Hadrian (Museo Arqueológico, Sevilla)

In the early Summer of 128, the Roman emperor Hadrian visited Lambaesis, the base of the Third Augustan Legion. As it happens, a substantial part of the speeches he delivered, survive. Much of it consists of topical praise, but the text is nevertheless interesting, because we can recognize that Roman legions were as hierarchically organized as Roman society in general.

My article on the subject was published in originally published as “Hadrian and his Soldiers. The Lambaesis Inscription“, in: Core of the Legions. The Roman Imperial Centuria = Ancient Warfare Special 2010. Because the publisher is a friendly person, it is now available online: here.

• Arch of the Bankers
• Arch of Drusus
• Arch of Gallienus
• Arch of Janus Quadrifrons
• Circus Maxentius

From Patrick Charlot, I received photos and an article on the rock relief of Gardanah Gavlimash, while Michel Gybels wrote articles on Manicheism and the spread of heterodox beliefs along the Via Egnatia.

For those who want to know more about Homer, classicist Caroline Alexander published The War that Killed Achilles. She guides us through the Iliad, from the moment on which Achilles decides to abandon the fight until the burial of his enemy Hector, which means that both the death of Achilles and the fall of Troy have become inevitable. Alexander offers a well-written and detailed summary of that most classic of all classics, and makes this part of the Greek legacy accessible again.

Often, she interrupts her story to insert quotes: sometimes one line only, but in one instance several pages. The reader of The War that Killed Achilles will not only understand the plot and significance of the Iliad, but will also have a taste of the poem’s tone and vocabulary. Alexander also explains various aspects, like the nature of the gods, the eastern predecessors of Homeric poetry, or the biography of this or that hero. However, you never have to wait long until she returns to the Iliad.

To stress that Homer deals with universal themes, Alexander offers many parallels with other civilizations, especially those of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. So, Achilles drags the body of Hector behind his chariot like Somalians drag dead Americans behind their cars through the streets of Mogadishu, the gods appear to warriors like “the angel of Mons” appeared to British soldiers during the First World War, and Achilles’ mother Thetis searches for a panoply like the parents of American soldiers buy ballistic vests for their sons in Iraq.

If Alexander tries to introduce the Iliad to a new audience, she has succeeded. However, I must add that I am prejudiced: as an ancient historian, I share many of her assumptions. Not everyone else will be convinced. In the first place: if she wants to prove that Homer’s themes are universal, she has to define what universality means, because otherwise her parallels are just intriguing without being convincing. In the second place, it is necessary to indicate why – or at least in which aspect – she believes the primitive Homeric society can be compared to our own, complex society. In other words, what justifies the comparandum if two dissimilar types of society are compared? Because she ignores these problems, The War that Killed Achilles is only convincing for those who are already convinced that the aristocratic Iliad has a message for people in an egalitarian, postindustrial world.

Another remarkable shortcoming is that Alexander almost ignores non-English scholarly publications. She quotes German books and articles in translation only and references to French scholarship are conspicuous by absence. As I already indicated, I find this unacceptable. Furthermore, in a book with so many comparisons to modern warfare, the absence of any reference to the often very good internet archives strikes me as rather odd. Nor is this an innocent omission: now that about a quarter of the people are skeptical about the results of science and scholarship, it is more important than ever that scholars present arguments without visible holes.

Alexander writes for those who are already convinced about the Iliad’s importance. As it happens, I belong to that group and that is why I read this book with pleasure, in spite of the sad subject. I think most of the readers of this little blog belong to the same group and will appreciate the book as well. However, another group of readers will think that a discipline has become irrelevant if its scholars do not explain their comparisons, ignore foreign literature, and are unaware of modern media. Although my sympathies are with the first group, I agree with the second,

• W.H. Schoff, Some Aspects of the Overland Oriental Trade at the Christian Era (1915)
• W.H. Schoff, The Eastern Iron Trade of the Roman Empire (1915)
• W.H. Schoff, Navigation to the Far East under the Roman Empire (1917)
• G.F. Hourani, Did Roman Commercial Competition Ruin South Arabia? (1952)
• F.J. Haverfield, Ancient Rome and Ireland (1913)
• D. Daly, The Legend of St. Brendan (1904; I loved this one)

And, not about trade or travel:

• D. Pingree, Astronomy and Astrology in India and Iran (1963)

Finally, some fragments from Sallust’s Histories:

• Speech of the Consul Lepidus to the Roman People (Latin and English)
• The Speech of Philippus in the Senate (Latin and English)

View from the tower

The museum of the Roman city walls may not be the most famous of Rome, but it is worth a visit. Situated in the ancient Porta Appia, now known as the Porta di San Sebastiano, it offers a lot of information about the history of the defenses of the eternal city.

You enter the museum through the western tower. The two main rooms are situated over the gate itself, and when you look through the windows, you can see what the soldiers must have seen when they operated the catapults. In these two rooms, texts and photos explain the history from the age of Romulus until 1870: Roma Quadrata, the Servian Wall, the Aurelian Wall, and the medieval expansions surrounding the Borgo and connecting it to Trastevere.

The rooms in the eastern tower offer a couple of models, while a small room upstairs above the entry contains stone decorations from medieval towers. From here, you can ascend to the crenellations and the roof of one of the towers. The terrace offers you a splendid view of the Aurelian wall, the Parco degli Scipioni and the Roman countryside, dominated by the Alban Mount.

Perhaps you will remember that some ten years ago, part of the southeastern sector of the Aurelian Wall collapsed after some heavy rains. You will see photos of the situation in the 1990s, after the collapse, and after the repairs. An inscription commemorating earlier repairs by pope Innocent X and his coat of arms are now on display.

In general, a nice museum, although perhaps more for people fascinated by army matters than for a more general audience. A visit can easily be combined with a trip to the Via Appia, which starts at this very gate.

Bust of Caracalla(Musei Capitolini)

The complete Historia Augusta has been up on LacusCurtius for seven years now, and in all that time the reader going to its orientation page will have read that there was an introduction by the Loeb editor, and a little section on the manuscripts — but that I hadn’t put them up, and would do so in the fullness of time.

Of course I quickly forgot about the missing items; yesterday must have been the fullness of time, and I had occasion to discover them again. They’re now up: Introduction and Manuscripts.

David Magie’s explanation of just how people consider the Historia Augusta a pack of lies is reasonably thorough and clear. But the more useful and interesting explanation is in fact on Livius; though less complete and technically detailed, that’s still the one I recommend.

The end of one the most lovely “living history” parks in the world does not come as a surprise; still, it is a shock. Of course, a state monument is just a monument and 6 million is a lot of money. They could throw away only a few billions to bail-out our banks. Below, you can find an article I wrote in happier days.

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Synagogue, reconstructed

Sometimes, the history of a museum is as interesting as its collection. The Dutch Museum Orientalis near Nijmegen was founded almost a century ago -in 1911 to be precise- and was meant to offer a taste of the Holy Land to Christians who were unable to travel to the Levant.

It was unique. Of course, there were other living history parks, like the Pompejanum (1848), the Saalburg (1897), the Kerylos villa (1902), but these were inspired by Greece and Rome. The Holy Land Foundation, as the Dutch museum park was originally called, concentrated on Palestine. In an age in which Catholic art was inspired by the Neogothic architecture and the Beuron Art School, it was revolutionary to show Christ as a human being living in Palestine.

My parents took me to the Holy Land Foundation in the early 1970′s. You could see a Jewish village with a synagogue (photo above), reconstructions of the Sanhedrin and the Palace of Pilate, Golgotha and the empty tomb. In the late afternoon, we attended a passion play. Although I was six or seven, I thought it was too pious, too devote.

Roman street

It must have been one of the last passion plays to be performed over there, because at that moment, the original museum park was already changing. It had been intended to bring people closer to Christ, and give them more love in their heart. There is nothing wrong with that. But the old kind of devotion was no longer popular. Instead, the museum started to stress the Jewish-Roman environment in which Jesus lived. For example, a nice street in Roman style was added (second photo), with expositions in the houses. From a visit in the 1990′s I remember beautiful models of Deir el-Medina, the Athenian Acropolis and Jerusalem.

The Temple, model from Orientalis

Nowadays, the museum park is meant as a meeting place, where people can learn about the three main monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam. You can see some multimedia presentations about, for instance, religious dress, food, and habits, and about more serious themes like religious hatred and religion as source for peace. The oriental landscape serves, as the museum says, as background for a “meeting of minds”.

Reenactors

Some time ago, I was in Nijmegen and made a walk though the park. It must have been my fourth or fifth visit. I was amazed by the high quality of the earliest reconstructions. The men who designed it, had travelled widely through the Middle East, and their Jewish village is an exact copy of a Palestine town.

Of course, we can now see that their orientalist philosophy was wrong: they believed that modern Palestine could help us understand the life of Christ, which implied that they thought that nothing had really changed over there – a rather unkind vision on the creativity and originality of the people living in Palestine. Still, their idea to put that Jew of Nazareth back in his original context, instead of reducing him to a European, artistic icon, is worth consideration, and I am glad that the old buildings are now on the Monument List.

… the rise of the Frankish kingdoms as very much influenced by and the direct result of the history of Germania Inferior and Gallia Belgica from the third century onwards, rather than as a separate historical phase distinct from the preceding Roman empire.

The review was a complete surprise, because I did not know that my publisher had sent a copy of this Dutch book to a foreign journal. Even better, the article appeared just one day before I met the director of my English publisher, Karwansaray.

Today, we discussed the translation. For example, there will be some changes, because the Dutch version assumes knowledge of the topography of Holland and Belgium. Some photos need to be replaced, we need to take into account some new finds (like this one), we can benefit from other maps, we will add a long list of nice museums in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands.

The project will start in January, and I think it’s not unreasonable to expect that the book will be in the shops in the Spring of 2013. The book already won an award and now has a very good review. As we say in Holland, this will be “an unrelenting bestseller”.

Milestone

The Via Egnatia is one of those almost legendary Roman roads, not unlike the Via Appia. In fact, the Egnatian road is a continuation of the Via Appia: anyone leaving Rome to visit the East, would first travel to Brundisium, cross to Dyrrhachium (modern Dürres), and travel along the Via Egnatia to Thessalonica, to Amphipolis, Philippi, and Byzantium. On many places, the road still exists, although the modern Greek highway with the same name is a more recent project.

The interesting milestone above, which can be seen in the splendid Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki, correctly records a distance of 260 miles to Dyrrhachium (CCLX, first line), the builder of the road, praetor Egnatius (second line), and his proconsular powers (third line).

A new page about this road, which was once used by the apostle Paul, is now here.

Kampyr Tepe (Uzbekistan)

On several occasions I have blogged on the possibilities of Google Earth and its online spin-off, Google Maps. My last blog on this topic was a bit over half a year ago, when I had some 1700 items available. In the meantime, I have added more than 550 ancient sites to my list, from all quarters of the ancient world. The grand total now is 2283.

The online version is here and the masterfile can be downloaded here. If you use the latter, do not forget the directory NEW/OFF-TOPIC, which contains many others, still unqualified markers.

The eagle of the Byzantine Empire

Some pages ought to have been added to the Livius website long, long time ago, but were never written, usually because I didn’t have sufficient time. I am glad that Mrs. Karin de Leeuw wrote a nice page on the Byzantine Empire, the successor state of the Roman Empire.

I also added a little page on the river Elbe. Not terribly important, to be honest. Read the page on Byzantium first, because it’s more interesting.

Derlon Museum Cellar

The beautiful Derlon Hotel in Maastricht is very much part of the city’s history. It is situated on the lovely square Onze Lieve Vrouwe-plein, in the very center of the old town, and it is almost a century and a half old. That does not mean that the hotel itself is old-fashioned. Several years ago, it was completely rebuilt. During the construction works, archaeologists found several Roman remains, which have been left visible in the Derlon Museum Cellar.

It is all very neatly explained. There are several levels, the oldest of which dates back to the first half of the first century. There was a small paved road over here. Other levels date to post-70 and to the middle of the second century. From about 200, there is a layer of gravel, which covered a field between a sanctuary, a gate, and something that was probably a shop. The gate has been rebuilt in Museum Park Archeon.

Reconstruction of the temple gate, Archeon

To be honest, we are not really certain that there was a sanctuary. However, the remains of a Jupiter column have been found, and although these monuments may have stood anywhere, they suggest that the gods were venerated in the neighborhood. Besides, next to Derlon Hotel is the basilica of Our Lady, Star of the Sea, a very, very old church, which may well have replaced an older, pagan sanctuary. One day, excavations may take place over there. (BTW: the pilgrim is to say a beautiful but curious prayer, in which he almost blackmails the Virgin.)

If you want to visit the Museum Cellar, just go to the hotel and ask. The people are really kind, and will usually allow you to go there. Perhaps they will ask you to return a bit later. However, officially, it is only open on Sunday. Hotel guests can always visit the place.

Cover

I already blogged about my visits to Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey. It’s an important site from the Early (preceramic) Neolithicum. What it is, we don’t really know, although Klaus Schmidt, the excavator, is pretty sure that the site is religious in nature. In his nice, well-illustrated book, Sie bauten die ersten Tempel (“They built the first sanctuary”), he offers lots of information.

The book is very well-structured. In the first chapter, Schmidt explains how the site was identified. It had already been discovered, but the discoverer had not understood that the big stones on the surface were from the Stone Age. Misidentifying them as Islamic tombstones, he had not realized the site’s significance. Schmidt, who had the benefit of knowing the finds from sites like Çatal Höyük, Çayönü, Nevali Çori, and Gürcütepe, was the first to realize the importance of Göbekli Tepe (“belly hill”).

The second chapter is about the discovery of the Stone Age, from the very moment that archaeologists realized that there had been an age in which people made stone objects, until the present day. It is a very useful and interesting chapter, because Schmidt can introduce important questions and technical expressions.

The third, and longest, chapter consists of a meticulous description of what has actually been found. The five enclosures are mentioned and every pylon receives is dealth with. Those pylons, which represent human figures (ancestors?), were decorated with all kinds of animal figures. Perhaps this chapter was a bit too detailed, but Schmidt did well to separate the description from the identification.

Enclosure C; photo Kees Tol

The fourth chapter deals with the interpretations. Schmidt compares Göbekli Tepe to several other places, without making very strong statements. Nevertheless, I was impressed by his argument that at least one picture does not represent ostriches, but people dancing like ostriches. I also liked the idea that the pictures of animals might in fact be some kind of sign language, although Schmidt does not say that this is the only possible interpretation of the finds. His conclusion is essentially negative: he is certain that these animals were not representation of the hunter’s prey. No one hopes to catch spiders or snakes.

A predator from Enclosure C; Museum Sanli Urfa; photo Marco Prins

In the fifth chapter, we read about the way this monument was built. A great many hunters and gatherers must have been involved, and the size of the monument proves that they were well-organized. The 2007 edition of the book, which was first published in 2005, concludes with an additional chapter with new finds and further thoughts.

What I like about Sie bauten die ersten Tempel is that it presents scholarship as a puzzle and allows readers to understand the process of acquiring knowledge. There is much room for doubt and cul-de-sacs are not ignored. For example, many animals look as if they are about to attack – but what are they defending? Schmidt admits that he does not know. He calls the building a temple, but immediately stresses that in fact, we cannot really know. This is the way a true scholar must proceed. I like this excellent book and can sincerely recommend it.

Gur-e Dokhtat

I have never met Mr Charlot from France, but he occasionally sends me photos from Iran, where he visits places that I never visit: Kurangun, Guyum, Qadamgah, Sarab-i Bahram, and Sarab-e Qandil. Last month, he sent me several photos of Gur-e Dokhtar, where an Achaemenid tomb can be seen. The small monument is remarkably similar to the more famous mausoleum of Cyrus the Great in Pasargadae, but is interesting in itself.

You can read Mr Charlot’s article here.

The Hagia Sophia

I was in Trabzon when its football team, Trabzonspor, beat Inter Milan. I have never seen a city that went so completely out of its mind: people honking their cars and even the ships in the port sounding their horns.

It’s an ancient city, originally called Trapezus. It became famous in the Middle Ages, when the Comnenian dynasty of Byzantine emperors settled in “Trebizonde” (as it was known back then) and made it the capital of a mini-empire, after Constantinople itself had been captured by the knights of the Fourth Crusade. In all aspects, Trebizonde had to resemble the real capital of the Byzantine world, which meant that there was also a lovely Hagia Sophia: smaller but more refined than its namesake in Constantinople. You can still visit the place.

There’s nothing left from the Greek and Roman age, but the city has an interesting history. You can read more about it on my new page: here.