

It is hard to not to know that Petra is the main archaeological site of Jordan. In Amman, there’s a musical on stage, aptly called “Petra Rocks”; companies call themselves after the Nabataean capital; posters of the town can be seen in nearly every souvenir shop; the famous view of the Treasury is reproduced as a mosaic. I was anxious to visit it, but I somehow did not dare to expect too much of it. I had the same experience during my first visits to Rome, Pompeii, Delphi, Persepolis, Lepcis Magna, Giza, Palmyra, and Nemrud Daği. Perhaps this is one of my minds’ curious strategies to prevent a disappointment.

This time, it turned out to be a wise strategy. Rome, Delphi, and Persepolis will always surpass the highest expectations and a visit to Palmyra, Pompeii, the pyramids, or Lepcis will never become a routine either; on the other hand, Nemrud Daği had no magic left when I arrived there for the second time. I think that Petra will belong to this same category. (I am aware that I am superbly blessed to have had the prerogative to be able to visit and revisit so many sites, and to have a friend with whom I have been able to share so many experiences.)

Petra is interesting and beautiful, but it is not Rome, Delphi, and Persepolis. Situated in a landscape reminiscent of Cappadocia, it is nature, not architecture that makes it special. The many funeral monuments are impressive and some of them are really beautiful, but that is all there is to it. You will never walk through the house of an Augustus, the temple of a Plutarch, or the palace of Xerxes. The site appeals to our sense of beauty and is therefore interesting for art historians and tourists; but to historians and other people interested in the depth of time, it has less to offer.

This does not mean that I am disappointed. My mind’s odd trick had helped me not to expect too much. It’s funny how the subconscious works.

Qasr Bshir

Leaving one of the most splendid sites of Jordan

A visit to Qasr Bshir ought to be obligatory to any visitor to Jordan. The Roman castle, founded in c.300, is not a ruin, as so often, but is almost intact. It is a square limes fort of about 50×50 meters with four towers, so that it is often typified as a “quadriburgium”. That it is a fascinating place can be deduced from the fact that two young women in our company, who were not known for their great interest in military architecture, were the last ones to leave.

The most amazing aspect of the best-preserved Roman castle in Jordan, however, is that you will be alone. For those who cannot believe that, I will repeat it: you won’t find a soul at a site that is arguably the kingdom’s third archaeological site, after Petra and Jerash.

This is all the more surprising because Jordan’s Castel del Monte is situated almost next to the Desert Highway, the main road from Damascus to Amman to Saudi Arabia. To reach it, go from Qatrana to the north. At your left hand, you will pass the “Petra Tourist Complex” (terrible coffee); after this, take the first asphalt road to the left. It is perpendicular to the highway, leading almost straight to the west. After you have passed the first of two electricity lines, the road turns to the right and winds itself to the northwest. After some eight minutes, you will see the fort to your right. The walk to the castle takes about 15-20 minutes and is easy. Your satellite photo is here.

Sarvestan

Sarvestan Palace

The Sarvestan Palace (satellite photo), built in the fifth century by the Sasanian king Bahram V, is about an hour and a half east of Shiraz. The trip itself is half the fun, because the road passes along a salt lake and through some orchards (the pomegranates are now ripe). Finally, you reach an immense plain, where the only sounds you hear are the ones you produce yourself, and where your only company consists of an occasional twister. The palace is in the center of the plain, splendidly isolated.

The monument is made of bricks and used to have three domes, of which two survive. Just like the Qalah-e Dokhtar and the palace of Ardašir, both near Firuzabad, the Sarvestan Palace is being restored. There were large scaffolds in the great dome. On our way back, we bought some pomegranates, and enjoyed the chaotic traffic of Shiraz. All in all, the visit was extremely worthwhile.

If you want to go to the Sarvestan palace, too, it may be useful to know that it is not near the town called Sarvestan; it is in fact ten kilometers east of it, close to a small village. I read the sign while we were passing along it in the car and I could not read it well – it may have been Mohsenabad. Amusingly, I wrote in my notes “Mohinabad”, Nothingville.

Decapolis and Capitals

The ruins of Scythopolis, one of the towns of the Decapolis

Continuing my series of articles on Jordan in Antiquity, I added two articles today: one about the Decapolis and one about capitals. The latter is meant as an addition to yesterday’s piece on the Nabataeans, who tried to stress their cultural autonomy by designing a building order of their own, that was not recognizably Greek. If I wanted to explain it, I needed to show photos of other capitals: the Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and so on. For one reason or another, I enjoyed writing this piece of antiquarism.

The Decapolis was part of the original series of Jordanian articles. It was a group of towns in northern Jordan, northeastern Israel, and southwestern Syria. The name suggests that there were ten cities, but there were at least twelve, and at some point even eighteen members of the Decapolis. What they shared, was their (accepted) Greek legacy. This made them completely different from the Nabataeans, who rejected Hellenism.

The Decapolis is here and the capitals are here; and Bill made available a new text by Plutarch, On Tranquillity of the Mind.

Buthrotum (Butrint, Albania)

Lake Palodes

The city of Buthrotum was founded in the mid-seventh century as a port of trade where Greeks could exchange goods with the native Chaonians. We know little about it: the town is not mentioned often in our sources. Fortunately, the site, which is situated on the western shore of Lake Palodes, has been excavated, and a theater, city walls and gates, temples to Athena and Asclepius, a stoa, a prytaneum, churches, the bishop’s palace, and an exceptionally large baptistery have been excavated.

I never visited the site, but my friend Lauren did; she also took the photos, which you can see here. It makes me looking forward to a trip to Albania too. And if Lauren’s photos are not enough for you, here’s the splendid official website.

Three Turkish Towns

Helios. Part of the decoration of the theater at Myra

The southwestern coasts of Turkey, the ancient landscapes of Caria, Lycia, and Pamphylia, are beautiful, and there are several equally beautiful ancient towns over there. Most worthwhile is Xanthus, where many monuments have been preserved but where you will not see many tourists. Myra has a nice theater and many intrigueing rock tombs; the main attraction, however, are the ancient port with its granaries and the basilica of Saint Nicholas. Both cities are worth visiting.

This cannot be said of Side, which is crowded by visitors. This may be a sign that the ruins are beautiful, but if this is really the case, that escaped my notice because I was usually too occupied with trying not to walk against other people. Still, we managed to make photos, which are now online; you don’t have to go there.

Also available: a small fact sheet on the Roman empress Plotina, wife of Trajan.

The ziggurat of Choga Zanbil

Stairway to heaven

A ziggurat is a pyramid-shaped artificial mountain, which served as the base of a temple. The most famous example is the “Tower of Babel“: a temple tower meant to “reach into heaven”, as the author of Genesis states – a claim that has indeed been made by the Babylonian kings Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar. The best-preserved ziggurat is in Choga Zanbil, in Khuzestan (Iran).

It is also one of the largest: it occupies a surface of 110×110 meters, and still rises some 25 meters high, less than half of it original heighth. But Choga Zanbil is not just a big heap of ancient tiles and bricks: there are courts and temples, there’s a water refinery, and there’s a royal palace with royal tombs. To be honest, everything is small compared to the building erected by king Untaš-Napiriša (1275-1240).

A “zanbil”, BTW, is a bucket, usually made of leather or rubber. From an excavation in Greece (Halos), I remember that we carried away the dirt in “zambilis”, which suggests that the word has entered modern Greek as a loanword from the Turkish language. Perhaps it’s originally an Arabic word, that was borrowed by the Turks first?

I used to have two pages on the site, based on photos from 2004. But I’ve been there again and again, sometimes twice a year, so I revised everything, and it’s now here.

Sardes

Marble table in the synagogue of Sardes

If all history of Antiquity were summarized, the result would look like Sardes, or Sardis. The city dates back to the Bronze Age but did not become important until the Cimmerians had overthrown the Phrygian kingdom, and Gyges reorganized what was left: the Lydian Empire, capital Sardes. His dynasty became famously wealthy because next to Sardes is the Pactolus, which contains gold dust. The immense size of the royal tombs at nearby Bin Tepe reflects the wealth of the city.

The Persians took charge in thr 54os or 530s and introduced eastern religious practices. From Sardes, the indomitable western barbarians were divided and controled, but in 334, their leader Alexander the Great defeated the Persian forces and took over the eastern empire. Now, Sardes became a capital in the Hellenistic world, successively ruled by Antigonus, Lysimachus, Seleucus, his successors and several rebel princes, and after 188 by the Attalids and, after 133 BC, the Romans.

The city prospered and may have had some 100,000 inhabitants. Many monuments survive, even though Sardes has received less attention than, for example, nearby Ephesus. The presence of Jews and Christians is attested; in the Byzantine age, the city was rich enough to build new churches. It was the Sasanian king Khusrau II who made an end to the city’s prosperity.

I’ve rewritten an older article and added several new photos: go here.

Common Errors (20): Hanging Gardens

Artist's Impression of the Non-Existent Monument

Babylon was the cultural capital of the ancient Near East. Many monuments have become famous, like the Ištar Gate, now in the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin, and the temple tower named Etemenanki, the “Tower of Babel”. Equally famous are the Hanging Gardens that king Nebuchadnezzar II (r. 605-562) created for his queen, a young lady from Iran who longed back to the mountains of her fatherland.

The Hanging Gardens, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, are mentioned by several Greek authors: the geographer Strabo of Amasia, the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, the orator Philo of Byzantium, and Cleitarchus, who wrote a biography of Alexander the Great that is now lost. This book, however, is quoted by the Sicilian historian Diodorus and his Roman colleague Curtius Rufus. So, we have a great many sources, and we get the impression that the complex was about two hectares large, as high as the city walls, and resting on heavy foundations of natural stone.

So far, so good. The problem is that all these sources were written in Greek or Latin. The Hanging Gardens are not mentioned in the thousands of cuneiform tablet from Babylon, not even in the list of monuments that is known as TINTIR is Babylon. Archaeology has not been helpful either: when the city was excavated at the beginning of the twentieth century, Robert Koldewey (1855-1925) was unable to establish the site of the Hanging Gardens, and in the end pointed at the only natural stones he could find. He admitted that he was not convinced himself.

It has been suggested that there must be a misunderstanding: the gardens may have been in Nineveh, the capital of Assyria. Although this assumes an error that is as big as placing the Eiffel Tower in Berlin, it is not impossible: Greek authors often confused Babylonia and Assyria. Herodotus of Halicarnassus was even capable of making Babylon the capital of Assyria. An alternative explanation is that the Hanging Gardens are simply a description of the Palace of Nebuchadnezzar: we know that it had gardens – so roof garden may have been there too. If this is true, the original mistake may have been made by Cleitarchus, who was not above exaggerating and delighted in stories about wonderful things.

Is Cleitarchus the inventor of the Hanging Gardens? All sources directly or indirectly quote him, except one: Josephus refers to a list of monument by Berossus, a Babylonian author from the third century BCE, who was known to Josephus through Alexander Polyhistor. However, there is something weird with Berossus’ list: it enumerates a series of monuments in exactly the same sequence as the East India House Inscription that is now in the British Museum. The only monument mentioned by Josephus that is not mentioned by Berossus, is the final one: the Hanging Gardens.

The similarity between the Berossus fragment quoted by Josephus through Polyhistor and the East India House Inscription is so striking that it is impossible that Berossus does not quote (a copy of) it. This leaves us with only three possibilities:

1. Josephus added information from Cleitarchus to information he found in Polyhistor (unlikely: he had no motive for this fraud);
2. Polyhistor added information from Cleitarchus to Berossus (likely: we know that Polyhistor had a rather loose way of dealing with texts);
3. Berossus added information from Cleitarchus to the East India House Inscription (which raises the question why the inscription ignores a major monument).

We can not be completely certain, but it seems very likely that the Hanging Gardens are in fact Cleitarchus’ fantastic description of the royal palace in Babylon. All our sources can, directly or indirectly, be connected to his biography of Alexander.

Literature

R.J. van der Spek, “Berossus as a Babylonian Chronicler and Greek Historian,” in: R.J. van der Spek (ed.), Studies in Ancient Near Eastern World View and Society, Presented to Marten Stol on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday (2008) 277-318.

<Overview of Common Errors>

Common Errors (16): Persepolis

The Palace of Darius I the Great: not destroyed by fire

In the first weeks of 330 BCE, Alexander the Great captured the capital of the Persian Empire, which the Macedonians and Greeks called Persepolis, “City of the Persians”. The living quarters were looted immediately, and when the invaders continued their expedition in early Spring, the palaces were destroyed as well.

Our sources are not in agreement about the way this happened. According to Arrian (Anabasis, 3.18.11), it happened after deliberations; it was a well-planned operation. On the other hand, Curtius Rufus (History of Alexander, 5.7.3-12) and Plutarch (Life of Alexander, 38) say that Alexander was drunk – by no means excluded.

Scholars have so hard been trying to find out what happened exactly, that they ignored a more important question: did it actually happen? The problem is that many buildings were simply left intact: the Gate of All Nations and the Palace of Darius the Great, for example. Of course, the wooden and the limestone parts have vanished, but the gates, windows, and lower parts of the walls are still standing. No traces of vandalism here.

Something else happened in the Palace of Xerxes: hardly anything survived. Fragments of the columns that once supported the roofs of Xerxes‘ rooms were discovered far away: these palaces were the victims of a gas explosion (a “delayed flash-over”, as the fireman I once interviewed on the subject explained). There’s also evidence for arson in the Treasury and the Apadana, the throne room where the Great King received embassies of the various nations. Here, the excavators found a stratum of one to two feet of charcoal: burnt cedar wood.

And that’s the smoking gun. These buildings were extremely significant: the Palace of Xerxes, because he had attacked Greece in 480; and the Apadana and Treasury, the symbols of the ritual of gift exchange that was Achaemenid equivalent of the social contract.

Of course fires are unpredictable, but why, out of a set of twelve momuments, were exactly these three buildings destroyed? It is almost impossible that these buildings, and these buildings only, were destroyed by a random process. The arsonists in Persepolis were not drunken vandals: this was a well-organized action.

<Overview of Common Errors>

Common Errors (15): White Sculpture

Reconstruction of the colors of the Marcus Caelius Cenotaph (Xanten)

The ancient Greeks were brilliant sculptors, who were the first to accurately render the human body in bronze or stone. Perfection, defined as understanding contrapposto, was reached at the beginning of the fifth century BCE.

It has often been assumed that the old statues were made of white marble from Paros or the Pentelic Mountains. The absence of color was even lauded as a brilliant abstraction, an aesthetic judgment comparable to the idea that old black-and-white movies have a beauty of their own, and that it is blasphemy to make a colored version of, for example, Buster Keaton’s The General.

Yet, the ancients did in fact paint their sculpture. On many statues, we can still see traces (example); yes, even when we can not discern these traces, our scientists, applying all kinds of modern technology, know how to reconstruct them. According to our standards, ancient sculpture had screaming colors and was absolutely campy. I remember a lecture in Oxford, the introduction to a series of lectures on ancient sculpture, in which people burst out into laughter on seeing a slide with an exquisitely ugly Primaporta Augustus.

Polychromy was also characteristic of ancient architecture. The monuments on the Forum Romanum were made of green, purple, red, or white marble, and grey or purple granite, while the floors were covered with stones that had yellow, green, or purple veins. Exposed to centuries of sunlight, the colors have now vanished, but if you look at the floors of Rome’s medieval churches, which are covered with mosaics made of ancient marble, you get an idea of the splendid colors of the ancient city.

An interesting website, in German and unfortunately with music you’re forced to listen to, on the subject is here.

<Overview of Common Errors>

Fort Gholaia (Bu Njem)

The Roman fort at Bu Njem; oasis in the distance

My favorite site in Libya is Bu Njem, ancient Gholaia: a well-preserved fort of the Limes Tripolitanus. Today, this area is arid, but it has not always been that way. By building all kinds of dams, the emperor Septimius Severus changed the entire ecosystem and converted this area into a fertile zone, where sufficient food was produced to feed the soldiers in the fort.

The French archaeologists who excavated the site, first had to remove all the sand, but the rewards were great: besides the remains of the ancient buildings, there were several interesting inscriptions and dozens of ostraca, which document daily life in Gholaia.

My photos have been online since 2006, but I revisited the site last year. The new photos and an improved text are now available here. The satellite photo is also worth looking at: here.

Merida, Andujar, Alcantara

Roman bridge at Alcántara

Mérida, ancient Augusta Emerita, was the capital of Roman Lusitania. It was founded after the Cantabrian Wars and the first settlers were veterans of the legions V Alaudae and X Gemina. Among the sights are a splendidly preserved theater, an amphitheater, a circus, and a bridge that is still in use. The history of the city is briefly summarized here, the website of the lovely Museo Nacional de Arte Romano is here, and links to photos can be found here.

Other Roman bridges, both still in use, were at Andújar (ancient Isturgi) and Alcántara – the last one is one of the most spectacular monuments from ancient history.

This completes the transfer of the Spanish section of Livius.Org; other pages are devoted to Ampurias, Bera, Carmona, Córdoba, Italica, Segovia, and Tarragona. Now that I am finishing this section, I realize that I haven’t been to Spain for a long time. As a student, I was fascinated by Andalusia, and wrote a lengthy comparison of the romanization and arabization of the Iberian Peninsula.

Together, the Livius website now has 3,400 pages, and I still have 103 pages to move…