New Perspectives on the Ancient World: Modern perceptions, ancient representations 9781407302706, 9781407332734

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CONTENTS
Introduction
Section I The ancient world and modern perceptions:the invention of antiquity in modern times
A Morphology of Ancient History from a tropical, half-European viewpoint
Eurocentricism and theory in Roman Archaeology: a further contribution to the Romanization debate
Post-colonial theory, the Art of the Western Provinces, and the Warrior Reliefs from Osuna
Antiquity at the service of France’s ‘extreme rights’: GRECE, Front National and Terre et Peuple
The construction of archaeological identities in Lebanon : archaeology, colonialism, nationalism and Frankenstein
Dom Pedro II Visits Antique Shop in Jerusalem: A controversy around Moabite antique pieces and the ‘Shapira Affair’
The Invention of Antiquity in South America through images borrowed from Ancient Egypt -Egyptomania
Egypt and Brazil: an educational approach
Section II Ancient economy, politics and society:evidence and interpretive models
The symbolic meaning of the Vitruvian city
Gladiator fights on the Northwestern frontier of the Roman Empire
Modeling the Macro-Economics of the Roman Empire, or Globalization as World-Systems Without the Guilt
Agrarian systems in Roman Spain: archaeological approaches
New methods for the study of the social landscape from the Laietania wine production region of Northeastern Spain
The annona militaris in the Tingitana: Observations on the organization and provisioning of Roman troops
Provincial interdependence in the Roman Empire: an explanatory model of Roman economy
(Almost) forgotten complicity: Socrates (and Plato) between the Oligarchic Coup of 404 BC and the Democratic Restoration of 403
Power and Solar Cult in Ancient Egypt An Iconographic and Political-Religious approach
Concordia, Discord And Political Legacy: The Rule of Geta and Caracalla
Section III Ancient representations: subjectivities and identities in interpreting gender, ethnicity, religion, literature and art
The Erotic Collection of Pompeii: Archaeology, Identity and Sexuality
Feminine and Masculine in Pompeii: Gender Relations among the Common People
The Representation of Age: Towards a Life Course Approach
Ethnicity and Ancient Judaism: Jewish Identities in 1st Century Alexandria and Antioch
Themistius, the Emperor Julian and a Discussion of the Concept of Royalty in the Fourth Century AD
Religion, identity and conflict in the Later Roman Empire: Constantine and the struggle for the Dominium Mundi (312-324 AD)
The literary existence of Polygnotus of Thasos and its problematic utilization in painted pottery studies
Characteristics and Names of the Extreme Types of Speech according toDionysius of Halicarnassus

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BAR S1782 2008

New Perspectives on the Ancient World

FUNARI, GARRAFFONI & LETALIEN (Eds)

Modern perceptions, ancient representations

Edited by

Pedro Paulo A. Funari Renata S. Garraffoni Bethany Letalien

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON THE ANCIENT WORLD

BAR International Series 1782 B A R

2008

New Perspectives on the Ancient World Modern perceptions, ancient representations

Edited by

Pedro Paulo A. Funari Renata S. Garraffoni Bethany Letalien

BAR International Series 1782 2008

ISBN 9781407302706 paperback ISBN 9781407332734 e-format DOI https://doi.org/10.30861/9781407302706 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

BAR

PUBLISHING

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION Pedro Paulo Funari Renata Garraffoni Bethany Letalien.......................................................................................................................................................iii I. The ancient world and modern perceptions: the invention of antiquity in modern times 1. A Morphology of Ancient History from a tropical, half-European viewpoint Norberto Guarinello..................................................................................................................................................1 2. Eurocentricism and theory in Roman Archaeology: a further contribution to the Romanization debate Richard Hingley.........................................................................................................................................................9 3. Post-colonial theory, the Art of the Western Provinces, and the Warrior Reliefs from Osuna William Mierse......................................................................................................................................................... 23 4. Antiquity serving the “extreme rights” in France: GRECE, Front National and Terre et Peuple. Glaydson Silva . ....................................................................................................................................................... 35 5. The construction of archaeological identities in Lebanon: archaeology, colonialism, nationalism and Frankenstein Tamima Orra Mourad............................................................................................................................................. 47 6. Dom Pedro II visits antique shop in Jerusalem (a controversy around Moabite antique pieces and the “Shapira Affair”) Reuven Faingold ..................................................................................................................................................... 53 7. The Invention of Antiquity in South America through Egyptomania Margareth Bakos .................................................................................................................................................... 59 8. Egypt and Brazil: an educational approach Raquel Funari.......................................................................................................................................................... 73 II. Ancient economy, politics and society: evidence and interpretive models 9. The symbolic meaning of the Vitruvian city Alexandros Ph. Lagopoulos ...................................................................................................................................79 10. Gladiator fights on the Northwestern frontier of the Roman Empire Renata Senna Garraffoni and Pedro Paulo A. Funari......................................................................................... 89 11. Modeling the Macro-Economics of the Roman Empire, or Globalization as World-Systems Without the Guilt Glenn Storey............................................................................................................................................................. 93 12. Agrarian systems in Roman Spain: archaeological approaches Victor Revilla . ....................................................................................................................................................... 117

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13. New methods for the study of the social landscape from Laietania wine production region (NE Spain) Oriol Olesti and César Carreras.......................................................................................................................... 131 14. The annona militaris in the Tingitana: Observations on the organization and provisioning of the Roman troops Lluis Pons Pujol..................................................................................................................................................... 145 15. Provincial interdependence in the Roman Empire: an explanatory model of Roman economy José Remesal-Rodríguez....................................................................................................................................... 155 16. (Almost) forgotten complicity: Socrates (and Plato) between the Oligarchic Coup of 404 B.C. and the Democratic Restoration of 403. André Leonardo Chevitarese and Gabriele Cornelli......................................................................................... 161 17. Power and Solar Cult in Ancient Egypt: An Iconographic and Politic-Religious approach Júlio Gralha............................................................................................................................................................167 18. Concordia, Discord and political legacy: the rule of Geta and Caracalla  Ana Teresa Gonçalves............................................................................................................................................ 175 III. Ancient representations: subjectivities and identities in interpreting gender, ethnicity, religion, literature and art 19. The erotic collection of Pompeii: archaeology, identity and sexuality. Marina Cavicchioli................................................................................................................................................187 20. Female and male in Pompeii: Gender relations among the common people Lourdes Conde Feitosa..........................................................................................................................................195 21. The Representation of Age: Towards a Life Course Approach Mary Harlow and Ray Laurence.........................................................................................................................205 22. Ethnicity and Ancient Judaism: Jewish Identities in 1st Century Alexandria and Antioch Monica Selvatici.....................................................................................................................................................213 23. Themistius, the Emperor Julian and a Discussion over the Concept of Royalty in the 4th century A.D. Margarida Carvalho.............................................................................................................................................. 223 24. Religion, identity and conflict in the Later Roman Empire: Constantine and the contention for the Dominium Mundi (312-324) Gilvan Ventura da Silva........................................................................................................................................ 229 25. The literary existence of Polygnotus of Thasos and its problematic utilization in painted pottery studies Pedro L. M. Sanches.............................................................................................................................................. 235 26. Characteristics and names of the extreme types of speech according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus Marcos Martinho...................................................................................................................................................245

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Introduction The study of the ancient world has been particularly affected by the changes in postmodern societies. From the inception of the discipline, as Classics or Altertumswissenschaften, the scholarly understanding of Greece and Rome has centered on tradition. The study of Latin and Greek and ancient literatures was the backbone of a rather conservative approach to the ancient world, understood as the origin of modern values and social order. Modern hierarchies were thus rooted in classics and the discipline was to be challenged from the second half of the twentieth century as a reactionary force. Grammar school faded in several countries and the study of classics has been related to specialized university departments, rather than the front pages of newspapers, as it was the case before. The postmodern conditions led to the springing of a plethora of social identities and to new approaches to the ancient world. The social production of interpretations of the past was to be a most important focus of research and the uses of the ancient past is now a common feature, even in handbooks about the ancients. Furthermore, these postmodern conditions enable scholars to challenge traditional approaches and propose critical ones. As the study of the ancient world has been experiencing a fresh renewal in the last few years, breaking down traditional disciplinary barriers and epistemological paradigms; historians, philologists, archaeologists, epigraphists, among other students of the ancient world, have been proposing a multidisciplinary approach to ancient subjects. There has also been a growing awareness of the importance of a critical review of the modern interpretive framework and traditions, putting interpretation in historical context and fostering the search for historiography discussion. As a consequence, there has also been an international push for interpretive contributions not only from traditional scholarly centers in Europe and the United States, but also from peripheral areas in Europe itself and elsewhere, enabling scholars from core and peripheral areas to interact. In this overall context, we decided to organize the present volume, New Perspectives on the Ancient World. We aimed at editing a volume with a wide perspective, for an international audience. We put together theoretical and empirical chapters, or a mix of them, from different countries and disciplines. Three main subjects are related to: The ancient world and modern perceptions: the invention of antiquity in modern times; Ancient economy, politic and society: evidences and interpretive models; Ancient representations: subjectivities and identities in interpreting gender, ethnicity, religion, literature and arts. Our intention with this edited volume is to produce an innovative collection of chapters, from different standpoints, revealing how classics in general, and classical archaeology in particular, has reacted to the challenges of the recent past in forging a socially relevant study of the ancient world. Pedro Paulo A Funari Professor, State University of Campinas, Brazil, Research Associate, Illinois State University, USA, and Barcelona University, co-editor of Historical Archaeology, Back from the Edge (London, Routledge, 1999) and Global Archaeological Theory (New York, Springer, 2005), among others. Renata S. Garraffoni Lecturer at the Paraná Federal University (UFPR), Brazil, member of the Centre for Strategic Studies (NEE/Unicamp). Bethany Letalien Ph.D. Candidate at University of Texas, USA.

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Section I The ancient world and modern perceptions: the invention of antiquity in modern times

A Morphology of Ancient History from a tropical, half-European viewpoint Norberto Luiz Guarinello São Paulo University, Brazil

Introduction My objective is twofold: firstly, to present some very general ideas on the way historians think about the past to give meaning to it and to present it to their audiences. As a scientific discipline it has its achievements, but also its limitations. Limitations are inherent to any attempt to understand and to interpret the world. Secondly, this essay is an attempt to think about my own field of specialization, the discipline conventionally called Ancient History. My particular aim is to examine it as a specific area in the whole field of historical science, to look at its specific contribution to a larger understanding of human societies, but it is to think as well about the very limitations of the internal frontiers that the discipline of History draws inside itself and about the consequences of these frontiers to a more global understanding of human societies. As you will see, I think that Ancient History does not exist in itself. It is a construct, a frame as I call it, that was built to assemble and to render meaningful certain past realities. The practice of History: Theories, Models and Frames Let me start with a very general question: what is Scientific History? (You will see that I assume that history is a science) What is its subject matter? This is not an easy question. In my perspective, the matter of History is not something real, in the sense of a thing, an object, that could be accurately defined within clear spatial, chronological and conceptual limits. Scientific History, in all its fields of specialization, is a way of producing social memory, of giving meaning to the past by creating frames or contexts. It is with these frames that historians try to make sense of the past, try to create a sense of reality and of completeness for past things (Ankersmit 1988). This may sound like a postmodernist perspective, but it is not. I am not concerned here with the debate on the presumed rhetorical, or fictional, character of the discipline. I admit the scientific status of History and the validity, trustworthiness and usefulness of the specific memory it produces to society. I am interested in the conditions that determine and limit historical truths. They lie, as I understand them, precisely in the frames I have mentioned. I will speak firstly in very general terms, about Scientific History as a whole, and then turn specifically to the frames of Ancient History.

What is a frame in the work of a historian? To understand the sense I am giving to this word, I should make some preliminary remarks. Firstly, it is important to have in mind the way historians produce and write History. History is usually thought as having two meanings: either it is res gestae, the past as such, as it really happened, or it is narratio rerum gestarum, its reconstruction or narrative by a modern specialist/scientist. But this is untrue. Historians do not narrate or reconstruct the past, for the simple reason that the past is inaccessible to us, it does not exist anymore, and it cannot be revived or recovered as it really was. In reality, we only have access to the past through the present, through objects, texts or living individual memories that exist hic et nunc and that historians, with their trained eyes, can identify as remains from a past that no longer exists, as survivals that can be treated as documents. The universe of these remains is a third sense for the term History. It means the existing past. These remains, however (and this is a crucial point), whatever their amount or quality, are not the past itself, but something quite different. They are not representative of what happened in a uniform or regular way; they are not the past as if reduced to a small version of itself. They are more like sparse flashes of light in the darkness: isolated, disordered, chaotic, filtered, and irregular. They allow us to speak about the past without ever seeing it. This allowance however has a cost, because these chaotic remains also determine our possible visions of past things. Things that have left no trace of themselves, whether they were important or not, have completely disappeared, they are out of reach now, they are forever unknowable, forgotten things. But even what has survived only allows us to represent the past in a very indirect way, through multiple mediations. These mediations are precisely the product of what we name the ‘Science of History’ and frames are a decisive part of it. Some of these mediations, like theories and models, are often explicit. Others, like frames, are much less thought about. Let us think for a moment about these mediations, before looking specifically to the frames. What is the historians’ History about? It is a specific production of modern societies, but also a part of collective memory, or rather, a part of the social production of memory, and a very particular one. Its foremost presupposition is

Norberto Luiz Guarinello

that History is a Science and that, therefore, it is different from fiction and from other products of collective memory. That is so because, among other things, it presupposes that there is order in the past, or in other words, 1) that history is rational, 2) that human societies have always been organized and 3) that their development follows certain principles (even if the principle is mere chance). It is scientific also because 4) it considers that documents are the foundation of any reconstruction of the past, the basis on which to confirm or deny realities and the ultimate proof that order existed in the past.

sense or purpose. But the remains of the past are discontinuous and disconnected. The past, as it really happened, is not synthesized by or in the documents. To narrate or to explain past reality, historians have to relate remains that were produced at different times and places, by different social agents, for different purposes. To establish these relationships historians have thus to presuppose that they are part of the same reality. By doing that, they impose order upon the documentary chaos, they assume coherence and continuity in what is, by itself, incoherent and discontinuous. The basic procedure for relating information from documents within the incoherent universe of past remains is a process of generalization that creates frames, or contexts. It is a process of creating frames.

Order is set by theories or models of social reality. The theories and models used by historians are precisely presuppositions of the existence of an order, just like Physics’ several theories and models of reality (relativistic, quantic), only that in History models are much more different from each other, because social reality is more complex than nature. And it must be said that this is so because there are different and even conflicting social interests in the scientific production of memory, and these interests change over time.

Scientific History is an interpretative play between certain models and theories and certain documents on the basis of generalizations or frames that are admitted or accepted as valid by writers and their readers. Frames are necessary because documents are always singular and from a historian’s viewpoint they do not have sense in themselves. There are several degrees in the generalization process in the historian’s work. Defining a period is one of them: historians assume that a specific period has certain common characteristics so that documents produced during a certain time span can be related to each other, can be compared, can be put in dialogue. The longer the period, the richer the dialogue, the more documents can be put into relationship with each other. Consequently, a historical period lends contemporaneity to what are really non-contemporaneous documents. Another form of generalization is to name or define a society, or a culture, or a cultural area so that documents attributed to the same society or culture can be put into relationship. And this is so even if documents are produced by different social agents for diverse purposes and are of a very different nature (such as archaeological objects and texts). Roman agriculture is an example of a small context or frame. It enables historians to connect various kinds of information. Ancient agriculture would be a larger frame and Ancient Economy a still larger one. These frames are part of any historical reconstruction. Even National States, which are the centre or even the core of much of the historical discipline since the 19th century, are such frames, and very large ones. The largest frames are those which try to present a view of world history.

Theories and models are mediations. They have a fundamental role in the practice of History, in the way historians write History. Historians select facts among the remains (documents) based upon certain theories of society and of human action and upon more specific models of the society that they want to study. Theories and models are crucial: they are ways to see the object, to select relevant facts and to put them in relationship to each other. Even if only implicit, theories and models are ways of making the remains into interpretations of the past and to propose specific reconstructions of human history or of parts of it. They relate disconnected facts found in the documents in different ways, either as concomitants or in a cause-effect relationship. For instance, if for a historian political events or the attitude of elites are decisive factors in history, he will select documentary information to extract events and relate them to explain or to rebuild a meaningful past reality. If, however, he gives priority to economy as the explaining dimension in the structuring of human societies, he will select economic facts and will put them in a certain order, either privileging property and production relationships, as for Marxists, or attributing more importance to market relationships, and so on.

Smaller and larger frames are inherently related. The smaller contexts are easier to control, but poorer; the larger frames are more intelligible, but much more arbitrary. In the great narratives that try to give sense to large periods in history, these contexts tend to become entities by themselves, almost natural ones. One rarely thinks about them, but it is by means of these frames that historians assemble facts and events and apply their theories and models of History or of society. By employing wider frames we enrich our understanding of the past, we give greater meaning to local realities or documentary collections, but we also run greater risks. Frames become more and more abstract and

Theory, models and documents are thus complementary and inseparable. And this is more or less consensual. My point lies elsewhere. There is another dimension inside the practice of History that historians rarely pay attention to. The association of theory, models and documents is not enough to explain the work of historians and the interpretation of the past that they propose. And this is so because they also employ frames. I will try to make my statement clear. The past, or rather time, may be thought of as a continuous flow of infinite events, without any necessary coherence, 2

A Morphology of Ancient History from a tropical, half-European viewpoint

intangible. Periods within each frame do not correspond exactly to each other and the social realities that produced the remains within each frame can be very different in time and in space.

and even determine their interpretations in an almost unconscious way, which is clear in the larger narratives but which occurs also, I believe, even in very specialized and circumscribed pieces of scholarship. Ancient History?

It is impossible for a historian to understand the past without frames. But we should be very conscious of their existence, because they are not innocent or totally harmless. The traditional history of Brazil, for example, reinforces the elite’s identification with Europe and has helped to erase the memory of the African and indigenous roots of the country. Today Brazilian native Indians still have no history, no memory of their past, no identity among the general population. This means that all frames produce, at the same time, memory and forgetfulness, visibility and invisibility.

The same processes of production of memory and forgetfulness, and of structuring the past by an artificial frame, apply to Ancient History. It is true that it is a much more distant object than, say, the contemporary History of National States, but it is also conceived by a projection of the present back into the past, although in a more complex way. My second objective in this paper will be to examine this way. Like any large frame, Ancient History is both useful and risky. Here I will explore the risks, not the achievements, starting with the very term by which we name the discipline. Why is it Ancient? What does Ancient mean here? It is obviously the opposite of Recent, Modern, or Contemporary. Ancient History should thus be the oldest part of Contemporary History, the History of its origins, its beginnings. It defines a period in History. But it is a period of what part of History? This History must be qualified; it must be the History of something, and not just History, in general.

The great majority of Brazilian historians agree, today, that this is a Eurocentric point of view and that we should begin with the very first inhabitants of Brazilian territory. That is fair enough. But what territory is this? The current one? How to define the spatial limits of that History back in time? (I had myself to confront this problem when writing a book about Brazilian pre-history). Note that Brazil only became a National-State in 1822 and that its present frontiers were fixed in the beginning of the 20th century. The very idea of a Brazilian identity is quite recent, a conscious product of the imperial state and of the elites in the 19th century that created and imposed a unified language and wrote the first versions of a national history. Obviously Brazil is an important subject matter to study, at least for Brazilians, but it is also clear that it is a frame projected back from the present into the past to create a meaningful context.

As we know, the very idea of the existence of a history that is ancient was developed by European Renaissance thinkers (Demant 2000, 997). It presupposed both a rupture and a recovery, religious and cultural, between two worlds. A rupture that gave a certain sense to their history, as a recovery of something lost, as the restoration of a bond that had been broken during the so-called history of the Middle, the Medieval History. In this way, it associated their contemporary world with a certain past. For them it was the ancient history of their world. Is this still true of our world? Many contemporary textbooks and school and university curricula still call it the History of the Ancient World. But of course it is not the ancient history of the world at all.

If it is not possible to proceed without frames, it is necessary to be conscious of them, to think how and why they were created. It is necessary to think about their effects upon our understanding of the past and of human history as a whole. Furthermore, this conscientiousness can open for historians the possibility of producing alternative visions, the possibility of creating or writing other pasts. And this may be useful (I think that it is even necessary) in a time of great transformations such as we are experiencing. To render the understanding of the past more useful to the present we need to rethink the traditional frames within which we still research, write and teach History. The History that is produced in many universities, for instance, or the history that is taught in school curricula, is still largely Eurocentric. It is based on an evolutionary conception of human history that still maintains Europe in the centre of the most relevant facts, deeds and ideas to be interpreted, understood and told.

The very idea of Ancient History represents a rather provincial, European vision of history, a certain way of viewing World History from a European perspective (Mommsen 1965, 153; Bentley, 2001). It is a very particular point of view that presents itself as universal and natural. It is a frame and, as I have already said, frames are not innocent. In Brazilian schools and universities (and this is also true of many other countries) history is taught as an evolutionary sequence that arrives at the present following certain periods: Pre-History, which is normally more general, even if not usually including the Americas, and then the sequence: Ancient, Medieval, Modern and Contemporary Histories. History only exists in Europe. Even Brazil and America are included in History syllabuses and curricula only after their ‘discovery’ by Europeans, that is, only when they become a part of the History of Europe.

Changing the frames is not an easy task. The very educational system and the traditional research divisions tend to reproduce themselves through inertia. Historians only rarely think about these larger frames, and they take them for granted, as natural entities. The frames influence 3

Norberto Luiz Guarinello

But the problems with this frame do not restrict themselves to its Eurocentrism. There are other, more conceptual problems. Even inside what could be termed the History of Europe, the idea of Ancient History is not totally clear. Is it really the ancient history of Europe and if it is, in what specific sense? Certainly there are no evident social or political continuities between the world of ancient history and that of modern Europe. There are perhaps more social and political continuities between the Ottoman Empire and the Roman Empire, than between the latter and the modern European National States. But there is not even any spatial continuity. The Roman Empire, which was the largest political unity of what we call ancient history included areas that nobody today would define as European: the north of Africa, parts of the Middle East, perhaps Turkey. On the other hand, it did not reach other areas that today claim to be part of Europe, like Russia, all the Eastern European countries and the Scandinavian Peninsula. In a curious way, Ancient History is Eurocentric but not European History at all. It is not just a projection of Europe back into the past.

about? Or rather, what is its subject, in space and in time? Which are the parameters to define a History of Greece? This frame, in practice and as employed in an everyday sense, put some parameters that are vaguely cultural together with a political parameter that is clearly dominant. What is named the ‘History of Greece’ is normally the History of some poleis as independent states. It is a History that begins with Homer and goes on until Alexander or the Roman conquest. In textbooks it tends to be essentially a History of Athens and Sparta, precisely the two least typical cities that we could think of as part of the Greek world. The History of Rome presents us with some specific difficulties. Is it the history of a city or of an Empire? If it is the History of a city, why are historians to privilege Rome among so many cities that, along its history, were even more potent or important? Why concentrate on Rome at its humble beginnings? Is it because of its manifest destiny to become an Empire? But in this way we are being teleological by projecting the future back into the past. And the other contemporary cities, why are they left out of History? Did nothing happen in them while Rome, by its own will and virtue, accumulated power?

The conceptual incongruities of Ancient History are not restricted to what we could call its ideological content. There is more incoherence within it. There are further frames inside Ancient History. In many countries, like Brazil, Ancient History is taught and researched within three main divisions: the Ancient Near East (mainly Egypt and Mesopotamia), Greece and Rome. It is in this way that Ancient History appears in textbooks, and so is structured a large portion of academic research (although not all). This threefold division is presented to the general public in the form of a chronological succession, as if the torch of History, in its evolutionary race, had been transmitted progressively from East to West. It is as if history faded progressively in the East, only to be lighted up in the West, as the focus of civilization shifted.

The History of the city of Rome only makes sense in the context of a world of other cities and Empires. Rome did not expand in a vacuum. We can perfectly well consider that its expansion was due, not so much to a peculiar will, but to the weaknesses and structural needs of that world. But there is still another problem. Suddenly, ‘Rome’ no longer means a city but an Empire. Or rather, it means both at the same time. Many Histories of Rome, above all those centered on constitution or politics, do not care about this ambiguity. Many books and articles speak of Roman society, Roman culture, and Roman economy without feeling any need to specify whether they are talking about Rome, the city, or Roman Italy, or the Roman Empire as a whole. And we are talking about an Empire that was characterized by an immense diversity of languages, customs, cultures and societies. What is Roman Society in the early Principate, after all?

A second problem concerns the diversity of criteria of this triple division. Conceptually speaking, it is quite incongruous. The Near East is a geographical partition, defining a wide territorial space, rather than types of society or specific cultures. It is absolutely clear that no essential unit marks the very long-term history of the socalled Near East. On the contrary, it is marked by a wide diversity of peoples, cultures and social organizations.

These are some of the conceptual incongruities in the frames we employ to think about and produce Ancient History. It is possible to point out some reasons for these incongruities.

The criteria that define the History of Greece are more complex. After all, what gives unity to Greek History? It is not of a specific country or place. Should it be a common language, a common culture, or a shared religion? Recent studies have shown that Greek identity was slowly produced over centuries. It never corresponded to anything like a uniform society, culture or unified state. Moreover, it never became a precise identity. Athens and Sparta were both Greek and both socially and culturally rather different. And what about the Thessalians, the Epirotes, the Arcadians, the Macedonians, the Greeks of the Diaspora, the Greeks under the Romans? What is a History of Ancient Greece

Ancient historians have at their disposal a wide range of different kinds of sources: papyri, coins, archaeological remains, and epigraphic texts. But the determining sources that shaped the constitution of the very conception of ancient history are the books that were produced along more than a millennium, mostly in Greek and Latin. These books constitute a literary and scholarly tradition that we call the Classical Tradition (there are few other literary traditions in the world). As we know, they were 4

A Morphology of Ancient History from a tropical, half-European viewpoint

not produced at the same time and place. They are not part of a contemporary literary world. Properly speaking, they are a tradition, a long process of accumulation and discarding of texts that run along centuries (Highet 1949; Wilamowitz-Moellendorf 1982). It is a magnificent instrument of thought, a store for learning achievements, and an expanded memory of different societies in what the French call la longue durée. But the point is that it does not represent any single period, any single society. It is more like a condensation of all the societies, cultures and centuries encompassed within it. The Classical Tradition has an internal unity, the books refer to each other, they are organized into specific genres, they are the basis of a tradition that we follow until today and that some call Western civilization. But the very unity of the tradition represents a danger to historians.

modern European civilization. We still speak about them as civilizations. But the very idea of civilization is extremely ambiguous. It served the purposes of legitimating European world hegemony in the XIXth and in a large part of the XXth centuries, but it is not a scientific concept. Sometimes it is employed as a synonym of culture at large, including all everyday practices, sometimes it refers only to a part of the cultural production of a society, other times it is employed to differentiate ‘primitive’ from developed peoples. It is not clear what gives unity to it: a common spirit, a race, a language (or what)? In a sense, it sounds anachronistic too. The civilization frame is excessively vague and ideological. I think it can be accepted, but just to refer to the learned culture, to the very tradition of teaching and writing that produced the Classical Tradition of books. This Classical Tradition is in fact a unity. But it presents us with a final problem. It was not the product of a single culture or of a single society, but of a large diversity of cultures and societies along millennia. Each one of the texts of this tradition was produced in completely different contexts, by different societies, at different moments and places. There is no single Greek society behind the tradition of Greek books, neither a unique Roman society nor Roman culture behind the Latin ones. The relationship between society and literature is here extremely complex, above all because we are dealing with a long-term tradition. As Finley recognized in his ‘Ancient Economy’ only the Roman Empire gave a certain unity to this world, mainly a political one, it is true, but a unity that progressively became also social and cultural to a certain extent.

At the end of the XVIIIth century and during the XIXth historians started to produce History from this tradition, employing and developing methods of source criticism to extract from texts the society and culture that had produced them. The historical narratives of the very sources were both a guide and a limitation (Ampolo 1997). Anyway, their information had to be scrutinized to fulfill the interests of the new historians. Quite naturally, the historians of the XIXth century ordered the information they found in the sources, creating frames or contexts to give them meaning. These frames, as we saw, were capable of both uniting and separating the documents and of putting them into different kinds of dialogue. A first context was language: Latin and Greek were felt as two related but different traditions. And so they constituted the bases for two Histories (Clarke 1959, 99). But Histories of what?

Conclusion

If we have in mind that History developed along the XIXth century very much in the service of the emerging national states it is understandable that politics and even the idea of ‘nation’ should be one of the foundations of the frames created at that time (Hentschke & Muhlack 1972, 91-127; Pavan 1977, 94; Ampolo 1997, 86). And nation, at that time, referred to an ethnically, culturally and socially unified linguistic group, with a natural identity by itself (Momigliano 1992, 459). The History of Greece was conceived as the history of a politically divided nation, whose unity was rather cultural or even racial, the History of Rome, as that of an expansionist national-state, of a specific people with its special virtues and its particular character. In a sense, we still structure our discipline around the idea of Nations, even if today this seems rather anachronistic (Goldhill, 2000).

The ideas that I have presented are not intended to deny the very existence or the importance of studying Ancient History. They are meant to develop a wider consciousness of what we do and how we present the past to our audiences, either scholars or the general public. I insist that what we call Ancient History is still a very useful pursuit to present times. Firstly, it is based upon a tradition that is very rich in human terms. Ancient texts are interesting in and of themselves. They are worth reading; some of them are really treasures for mankind as a whole. Secondly, the tradition we study and transform into History is still our own tradition. We are part of it, even in Brazil. Science is a direct heir of the Classical Tradition. Thirdly, the history of that world is an interesting history, even if it is not the whole ancient history of the world. It is worth studying, but I think it should be transformed to reach present needs. It should liberate itself from frames that have become anachronistic.

The second idea that determined and still influences the frames of Ancient History was that of civilization. The books from the classical tradition were considered as the products of different civilizations, each with its own characteristics. Near Eastern, Greek and the Roman civilizations were put in a sequence that culminated in the

Nevertheless, it ought to abandon its pretension to universality. It is a very specific, regional History. Moreover, it has to re-think the old divisions in its interior and reject the idea of a continuous progressive line. Some interesting attempts have been made in recent years to see this world through different eyes. Not surprisingly, two 5

Norberto Luiz Guarinello

of the most instigating ones have a strong influence of F. Braudel and of his ability and ambition of thinking vast objects: the determination of different world systems in the past (Chase-Dunn & Hall 1991; Frank & Gills 1993), and the study of Mediterranean as the medium uniting all ‘Ancient’ Histories, although in an eminently ecological perspective (Horden & Purcell 2000; Shaw 2001). Other ways are possible. Another possibility (that I would choose myself) could be that of consciously projecting back our present concerns into the past. Ancient History, as we saw, is the history of an intellectual tradition that we try to transform into a History of societies and cultures. Most, if not all, of the books from the classical tradition were the product of cities, the ancient cities. Theirs was a world of cities surrounded by other forms of society:

nomadic or sedentary tribes, smaller or larger Empires. The history of their world is one of initial profound variety and fragmentation. A History that, in time, becomes more and more integrated through economic, cultural and political forces. The Roman Empire is the culmination of a process of integration that never totally effaces local particularities. It is an Empire of cities, but also of a great variety of social organizations and cultures. I believe that this history of intermixing and integration is still able to propose quite interesting questions for the present world, which is facing very similar questions, even if in a quite different way. The dialogue between these two historical experiences may be rich and revealing. The History we research, write and teach (this is what I insist upon in Brazil), the History we call Ancient History, still speaks to us.

References Ampolo, C., 1997, Storie Greche. La formazione della moderna storiografia sugli antichi Greci, (Turim: Einaudi). Andreau, J et al., 1995, ‘L’Économie Antique’, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 50, 5. Ankersmit, F.R., 1988, ‘Historical Representation’, History and Theory, Vol. 27, 3, pp. 205-228. Bentley, J. H., 2001, ‘Shapes of World History in Twentieth-Century Scholarship’, in M. Adas (ed.), Agricultural and Pastoral Societies in Ancient and Classical History. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press). Bloch, M., 1993, Apologie pour l’histoire ou métier d’historien (édition critique préparée par Étienne Bloch), (Paris: Armand Colin). Cameron, A., 1989, ‘Postlude: what next with history’, in A. Cameron (ed.) History as texts. The writing of ancient history, (London: Duckworth). Chase-Dunn, C. & Hall, T. D. (eds.), 1991, Core/Periphery Relations in Precapitalist Worlds, (Boulder: Westview Press). Clarke, M. L., 1959, Classical Education in Britain, 1500-1900, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Demant, A., 2000, ‘Epochenbegriffe’, in M. Landfester, (ed.), Der Neue Pauly. Enzyklopädie der Antike, (Stuttgart: Verlag J.B. Metzler). Finley, M.I., 1980, A Economia Antiga, (Porto: Afrontamento). Frank, G. & Gills, B. K. (eds.), 1993, The World System. Five hundred years or five thousand? (London and New York: Routledge). Garnsey, P. & Sellers, R., 1987, The Roman Empire. Economy, society and culture. (London: Duckworth). Giardina, A. (ed.), 1992, L’Homme Romain, (Paris: Seuil). Goldhill, S., 2000, ‘Whose Antiquity? Whose Modernity?’, Antike und Abendland, 46, pp. 3-20. Hentschke, A. & Muhlack, U., 1972, Einführung in die Geschichte der klassischen Philologie. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft). Highet, G., 1949, The Classical Tradition, (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Horden, P & Purcell, N., 2000, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History, (Oxford: Blackwell). Huskinson, J., 2000, Experiencing Rome. Culture, Identity and Power in the Roman Empire, (London: Routledge & The Open University). Lepelley, C., (ed.), 1998, Rome et l’integration de l’Empire - 44 av. J.C. – 260 apr. J.C. Tome 2 Approches régionales du Haut-Empire Romain, (Paris: PUF). Malkin, I. (ed.), 2001, Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity, (Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard University Press). Marrou, M.-I. (1978), Sobre o conhecimento histórico, (Rio de Janeiro: Zahar). Momigliano, A., 1992, ‘La unità della storia politica greca’, Nono Contributo alla Storia degli Studi Classici e del Mondo Antico, (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura). 6

A Morphology of Ancient History from a tropical, half-European viewpoint

Mommsen, H., 1965, ‘História Social’, in: História. Enciclopédia Meridiano/Fischer. (Lisbon: Meridiano). Novaes, F. A., 1997, ‘Condições da privacidade na Colônia’, in L. Mello e Souza (ed.), História da Vida Privada no Brasil I; Cotidiano e vida privada na América portuguesa. (São Paulo: Cia. Das Letras). Pavan, M., 1977, Antichità Classica e Pensiero Moderno, (Florence: La Nuova Italia). Raaflaub, K. & Toher, M. (Eds.), 1990, Between Republic and Empire, (Berkeley: University of California Press). Reeve, M., 2001, ‘Introduction’, in S.J. Harrison, (ed) Texts, Ideas and the Classics. Scholarship, Theory and Classical Literature, (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Rundel, J. & Mennell, S. (eds.), 1998, Classical Readings in Culture and Civilization. (London: Routledge). Scheidel, W. & Von Reden, S., 2002, The Ancient Economy, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). Schiavone, A., 1999, La Storia Spezzata. Roma antica e Occidente moderno, (Bari: laterza). Shaw, B., 2001, ‘Challenging Braudel: a new vision of the Mediterranean’, Journal of Roman Archaeology, 14, pp. 419-453. Veyne, P., 1991, La société romain. (Paris: Seuil). Wilamovitz-Moellendorff, U. Von, 1982, History of Classical Scholarship, (London: Duckworth).

7

Eurocentricism and theory in Roman Archaeology: a further contribution to the Romanization debate Richard Hingley

Durham University, UK

Introduction: problems with the inheritance Many past studies have developed the idea of ‘Romanization’ to explore the spread of Roman cultural identity during the later first millennium BC and early first millennium AD. Archaeologists and ancient historians have, over the past 100 years, used various forms of the term Romanization to explore the spread of Roman culture, including Romanisation, Romanization, romanisation and romanization (Alcock 1997, 1). The use of the lower case ‘r’ perhaps sometimes focuses upon a more critical evaluation of the significance of the term than the use of the upper case letter. Bill Hanson suggested in 1994 that Romanization is ‘the single topic which effectively underpins and potentially unites all aspects of the study of the Roman period in Britain’ (Hanson 1994, 149), while the term is also applied to the societies of Italy, the Mediterranean, Iberia and Northern Europe, and is used by numerous writers in Europe and the USA (for reviews that take a variety of different perspective to Romanization, see Alcock 1997; 2000; 2001; Barrett 1997a; 1997b; Blázquez 1989; Curchin 2004, 8-14; Curti et al 1996, 181-8; Dench 2003; Derks 1998, 1-9; Freeman 1993; 1997; Hanson 1994; Hingley 1996; 2000, 111-3; Laurence 2001; Merryweather and Prag 2003; Millett 1990a; 1990b; Slofstra 2002; Webster 2001 and Woolf 1998, 4-7). In the final twenty years of the twentieth century and the early years of this century, a plethora of books was published that focused on Romanization, taking their detailed subject matter from Italy, Athens, Spain, Gaul, the Low Countries, Britain, the West and the empire of Augustus.1 Many of the accounts that adopt the Romanization perspective do not provide any detailed discussion of the concept, effectively assuming that it derives directly from classical society. Traditional approaches often appear to consider that the term provides an account of a spontaneous process that requires no explanation (Mouritsen 1998, 60), a description of ‘what really happened’, free of any conscious bias (Johnson 1999, 167).   A wide variety of works are listed by Hingley (2005, 128 n. 27 and n. 35). These include Blázquez and Alvar (eds.) (1996), Brandt and Slofstra (eds.) (1983), Curchin (2004), Digressus (2003), Hoff and Rotroff (eds.) (1997), Keay and Terrenato (eds.) (2001), MacMullen (2000), Millett (1990a), Torelli (1995). 1

Romanization, however, is problematical. Classical authors did not use it: the theory of Romanization drew upon concepts articulated in classical texts but was invented in the relatively recent past to explore an issue that modern scholars have felt to be important (Freeman 1993; Hingley 2000, 111 and Mouritsen 1998, 59). It is a cultural construct and not a self-evident entity; as, it should be noted, is the Roman empire itself (Barrett 1997b, 52). Romanization was invented to account for the process of social change that is argued to have occurred under Roman rule, first across Italy and then throughout the provinces of the Western empire and also across some areas of the East (David 1996, 1; MacMullen 2000). Many of the terms in which the Romanization debate has been defined (including ‘Roman’, ‘Greek’, ‘Hellenic’, ‘Etruscan’, ‘Italic’, ‘Celtic’, Germanic’, ‘native’, ‘barbarian’ and ‘civilization’) are themselves derived from classical texts, as is some of the conceptual framework within which they operate (Huskinson 2000, 21; Woolf 1997, 339; 1998, 54-67). This is significant, since, as Greg Woolf has indicated, it means that there is a hermeneutic aspect to the debate. Romanization is, at one and the same time, linked to more recent national and imperial ideologies (Desideri 1991; Hingley 2000; Laroui 1970, 47-9; Sheldon 1982, 102-3; Terrenato 1998, 21 and Mattingly 1997a, 8), while owing much to accounts of empire and civilization formulated during the late Republic and early empire in writing, art and rhetoric. At its core are imperial images that presented the idea of empire as divinely sanctioned, conceiving that Rome had a mission and moral right to civilize the barbarians (Woolf 1997, 339). This reuse of the past is a significant issue, since the incorporation of ideas that are derived from classical society into the contemporary analytical framework has often been used to provide powerful intellectual support for the authenticity of the concepts themselves. Ideas derived from classical sources were felt to have a particular authority, since this inherited tradition was often attributed with an un-challengeable status (Farrell 2001; Kennedy 1992, 37 and Stray 1998, 11-2). In reality, the core concept – Romanization – was first formulated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was the intellectual product of a group of nineteenth- and early twentieth-

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century historians, perhaps the most significant of whom were Theodor Mommsen, Francis Haverfield and Camille Jullian (Freeman 1997; Goudineau 1998 and Mouritsen 1998). It drew in various ways upon contemporary concepts of nationhood and empire (Desideri 1991; Freeman 1996; Hingley 1996; 2000; Laroui 1970, 47-9; Mattingly 2002; Mouritsen 1998; Terrenato 1998 and Woolf 1998, 4-7). Classical images formed a rich source of inspiration for the ruling classes of European nations during the imperial ventures of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, because they spoke within these contexts in powerful and authoritative ways (Desideri 1991; Hingley 2000 and 2005). In more general terms, some of the ideas inherited from the past – for instance, ‘civilization’, ‘barbarism’ and the idea of the ‘just war’ – have remained popular and are redefined again today in order to justify the international actions of Western nations.2 The survival of these political concepts mirrors the continuing popularity of the theory of Romanization today.

and collecting ancient works of art (Barbanera 1998, 3-48 and Barkan 1999). The observation of ruins and collection of exotic objects represented one of the ways in which scholars who studied classical Greece and Rome attempted to understand and interpret the ancient world (Barkan 1999 and Schnapp 1996). Classical archaeology and classics share a fascination with the inheritance of Western ‘civilization’ from Greece and Rome (Greene 1995, 30). Classics as a discipline grew, in particular, out of the Grand Tour of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but it performed a specific role in Britain during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: to educate future colonial administrators (Stray 1998 and Toner 2002, 2). Classical archaeology became a distinct discipline during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries as a result of the growing specialization of various topics within the broader categories of classical and historical studies (Dyson 1993, 195; 1998, 1). Knowledge of the classical past was a significant element in the creation of what today constitutes ‘Europe’ and ‘the West’ (for concepts of Europe see Chakrabarty 2000, 3-23; Gross et al 2002 [1996], 198-200 and Pagden 2002). The past, in general terms, has been deployed by Europeans, and peoples of the Western world, to construct identities that have often been defined in opposition to others, to construct the West and the non-West and to create ideas about ancestry (see Meskell 1999, 3 and, for the relationship of the East to the West, see Said’s 2003 [1978] seminal work). The idea originates from the division between the Eastern and Western halves of the empire, but it also incorporates religious aspects that defined the West as Christian and the East as Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist. This is ironic, since Christianity originated in what is today the Middle East, while the Eastern Empire inherited this religion and survived the fall of the Western empire by almost a millennium (Herrin 1987, 295). Also reflected is the post-war division between the capitalist West and the Communist East (Williams 1981, 334). Ideas about the identity of Europe have a significant role with regard to the definition of the West, although some Eastern European countries are often not included entirely within the area (Babic 2001 and Janik and Zawadzka 1996). The West also incorporates ‘neo-Europeans’, descendants of the people who settled in the Americas, Australia and elsewhere (Shohat and Stam 1994, 1). The construction of the past of the West, and that of Europe, has never been a neutral or an unbiased activity (Smith 1986, 180-1 and Jones and Graves-Brown 1996, 6). The role that the classical past has been given in the definition of the identity of people in ‘the Western world’ is a vital topic. Although dominant ideas of the core significance of classical society to Western identity remain powerful, this issue has only recently become subject to informed discussion (See Kennedy’s 1992, 38 discussion of classical literature and literary theory and Vasunia’s 2003 account of Hellenism).

Many past accounts suggest that the spread of Roman culture (often termed ‘civilization’ in works that were written in the first half of the twentieth century) occurred through a process of Romanization. Material culture, the objects and material structures that are found across the empire, is then thought to have spread as part of this expansion. This historical process is argued to have encouraged the adoption of the culture by groups of varying status. The process of Romanization was seen as involving a form of social change from one way of being to another, a change that has sometimes been conceived to have, in effective terms, a moral quality, since it was partly based on ideas of progress and development in the contemporary world. I shall focus here upon the general context in which the concept developed. Attitudes have been in a constant state of change over the past 100 years and Romanization has been reinvented in each age to reflect upon the contemporary situation. Initially, Romanization was viewed as a centralizing and civilizing process, and it was felt to operate in fairly simple ways. I shall discuss the context of this body of thought. Elsewhere, I have provided an account of the development of Romanization down to the present day (Hingley 2005, 37-48). Classical inheritances Romanization developed within the context of the ideas of classical civilization that were current within Europe during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, concepts that were themselves derived from earlier origins. In Western Europe, classical study originated during the Renaissance from a revival of the Roman interest for visiting monuments   Differences of opinion exist as to whether we now live in a postcolonial or post-imperial world. Many argued that the current world system is no longer an imperial one (Hardt and Negri 2000), while others argue that imperialism never went away and has reared its head in powerful new ways in the past few years (see, for instance, Brennan 2003, 93; Petras and Veltmeyer 2001 and Said 2003, xiii-xvi). For the use of the concept of the ‘just war’ in the Roman world see chapters in Rich and Shipley (ed.) (1993) and Webster (1995), for the idea in the contemporary world, see Hardt and Negri (2000, 12, 36-7) and Petras and Veltmeyer (2001). 2

The ‘civilization’ of classical Rome has been drawn upon directly since the ‘fall of the Western empire’ in the fifth century. This inheritance is one of two broad – but dichotomous – myths of origin within Western and Northern 10

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European society (Barford 2002, 77 and Kristiansen 1996, 138). Barbarity, the second myth, also originated with Greece and Rome. The idea of the inheritance of classical culture and the variety of concepts derived from the barbarian origins of Western nations have interacted in complex ways in the development of knowledge about the ancient past, and the theory of Romanization came to fulfil a core role in the debate about European cultural origins.

civilization to the modern world. We shall see that the manner in which civilization is considered to have been passed through to contemporary populations is not entirely straightforward, as, in addition to a considerable lapse of time, it has had to account for the writings of classical authors that address the ‘barbarian’ populations of what is today Western Europe. An inheritance from imperial Rome has, however, been drawn upon in Europe from the early medieval period. Roman civilization forms part of an inherited and reinvented tradition that has been handed down from antiquity, through the ‘Middle Ages’, on to modern times. Despite the ‘fall of the Western empire’ in the fifth century, Rome retained a vital role in the definition of political leadership (Hingley 2005, 20-1 reviews various examples from the ninth to nineteenth centuries). Christian Europe inherited its religious traditions from classical Rome. In addition, classical authors spoke, through their surviving writings, to the educated elite classes of modern Europe in Latin, a language that they were schooled to interpret and one that helped to define their identity (Farrell 2001; Lanham (ed.) 2002; Stray 1998 and Waquet 2001). Many felt a direct association with classical Rome through the inheritance of common tradition, language, religion and civilization. Ideas derived from Republican and imperial Rome have also been significant in modern times within the USA and other areas that have been colonized and settled by Western peoples (For the USA see Dyson 2001 and Linderski 1984, 145-9).

Civilization and imperialism In a study of the significance of classical knowledge to present day society, Mary Beard and John Henderson have suggested that the academic subject of classics links us to the world of the Greeks and Romans (Beard and Henderson 1995, 6). This means that the aim of those who study classical society is not only to uncover the ancient world but also to define and interpret our relationship to that world (ibid, 6-7). The questions that classical study raises are the result of our distance from the world of Greece and Rome and, at the same time, our familiarity with it (ibid), since classical culture remains central to our own. For Beard and Henderson, it is this centrality that binds Western society to its heritage (Ibid, 32). They choose two particular examples – the Parthenon and Virgil’s Aeneid – to underline this argument. Beard and Henderson deliberately use single examples derived, respectively, from Greece and Rome. Classical Greece provides an alternative series of ideas to those derived from Rome, concepts that have often been felt to have a more pure historical significance (Dyson 1995; Habinek 1998, 15-20; Morris 1994a and Vasunia 2003). Classical Greece has often been felt to provide a more original and untainted source for many Western traditions. In fact, this idea draws directly upon a Roman attitude towards the cultural superiority of Greece (Farrell 2001, 28 and Toner 2002, 12). A lively debate has developed about the social origins of past studies of ancient Greece, including the roles performed by ancient history and archaeology (Morris 1994a; 1994b; 2000, although see Vasunia 2003 for the need for a fuller study of these issues within the study of classical Greece). In these terms, ‘Hellenism’ involves the idealization of Greece as the birthplace of a European spirit (Morris 1994b, 11 and Whitley 2001, 16). That classics can be argued to have appropriated the Greek past for political purposes is felt by some recent writers to make the subject central to any attempt to study the place of archaeology in Western society (for the appropriation of the Greek past see Lowenthal 1988, for the significance of this to scholarship see Morris 1994b, 11).

Knowledge of classical Greece and Rome has been made to play a fundamental role in the ways that people in the West have imagined both their past and present. In particular, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, people in the West created a classical past that served their own nationalist and imperialist aims (Bernal 1994; Hingley 2000; Patterson 1997 and Vasunia 2003). An idea that has been explored in various ‘post-colonial’ readings of the writing of history in the West is that of ‘Eurocentricism’. This concept provides a rather simple and linear idea, which does not allow for the full complexity of the ways in which the classical past has been interpreted – it has a direct value, however, since it enables an assessment of the, often, unquestioned ways in which classical society has been used to formulate images of Western superiority. Eurocentricism focuses upon the idea of a classical inheritance. From the middle of the nineteenth century, European powers controlled or influenced most parts of the world and from the early twentieth century the USA has taken over much, although not all, of the former economic and political power of European states. During this lengthy period of ‘Western’ dominance, a Eurocentric perspective focussed attention upon the importance of Europe in world history (Bernal 1987; Shohat and Stam 1994 and Patterson 1997, 22). In these terms, it provided, and is still taken to provide, part of the justification for Western superiority and the resultant acts of imperialism (Shohat and Stam 1994, 2). It embeds, takes for granted and ‘normalises’ the hierarchical patterns that are

Classical Rome shares a special place with Greece in the definition of Western history and thought (Farrell 2001; Potter 1999; Thompson 1971 and Wyke and Biddiss 1999 consider various aspects of this relationship). This is at least in part a result of the range of practices and beliefs that people of Western origin are often argued to hold in common core Western values. Part of the fundamental importance of this idea of a classical inheritance has been the significant role that Rome is perceived to have performed in passing on a broadly-conceived Western 11

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established through imperial actions (ibid). ‘Civilization’ and western origins are, effectively, used as an excuse and justification for the imperial domination that Western powers exercise over others. The Eurocentric perspective suggests that civilization was successively displaced in time and space from the ancient Near East through ‘Western’ (and democratic) classical Greece and then to Rome (for the Near East see Bahrani 1999, for Greece see Said 2003 [1978], 55-8 and Vasunia 2003). Rome acted as the link to the Christian Middle Ages and then civilization passed through the Western European Renaissance and to the modern European imperial powers, finally to form the inheritance of the countries of contemporary Europe and of the USA (for contemporary American imperialism see Johnson 2004). In these terms, Eurocentric discourse renders history as a sequence of empires: Pax Romana, Pax Hispanica, Pax Britannica and Pax Americana (Shohat and Stam 1994, 2). In all cases Western Europeans or their descendants are seen to provide the ‘motor’, or impetus, for historical change.

and classified native peoples by contrasting their own civilization to the actions and institutions of these ‘others’ on the periphery of contact and control (Malkin 1998 and Nippel 2002 [1996]). By describing the appearance and actions of these others, classical writers came to provide ideas that had a lasting relevance (Habinek 1998, 157; Mattern 1999, 71-8; Nippel 2002 [1996]; Shahîd 1984, 157 and Webster 1996). This image of barbarity, however, was not simple; it was attributed varying meanings at different times and places (Nippel 2002 [1996], 297). Classical accounts became widely available to the educated elite in Western Europe from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries onwards. Contrasting traditions of study developed well before the twentieth century, drawing upon classical ideas of barbarian otherness to define contemporary national identity. The classical authors recorded the names of various ethnic groups in Italy, the Western empire and elsewhere, including Etruscans, Iberians, Gauls, Batavians, Germans, Britons and Dacians (Curti 2001, 22; Hessing 2001; Ruiz Zapatero 1996, 179). Although sometimes developed in very dismissive terms, at other times these accounts glorified indigenous peoples, arguing that they represented the pristine virtues that had been lost in Rome (Clarke 2001 and Mattern 1999, 78). The classical texts also contained useful information that described the habits and natures of these ancient peoples and the valiant warriors who led them in opposition to the armies of imperial Rome. These positive renditions of barbarians came, from the sixteenth century to the twentieth, to serve particular roles since they provided powerful images that were of direct value for the bringing into being of modern nations across Western Europe. Native peoples became adopted into national consciousness in differing ways, but usually in the guise of ancestors (Patterson 1997, 94-102).

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this image of the classical origin of an inherited Western civilization was drawn upon in Britain, France and elsewhere as a powerful support for imperialism (Desideri 1991; Hingley 2000 and Majeed 1999). Writers in the West appropriated ancient cultures for their own interests in terms of a form of teleology in which the significance of the past lay primarily in its relevance to the imperial present (Bahrani 1999; Bernal 1994 and Hingley 2005). The study of ancient history and classical archaeology, in these terms, was of value since it helped to establish the roots of contemporary Western society (Morris 1994a; 1994b; Martindale 1993, 25-36; van Dommelen 1997, 306 and Vasunia 2003), but this approach can also be argued to have established an over-simplistic view of the past, one that was deeply influenced by the historical context in which it developed. Although this inherited perspective has been subject to increasing criticism, as the result of recent research that reassesses information in a search for new understanding, the central idea of classical inheritance remains powerful today (Said 2003, xv-xvi and Seth 2003, 47).

The classical texts sometimes included information that enabled the former homelands of these ancient groups to be established and, as a result, from the seventeenth century onwards, writers and artists in the countries bordering the North Sea explored national identities by drawing upon knowledge about prehistoric peoples derived from the classical texts (Smiles 1994, 26). With the rise of antiquarianism from the late sixteenth century, physical evidence (artefacts and structures) derived from the past could be employed to locate these peoples in the contemporary landscape of Western Europe. Physical evidence from the past came to be used to translate classical descriptions of pre-Roman peoples onto the map of Europe, using the developing techniques of survey and classification (Smith 1986, 180), to provide a concrete and physical link.

Barbarity Classical Rome has been used to provide alternative contributions to the origins of people across Europe; identities that form the second half of the civilizationbarbarism dichotomy defined above (Kristiansen 1996, 138). Romans inherited knowledge from ancient Greek society, communicated through the writings of previous authors about the ‘barbarians’ that they had experienced during earlier colonial actions. Roman generals and traders also encountered non-Roman peoples during imperial expansion across the Italian peninsula and when they ventured across the Mediterranean, the Near East and beyond, into northern and western Europe (for Italy and the Mediterranean see Curti 2001, 22; Curti et al 1996; Mouritsen 1998 and Terrenato 2001, 71, for the Near East see Shahîd 1984, 157). Classical authors described

Classical writings included accounts of the ways in which Rome came into conflict with these ‘barbarians’, and the tales of the resistance of various of the peoples of Western Europe to Roman imperial expansion were sometimes developed in a strongly anti-Roman fashion. This often, in effect, gave a voice to certain individuals and peoples within the prehistoric West. Texts named and 12

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described native leaders who led these pre-Roman groups in armed resistance. The classical authors also put words into the mouths of native rebels, including Arminius in Germany, Vercingetorix in Gaul, Boadicea/Boudica in Britain, Civilis in the Netherlands, Viriathus in Iberia and Decabalus in Dacia (For Viriathus see Pastor Muñoz 2000; for Vercingetorix see King 2001; for Arminius see Struck 2001 and Wells 2003; for Boudica see Hingley and Unwin 2005 and for Civilis see Hessing 2001). These individuals were, in turn, called upon to play an important role in the definition of self-identity – staunch figureheads of national autonomy. Between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, various nations adopted these ancient leaders in order to map territorial claims derived from classical writings on to the contemporary landscapes of Europe.

arose through the development of racist and exclusionist accounts of Germanic peoples within Germany during the early twentieth century (Kristiansen 1996, 139 and Struck 2001, 101), but comparable visions of exclusive archaeological cultures were constructed in other European countries during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Jones 1997, 2-3). Civilizing the barbarian The idea of a clearly-defined barbarian identity was adopted from the classical sources, but reconfigured in contemporary terms through the mapping of cultural groups as clearly bounded and unchanging territorial units. In creating such clear boundaries, these accounts usually followed the lead of the classical texts by setting up their interpretations of native and Roman in opposition to one other. Classical writings, however, enabled another significant story to be told, one that allowed for the accommodation of native and classical civilizations. Certain classical writers had explored the manner in which barbarians might become civilized through contact and involvement with Roman culture (Clarke 2001). Some of these writings, therefore, provided the potential for an accommodation between the important but apparently conflicting images of classical and barbarian origin, an idea that was adopted in Britain and elsewhere from the sixteenth century onwards (Goudineau 1998; Hessing 2001 and Hingley 2000).

Within the disparate national traditions of archaeological research that exist in many of the countries that make up Western Europe, the ethnic or tribal terms that were recorded by the classical authors have been used to identify the inhabitants of various countries in the period immediately prior to Roman annexation. With the further development of archaeological methodology by the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, archaeologists were using techniques to locate, date, describe and classify material remains in some detail. This work enabled the writing of stories about the origins of monuments, artefacts and specific named individuals that assisted in the articulation of national self-identity. As a result of this information, and the development of knowledge about the pre-Roman monuments, prehistoric archaeology in Western Europe has developed according to an alternative logic to that adopted within Romano-centric classical studies.

This highly significant idea, which was particularly influential in Britain and France during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, built upon the Roman concept of the civilizing mission by arguing that imperial incorporation provided the opportunity for barbarian valour to be combined with an imported classical civilization. In Britain this image was articulated through the creation of an idea of mixed racial origin that had a contemporary imperial relevance. It drew upon the writings of classical authors who presented the empire as divinely sanctioned and with a mission to civilise the barbarians of the West (Desideri 1991, 586 and Woolf 1997, 339). Rome is made to represent the means by which classical civilization was transferred through the conquest and incorporation of territories that came in due course to form parts of Western Europe. The archaeological evidence that survives for Roman sites had a particular importance from this perspective, since it provided physical evidence for the introduction of civilization from the Mediterranean – roads, towns, villas, bath-houses, forts, frontier works and churches. These physical traces had a particular immediacy with regard to the tracing of cultural identity, as they focussed attention upon specific locations that provided physical links between classical past and imperial present. For many, this material link had a far more direct relevance than the descriptions provided by the classical writers, which emphasized, alongside their valour, the barbarity (or ‘otherness’) of native peoples across Western Europe. For some, it also had a more direct relevance than the remains left behind by prehistoric populations.

Those with interests in prehistoric Europe often aimed to counter the classical myth of origin that emphasized the idea of the barbaric character of the peoples in the West prior to the Roman invasion, by emphasizing the ‘civilization’ of the pre-Roman cultures (Kristiansen 1996). This prehistoric civilization was explored through study of the impressive monuments that these peoples left behind and also of their evocative material culture.3 The identification and description of these pre-Roman peoples within Europe has often formed the basis for the exploration of national identity (for archaeology and nationalism, see Díaz-Andreu and Champion (eds.) 1996 and Meskell (ed.) 1999). In these stories, the physical elements of prehistoric culture – the artefacts, barrows, henges, hillforts and houses – provided tangible connections with an imagined ethnic past (Smith 1986, 180). Sense of place is vital to national self-definition, and the tying of ethnic identity to certain physical forms of archaeological evidence has provided a useful tool for regional and state nationalism in various countries (Díaz-Andreu 1998; Hessing 2001; Struck 2001 and Ruiz Zapatero 1996, 180). The most extreme example of the nationalistic use of barbarians   A variety of national and regional studies have explored the extent and character of these peoples, see, for example, Curti (2001, 22) for the Etruscans, Díaz-Andreu (1998) for the people of Iberia and Cunliffe (1991) for those of Britain. 3

The inheritance from classical Rome had a directly political purpose. Classically-educated English administrators 13

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and politicians derived guidance from the example of classical Rome with regard to the topics of decline and fall, contemporary frontier issues and matters of ‘race relations’ within the empire (for ‘race relations see Betts 1971, for decline and fall and frontiers see Hingley 2000, for international politics see Purnell 1978). Late Victorian and Edwardian administrators and politicians used the Roman conception of a linear legacy of Mediterranean civilization to suggest that the British empire had inherited and improved upon the Roman example (Hingley 2000). The study of archaeological monuments had a direct role in this claim, since, increasingly, it was used to support the argument that Roman civilization had been passed onto the native peoples of Roman Britain (ibid). During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this idea of a classical inheritance was developed in academic circles, and also in some popular accounts, through the creation of the idea of Romanization, particularly in the influential work of Haverfield (1905; for a review of this work, see Hingley 2000). Romanization provided a simple account of how Western barbarians were able to adopt Roman civilization. The search for the homes of the Romanized natives, therefore, had a role in the development of a concept of the history of the nation, since through their exposure to Rome they were felt to have become civilized and were, in turn, the civilizers of those within their contemporary imperial domains.

clear link to be reaffirmed between the civilization of the ancient Mediterranean and that of the contemporary West (Desideri 1991), even though, in the West, this link had been broken by the barbarian invasions and the subsequent fall of the Western empire. Politicians and intellectuals of Western nations could therefore argue that contemporary empire was passing on an inherited civilization that had itself been brought into their countries in the distant past by a previous race of imperialists (Hingley 2000). The ‘gift’ of this (supposedly) inherited civilization helped to define acts of colonialism as ‘civilizing missions’, supposedly providing justification for the associated acts of violence and oppression (for civilizing missions see Bernal 1994, 119; Desideri 1991, 586; Hingley 2000; Mattingly 1996 and Sheldon 1982). This type of perspective arises naturally from adoption of the classical concept of humanitas and from the development of this perspective within the modern concept of progress (Hingley 2005, 27; for humanitas see Moatii 1997, 293-8 and Woolf 1998, 54-60). Both humanitas and progress suggest that the adoption of civilization represents a form of transition from a barbarian state to one that was closer to the present day. As such, the topics that have been discussed helped to supplement each other. A teleological perspective on technology and innovation helped to articulate ideas of imperialism and progress that then fed back into images of imperial purpose and power (Hingley 2005, 27). Effectively, modern authors drew upon the Roman example to argue the historical continuity of a European identity that was passed from civilization to civilization while being improved in the process. Rome presented the example of an extensive, powerful and wellorganised world-empire – a parallel that could be drawn upon in a variety of ways.

The role of classical literature was highly significant in creating this idea of the continuity of the history of the West. Within the Roman context, the concept of humanitas had become an ideological justification for the Roman elite that supported conquest and domination (Woolf 1998, 54-60). Some classical authors considered that humanitas had originated in classical Greece and was spread to a wider world through Roman imperial expansion. By representing Greek culture as the first stage in a universal process, authors within the empire could assert the superiority of Rome in a manner that served to counter anxiety over their own identity and status (ibid, 57). The ideas of the Roman inheritance of humanitas from the Greeks and that of the Roman cultural superiority over the peoples of the West were adopted during the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the context of Western imperialism. This was because the concept, in turn, was used to help to justify the imperial domination of other peoples by Western nations (Bernal 1994, 119 and Hingley 2000, 162).

Keeping the unwanted at bay Classical accounts were also used, from the sixteenth century onwards, to provide a directly contrasting representation of otherness that was utilized during the exploration and incorporation of Scotland, Ireland and part of the ‘New World’ into the expanding British empire from the early seventeenth century onwards (Nippel 2002 [1996]; Patterson 1997, 94-102 and Shaw 1983). Re-evaluation of the classical texts at this time led to the revitalization of geographical knowledge as ancient writings were adopted and adapted in the context of the new information derived from voyages overseas (Nippel 2002 [1996], 296-310). Ancient texts provided intellectuals with facts about ‘others’. The classical idea of the barbarian was adapted in the contemporary context to play a role in European colonization, as the ancient sources were called upon in order to help people to understand the natives and territories in these new lands (Clarke 1999, 69-70 and Malkin 1998). Concepts of savagery suggested that some of these contemporary peoples might be in a comparable condition to the barbarians that had been described by classical authors and, in a complementary manner, native peoples of the New World were used as ethnographic

Rome was argued to have brought classical civilization to barbarian peoples in the north and west of the empire and, in turn, modern peoples in the West have drawn upon these classical sources both in defining their own ideas of imperial purpose and in their dealings with others (Desideri 1991, 611-21). With regard to Western Europe, knowledge derived from the classical past was used to help to define national ancestry, while the theory of Romanization mapped the course by which influential native peoples were able to adopt civilization under the influence of Rome (Hingley 2000). As a result of the Roman conquest, these indigenous peoples were felt to have been able to learn the lessons provided by the imperial power. Romanization enabled a 14

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analogies in order to inform writings about the prehistoric peoples of Western Europe and also the engravings that were produced by Europeans to illustrate these ancient ancestors (Olivier 1999, 177; Smiles 1994).

1995, 169). In accounts of what is today the Maghreb of North Africa, the indigenous people of the Roman period, were often regarded as incapable of self-rule or advancement without assistance (Mattingly 1996, 51-2, 56 and Sheldon 1982, 103 provide examples of such works). The Berber population were seen as crudely stereotypical barbarians, incapable of living in peace or organizing self-rule (Mattingly 1996, 51). While these ideas have subsequently been challenged by many authors in their studies of the Roman period within the Maghreb (Most notably by Bénabou 1976, but also by other writers, including Mattingly 1996; 1997b), it has been argued that a comparable Romano-centric image remains influential in contemporary accounts of the Roman Near East (Ball 2000, 448; Shahîd 1984, xxiii).

As time progressed, in the context of the development during the nineteenth century of modern concepts of imperialism, the construction of an absolute racial difference often formed the essential grounding for the conception of a homogeneous national identity, while images and ideas of the character of the barbarian continued to play a part (for imperialism and racial definition, see Hardt and Negri 2000, 103; for colonial definitions of ‘otherness’ and their perpetuation into the contemporary global world system, see Gupta and Ferguson 2002 [1997]). Wilfried Nippel has suggested that: ‘The structure of the concept of the Barbarian as ‘a concept of asymmetrical opposition’… justified and made possible its being reserved to define, every time afresh, now pagans, now Muslims, now ‘primitives’… Even the conceptual paring of Europe/Asia could be employed in differing situations: to repel Arabs, Monguls, Turks,… to justify European colonialism, as well as to understand Europe’s role in the course of world history’ (Nippel 2002 [1996], 297).

An anti-Oriental interpretation of history has formed one significant element of Eurocentric discourse and is particularly common in Western accounts of history (Ball 2000, 447; Isaac 1990, 20; Said 2003 [1978]; Mattingly 1996, 52). Interpretations of North Africa and the Near East in the Roman period have often been marred by ethnic and cultural prejudice and it is significant that such modern attitudes often draw upon ancient sources – once again, the writings of classical authors have been made to serve modern agendas (Isaac 1990, 20-1 provides several examples of dismissive modern accounts, while Shahîd 1984, xxi, 157 and Isaac 1990, 21 consider the way that these have drawn upon ancient writings). Although more extreme versions of these imperialist conceptions have declined within classical archaeology since the mid-1980s, general frameworks of thought remain difficult to critique (Mattingly 1996; Shahîd 1984, xxiii and van Dommelen 1997, 308). In fact, a more challenging perspective in a post-colonial context is to make allowance for the twoway character of cultural influence across the whole of the empire (for the impact of Rome upon the East see references discussed by Mattingly 1996, 59 and Ball 2000, 444 and for influence passing in the opposite direction see Shahîd 1984, 149).

Doubts were sometimes expressed about the ability of nonEuropean ‘races’ to absorb the ‘gift’ of civilization offered by the West and permanent assistance was often felt to be necessary (Hingley 2000, 51 and Mattingly 1996, 56); in the mind of the colonizers, this force did not invalidate the potential of the gift itself (Hingley 2005, 28). In the writing of the Roman past, a similar logic was developed in the direct contrast that was often defined between the areas of Europe that formed the core of the West and areas of the eastern Mediterranean, North Africa and the Near East that once formed the colonial possessions of the empires of Western nations. During the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the French drew upon the Roman concept of the civilizing mission in their colonial occupation of North Africa, while the Italians argued a comparable motivation in the first half of the twentieth century during their occupations of North Africa and Albania (Mattingly 1996, 51, 56; Sheldon 1982, 102-3; van Dommelen 1997, 307 and Wyke 1999, 190). In North Africa, French colonial administrators and military men saw themselves as the direct descendants of the Romans (Mattingly 1996). They adopted concepts from classical historical sources and used knowledge derived from the study of Roman monuments in the creation of their colonial present. The expansion of Italian territory to include parts of Africa during the 1910s and 1940s, and the campaign to conquer Albania, were projected as attempts to regain lands that were formerly part of the Roman empire that were seen as properly belonging to Italy (Desideri 1991, 621; Gilkes and Miraj 2000 and Terrenato 2001, 80). In this context, modern colonialism provided both the opportunity and motive for the colonial authorities to map and interpret Roman monuments (Mattingly and Hitchner

Moving forward The relationships constructed between imperial Rome and the contemporary world have never been simple and the discussion above has relied upon the use of a theory of Eurocentricism that simplifies a very complex picture. Nevertheless, I would argue that classics, as an academic discipline, needs to deal with this inheritance. The argument that I have been developing suggests that Rome was made to share a particularly vital role with classical Greece in the course of Western history. Attention has been focussed upon the passing of classical Greek culture to the West through the medium of the Roman empire. From this perspective the Romans brought forward various vital innovations that are seen to form the core of Western cultural value systems, and as such Rome was seen to have a focal purpose in the history of the development of Western society (Hingley 2005). Indeed, Roman imperialism has been made to form part of this idea of dominance, which, 15

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in turn, was an essential element in Western identity and served a role in modern colonial action (Bernal 1994).

studies at the expense of the Southern and Eastern areas: interpretations of the latter have been coloured by ideas of the ‘oriental’ domains of Byzantine and Ottoman civilizations (Alcock 1993, 3). The past has been recast in the context of the present for particular reasons. Indeed, a consideration of the context of past and present work is vital at the present time if we are to try to build a relevant Roman past that helps to inform our present situation (Hingley 2005, forthcoming).

These studies of concepts of inherited civilization and barbarism indicate some of the contrasting ways in which the Roman past has been used to articulate ideas derived from contemporary contexts with evidence from the past. The Western empire, which formed the territorial base for modern Europe, has been emphasized in Roman

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Mattingly, D.J. (2002) ‘Vulgar and Weak ‘Romanization’, or time for a paradigm shift?’ Journal of Roman Archaeology 15, pp. 536-540. Mattingly, D.J. (ed.), 1997, Dialogues in Roman Imperialism: Power, discourse, and discrepant experiences in the Roman Empire, Journal of Roman Archaeology, Supplementary Series, No. 23. Mattingly, D.J. and Hitchner, R.B., 1995, ‘Roman Africa: An archaeological review’, Journal of Roman Studies 85, pp. 165-213. Merryweather, A. D. and Prag, J.R.W., 2003, ‘Preface’, Romanization: Digressus. The Internet Journal for the Classical World 3, pp. 5-6. Meskell, L., 1999, ‘Introduction: Archaeology matters’, in L. Meskell (ed.), Archaeology Under Fire: Nationalism, politics and heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, (London, Routledge). Meskell, L. (ed.), 1999, Archaeology Under Fire: Nationalism, politics and heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, (London, Routledge). Millett, M., 1990a, The Romanization of Britain: an essay in archaeological interpretation, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Millett, M., 1990b, ‘Romanization: historical issues and archaeological interpretations’, in T. Blagg and M. Millett (eds.) The Early Roman Empire in the West, (Oxford: Oxbow). Moatti, C., 1997, La Raison de Rome: Naissance de l’esprit critique à la fin de la République (IIe-Ier siècle avant JèsusChrist), (Paris: Éditions du Seuil). Morris, I., 1994a, ‘Introduction’, in I. Morris (ed.), Classical Greece: ancient histories and modern archaeologies, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Morris, I., 1994b, ‘Archaeologies of Greece’, in I. Morris (ed.), Classical Greece: ancient histories and modern archaeologies, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Morris, I., 2000, Archaeology as Cultural History: words and things in Iron Age Greece, (London: Blackwell). Morris, I. (ed.), 1994, Classical Greece: ancient histories and modern archaeologies, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Mouritsen, H., 1998, Italian unification: a study in ancient & modern historiography, (London: Institute of Classical Studies). Nippel, W., 2002 [1996], ‘The Construction of the ‘Other’’, in T. Harrison (ed.) Greeks and Barbarians, (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press). Olivier, L., 1999, ‘The origins of French Archaeology’, Antiquity 73, pp. 176-83. Pagden, A., 2002, ‘Europe: Conceptualizing a continent’, in A. Pagden (ed.) The Idea of Europe: from antiquity to the European Union, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Pastor Muñoz, M., 2000, ‘La figura de Viriato y su importancia en la sociedad lusitana’, in J.-G. Gorges and T. Nogales Basarrate (eds.) Sociedad y cultura en Lusitania romana, (Merida: Mesa Redonda Internacional IV). Patterson, T.C., 1997, Inventing Western Civilisation, (New York: Monthly Review Press). Petras, J. and Veltmeyer, H., 2001, Globalization Unmasked: Imprialism in the 21st Century, (London: Zed). Potter, D.S., 1999, Literary Texts and the Roman Historian, (London: Routledge). Purnell, R., 1978, ‘Theoretical approaches to international relations: the contribution of the Graeco-Roman World’, in T. Taylor (ed.) Approaches and Theory in International Relations, (London: Longman). Rich, J. and Shipley, G. (eds.), 1993, War and society in the Roman World, (London: Routledge).

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Ruiz Zapatero, G., 1996, ‘Celts and Iberians: ideological manipulations in Spanish archaeology’, in P.M. Graves-Brown, S. Jones and C. Gamble (eds.), Cultural Identity and Archaeology: the Construction of European Communities, (London: Routledge). Said, E.W., 2003 [1978], Orientalism, (London: Penguin). Said, E.W., 2003, ‘Preface (2003)’, in Orientalism, (London: Penguin). Schnapp, A., 1996, The Discovery of the Past, (London: British Museum Press). Seth, S., 2003, ‘Back to the Future?’, in G. Balakrishnan (ed.), Debating Empire, (London: Verso). Shahîd, I., 1984, Rome and the Arabs: A prolegomenon to the study of Byzantium and the Arabs, (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks). Shaw, B.D., 1983, ‘Eaters of flesh, drinkers of milk: the ancient Mediterranean ideology of the pastoral nomad’, Ancient Society 13/14, pp. 5-31. Sheldon, R., 1982, ‘Romanizzazione, Acculturazione e Resistenza: problemi concettuali nella storia del Nordafrica’, Dialoghi di Archeologia, 4, pp. 102-6. Shohat, E. and Stam, R., 1994, Unthinking Eurocentricism: Multiculturalism and the Media, (London: Routledge). Slofstra, J., 2002, ‘Batavians and Romans on the Lower Rhine’, Archaeological Dialogues, 9, pp. 16-38. Smiles, S., 1994, The Image of Antiquity: ancient Britain and the Romantic Imagination, (London: Yale University Press). Smith, A.D., 1986, The Ethnic Origins of Nations, (Oxford: Blackwell). Stray, C., 1998, Classics Transformed: Schools, University and Society in England, 1830-1960, (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Struck, M., 2001, ‘The Heilige Römische Reich Deutscher Nation and Herman the German’, in R. Hingley (ed.), Images of Rome: Perceptions of Ancient Rome in Europe and the Unites States of America in the modern age, Journal of Roman Archaeology, Supplementary Series No. 44, pp. 91-112. Terrenato, N., 1998, ‘The Romanization of Italy: global acculturation or cultural bricolage?’, in C. Forcey, J. Hawthorne and R. Witcher (eds.) TRAC 97: Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, Nottingham 1997, (Oxford: Oxbow). Terrenato, N., 2001, ‘Ancestor Cults: the perception of ancient Rome in modern Italian culture’, in R. Hingley (ed.), Images of Rome: Perceptions of Ancient Rome in Europe and the Unites States of America in the modern age, Journal of Roman Archaeology, Supplementary Series No. 44, pp. 71-90. Thompson, D., 1971, The Idea of Rome: from antiquity to the Renaissance, (Albuquerque: Univeristy of New Mexico Press). Toner, J., 2002, Rethinking Roman History, (Cambridge: Oleander Press). Torelli, M., 1995, Studies in the Romanization of Italy, (Alberta: University of Alberta Press). van Dommelen, P., 1997, ‘Colonial constructs: colonialism and archaeology in the Mediterranean’, World Archaeology, 28, pp. 305-23. Vasunia, P., 2003, ‘Hellenism and Empire: Reading Edward Said’, Parallax, 9, pp. 88-97. Waquet, F., 2001, Latin or the empire of a sign, from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, (London: Verso). Webster, J., 1995, ‘The Just War: Graeco-Roman text as colonial discourse’, in . S. Cottam, D. Dungworth, S. Scott and J. Taylor (eds.) TRAC 1994: Proceedings of the Fourth Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference Durham 1994, (Oxford: Oxbow).

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Webster, J., 1996, ‘Roman imperialism and the ‘post-imperial age’’, in J. Webster and N. Cooper (eds.), Roman Imperialism: Post-colonial perspectives, Leicester Archaeological Monographs No. 3, (Leicester: University of Leicester). Webster, J., 2001, ‘Creolizing the Roman Provinces’, American Journal of Archaeology, 105, pp. 209-25. Webster, J. and Cooper, N. (eds.), 1996, Roman Imperialism: Post-colonial perspectives, Leicester Archaeological Monographs No. 3, (Leicester: University of Leicester). Wells, P.S., 2003, The Battle That Stopped Rome: Emperor Augustus, Arminius, and the slaughter of the legions in the Teutoburg Forest, (London: W.W. Norton). Whitley, J., 2001, The Archaeology of Ancient Greece, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Williams, R., 1981, Keywords: A vocabulary of Culture and Society, (London: Flamingo). Woolf, G., 1997, ‘Beyond Roman and natives’, World Archaeology, 28, pp. 339-50. Woolf, G., 1998, Becoming Roman: The Origins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Wyke, M., 1999, ‘Sawdust Caesar: Mussolini, Julius Caesar, and the drama of dictatorship’, in M. Wyke and M. Biddiss (eds.), The Uses and Abuses of Antiquity, (Bern: Peter Lang). Wyke, M. and Biddiss, M. (eds.), 1999, The Uses and Abuses of Antiquity, (Bern: Peter Lang).

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Post-colonial theory, the Art of the Western Provinces, and the Warrior Reliefs from Osuna William Mierse University of Vermont, USA

Introduction By virtue of the law, that a people which has grown into a state absorbs its neighbors who are in political nonage, and a civilized people absorbs its neighbors who are in intellectual nonage - by virtue of this law, which is as universally valid as much a law of nature as the law of gravity -- the Italian nation (the only one in antiquity which was able to combine a superior political development and a superior civilization, though it presented the latter only in an imperfect and external manner) was entitled to reduce to subjection the Greek states of the east which were ripe for destruction and to dispossess the peoples of lower grades of culture in the west - Libyans, Iberians, Celts, Germans - by means of its settlers; just as England with equal right has in Asia reduced to subjection a civilization of rival standing but politically impotent, and in America and Australia has marked and ennobled, and still continues to mark and ennoble, extensive barbarian countries with the impress of its nationality (Mommsen and Dickson 1901, vol. 5: 3-4). Mommsen’s description reflects the 19th C. European view of the process of the Roman conquest of Europe as paralleling the European colonization of the world. More civilized forces took the land from those no longer able to protect and defend it and brought the fruits of their higher attainments to the less fortunate. What for Roman historians would later come to be known in English as Romanization had its contemporary corollary in the colonial practices of all the western powers. Rome introduced an orderly government which allowed for the development of local prosperity within the setting of a general peace throughout much of the conquered lands. This was framework for interpreting the interaction of conquered and conquerors, and by the end of the 19th C. it was well established, certainly for English historians following the lead of F. Haverfield (Freeman 1997, 27-50). Over the last decades there has been a major change in how the conversation between Roman conquerors and conquered peoples is understood and analyzed. In the past the art works of the Roman provinces were described and catalogued in terms of how closely they resembled works from the Mediterranean centers of Roman culture. Now we try to consider them as works reflecting the specific context of the provinces and manifesting responses to the changes that were brought about by the conquest and incorporation of these regions into the Empire. This paper has two parts. The first will describe the nature of the reassessment of the concept of Romanization as it applies to the study of the art of the western provinces. The second part will employ some of the new analytical tools

in consideration of a group of reliefs produced during the late Republic in southern Spain. Romanization, a changing concept Variations on the Mommsen view pervade almost all analyses of Roman provincial history and art well into the mid-20th C. Rome was understood to be the upholder of civilization as it had developed in the Greek world and then been transmitted to Rome. The conquered peoples of the West that formed the bulk of the populations of the Roman western provinces in the modern countries of Portugal, Spain, France, Britain, and Germany were understood to have been possessors of a lesser form of culture. Although Greek and Latin authors often acknowledged some native achievements and by the late 19th C. European museums contained objects associated with the local Iron Age native cultures, in any discussion about provincial works, Greek forms set the standard, since it was understood that in this aspect Romans had accepted Greek forms without question (Espérandieu 1907, 38). Provincial pieces were judged according to how they appeared to adhere to norms set by Greek or Mediterranean Roman models (Vilímková and Wimmer 1963: nos. 61, 62, 63, 65, 68, 70). For many European countries the pre-Roman cultural development that had begun to be investigated in the 19th century had become part of the evolving nationalist mythology (Geary 2002, 15-41), and certain stylistic features in provincial pieces were regularly read as evidence of a surviving older, pre-Roman, native sensibility bleeding through the Greek or Roman veneer (Museum of Fine Arts

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1976, no. 82). Some scholars treated as repugnant works that were seen to be made by provincial artists in slavish imitation of Greek and Roman models (Johns 2003, 10). However, the introduction to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts 1976 exhibition, Romans & Barbarians, provides the standard view:

act was a conscious decision of an individual. The notion of a passive person waiting to be redefined by outside forces was thus abandoned. Post-colonial theory was one of many new theoretical approaches that began to be used in the 1980s and was an element in a larger reconsideration of art production in the Roman world. The earliest manifestation of a radical shift can be seen in the reassessment of creativity and inventiveness in Roman art forms that had traditionally been regarded as dependent on Greek prototypes, wall painting and decorative sculpture. For the first time, the mass of Roman art, that which had been used in the private sphere rather than in the public setting, could now be argued to have a validity of its own (Brilliant 1984; Marvin 1983). Although in stylistic terms, many of the pieces owed an uncontested debt to Greek forms, the ways in which these works were employed in Roman contexts revealed that the stylistic aspects were perhaps of less significance than the function of the works in their Roman environment.

To the foreigners, through education and service to the empire could come citizenship; an official recognition of a man’s Hellenic culture, which conferred political and economic benefits ... With the expansion of the empire, all the peoples within its borders could be considered civilized, although some provinces were ‘tainted’ by their native cultures or by contact with the frontiers. (Museum of Fine Arts 1976, IX) By the second half of the 20th C., Roman culture was understood to be the heir to Greek culture, which it perpetuated and spread throughout the empire. Provincial work was imitation or emulation of these distant Greek models to be compared to the supposed prototypes found in the Mediterranean centers of Roman art production and the deviations between model and provincial work attributed to the influences of residual native sensibility or the result of general incompetence. All the production from the western provinces could be lumped together as in the Romans & Barbarians exhibition in which a bronze portrait head was included with a bronze running guard from a chariot and a bronze mirror because all shared the single distinction of being of western provincial origin.

At the same time Roman art historians began the exploration of gender (Kampen 1996) and aimed at raising the profile of Roman women, a group absent in the previous two centuries of scholarship. By the late 1990s, the influence of gender studies and post-colonial theory was beginning to show among scholars working on the western provincial Roman world. The representation of the provinces as female personifications received attention (Rodgers 2003), and images in which gender played a key role awoke interest in a number of scholars (Monserrat 2000; Green 2003).

This conception of Romanization saw the provinces as passive receivers of Roman culture. Such a view offered no scope for any notion of provincial negation or subversion of the Romanization process. The provincial artist might not be up to the task of faithfully emulating the metropolitan model because of some type of residual native sensibility (an impairment, in reality) or because of a lack of technical skill, but it was not the result of a conscious decision on the artist’s part. The only exception might be found when native religious traditions had been allowed to survive, providing a context for the production of art works that broke with the new style norms.

Unlike the situation in the Greek East, where a rich postconquest literary tradition developed, the West provided no such resource. The literary tradition was much less developed and in no way owed its existence to a revived pre-Roman cultural force. The native languages had largely disappeared, certainly among the elites. All literary writing was in Latin. Latin literature from the western provinces could be exploited to offer some context for the production of art works within the elite settings in the provincial west (Stirling 2005), but its limitations in terms of quantity and development make it less useable as a device for trying to flesh out all but the most limited group in the provincial west, a group that probably saw itself anyway as part of the metropolitan Roman world and not part of the conquered and colonized peoples of the West (Mierse 2004).

The West and Post-colonial theory Post-colonial theory had first developed in anthropology as a means of better understanding the nature of the relationship between many of the peoples in the developing nations with their former colonial rulers. Anthropologists argued that the whole interaction of colonized and colonizer cannot be understood and analyzed unless the colonized is taken out of the passive role (Scott 2003). Earlier studies that sought to see in some provincial products the traces of a native survival might be argued to have empowered the native by recognizing a surviving feature, but they in no way looked at the work to understand whether it was a conscious act, a move of self-empowerment. The postcolonial approach sees in all actions by the conquered or colonized an act of redefinition; whether intended to defy the new reality or an attempt to come to terms with it, the

The notion that a native sense of self had not been totally eradicated by the Roman conquest and cultural domination of the lands of Western Europe was not completely new (Toynbee 1961). A nativist view emerged among historians of the Roman West in the 1970s and 1980s (Millet 1990) which argued that the Roman presence represented nothing more than a veneer over the native cultures brought about by the incorporation of the native elites into the Roman power structure. The native culture continued to survive even in a subjugated position. There was general acceptance that lines of cultural continuity between the pre-conquest and post-conquest native societies could be found, particularly in burial practices, certain religious cults, and domestic 24

Post-colonial theory, the Art of the Western Provinces, and the Warrior Reliefs from Osuna

Over the last decade a number of colloquia (Mattingly 1997; Cunliffe and Keay 1995) have attempted to bridge the divide. At the same time, students of the European Iron Age have begun to address specifically the question of the interaction of Roman and native by looking again at the evidence of the material culture and reconsidering the nature of the textual evidence in the Greek and Latin sources (Wells 1999).

pottery (Schutz 1985, 165-166). This interpretation saw non-Roman elements in the material culture of the period of Roman control as the result of deeply embedded traditions and superstitions among the lower strata of the provincial society that would become manifest in settings such as burial or certain religious observances. These could be understood to be almost accidental survivals, aspects of the native culture that were so deep that they were not rooted out in the process of Romanization. The postcolonial view offers a different take on these survivals. By emphasizing the conscious and active role played by the colonized in their own redefinition process, these survivals can be understood as elements that the natives themselves regarded as worth retaining.

For art historians the changing methodological landscape has been further altered by the addition of gaze theory. This considers the aspect that power positions play in how objects are viewed and has been recently employed in the analysis of Roman art (Fredrich 2002), enriching even more the discourse.

In art history the first investigators employing postcolonial perspectives looked at more recent settings of conquest and colonization, examining closely the ways in which the conquered were reconceived by the conquerors (Porterfield 1998; Thomas and Losche 1999), a line of investigation also followed by some historians of provincial Roman art (Ferris 2003). A different approach was used by art historians more interested in the specific nature of colonization. Those studying the Spanish colonization of the Americas found this a rich vein of investigation and offered a number of significant studies that looked at how the native populations had engaged in the process of their own redefinition (Fane 1996). These studies offered two important new concepts. First, they suggested that native elites quite clearly changed their identities but did not completely lose their sense of local self. Second, they argued for a plurality of conquered native experiences that depended on such factors as original social status, gender, and nature of lifestyle (Scott 1990, ix-xiii). Critics of contemporary art noted that in the present setting artists working from the vantage point of the colonized had the ability to play on the very stereotypes that the colonizers were creating about the colonized (Kershaw 1997).

S. Scott and J. Webster’s Roman Imperialism and Provincial Art published in 2003 offers a good sampling of the methods being employed by scholars investigating the Roman West. Webster (2003; 2001) herself has developed a specific analytical tool that builds on several of the others, the idea of ‘negotiation’ as a device for describing the process by which the conquered and colonized peoples operated in the Roman world of the western provinces. The native peoples needed to redefine themselves in light of the reality that they were in a subordinate position because they had been conquered and were being culturally attacked in the process of being colonized. To survive and prosper, the native peoples at all levels needed to negotiate a new power structure, and their identities needed to be flexible enough to change to suit the shifting setting. Webster offers by far the most nuanced approach to the study of art produced in the western provinces. Negotiation helps to explain the various roles that people may have played in the provincial world and can offer notions of the contexts in which art produced probably operated. None of the approaches takes good account of time. The Roman Empire was largely established in the West by the reign of Augustus, and it lasted intact until the turmoil of the 3rd C. Any study of the western provinces needs to take into consideration the specific moment. Broad generalizations do not really help. Native communities responding to the first wave of colonization following the conquest were in a quite different position from communities that had existed within the provincial framework for generations. A monument with strong native aspects created soon after the conquest might be seen as product of subversion and defiance. A similar object created after several generations might be seen as nostalgic or even exotic; the context determines all (Stirling 2005). Interpreting the complex interplay of native and Roman forces -- which probably is too much of a polarized description really to explain the situation in the West after a few generations -- rests heavily on the evidence of archaeology, since there is not the literary tradition as in the Greek East to flesh out the story. The trouble with the archaeology, as Woolf has pointed out, is that we are still trying to do the basic disentangling and sorting out of the archaeological evidence even when it is a small area clearly defined by topography and a welldefined, short time span (Woolf 1998, 9-10).

New paradigms for the study of the art of the western Roman provinces The change in interpretive methodologies resulting from new theories was further informed by another shift in the mid-1980s. The study of the ancient West was divided between competing schools of scholarship, Classicisthistorians/archaeologists and prehistorians. These two groups had tended to work quite independently of each other. Derek Williams has aptly described the situation: ‘… it is odd that those who study the Rhine's left or Roman bank should seemingly require a different terminology from those studying its right or barbarian bank. At university they would be members of different faculties, attending different lectures and sitting different exams. Such is the compartmentalism of classical and Iron Age learning which has blurred out understanding of the north-south interaction and fogged our view of the Roman Empire's edges’. (Williams 1998, 2) 25

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in the act of lifting his horn to blow into it while at the same time turning in space. The treatment of the two actions clearly derives from Hellenistic-Roman sculptural prototypes, and this piece cannot be classified as an indigenous work. García y Bellido was certain that the artist must have been a Roman sculptor (García y Bellido 1943, 133). The 1973 excavations demonstrated that the occupation at Osuna stretched back to at least 1000 BC, long before any Roman presence. The area where the wall was built had been a funerary district throughout most of the history of the site. This fact suggests that the sculptures came from funerary monuments, the structures that would have been closest to hand when the wall was being rapidly constructed. Since the funerary nature of the site stretches back so far, it is reasonable to assume that there would have stood monuments from several periods. The archaeological investigations of southern Spain have shown that large-scale sculpted architectural funerary monuments were present as early as the 5th C. BC. These included sculpted steles (Almagro-Gorbea 1983a), towers (Almagro-Gorbea 1983b), and great figural ensembles (Agustín and Navarrete 1987). On the other hand, the sculpture of the cornu player clearly indicates that some portion of the corpus was created after the Roman arrival. By the mid-1st C. BC southern Spain had been under Roman control for over 150 years. Urso must have been a good example of a town under strong Romanization pressure. It was probably prosperous, since it sits in a good wheat- and olive-producing region. At the time of Caesar and Pompey’s conflict there was resident a significant elite population, to judge from the account of the war in which the embassy from Urso is identified as being composed solely of senators and knights, although whether these were native or non-native elite is not clear (BH, 22).

Fig. 1. Cornu Player from Osuna in the Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Madrid (Archivo fotográfico, Museo Arqueológico Nacional). The Osuna Reliefs Housed in the Museo Arqueológico Nacional in Madrid (Museo Arqueológico Nacional 1979) and the Louvre in Paris (in deposit in Saint-Germain-en-Laye), are two groups of sculptures, all of which were found in excavations in the southern Spanish town of Osuna, ancient Urso, during a season of digging in 1903 (Engel and Paris 1906). The excavations were systematic and well reported for their day. The sculptures were in secondary reuse in a hastilybuilt defensive wall. There was no way to determine from the find spots whether the sculptures were originally from a single structure or from several, although all of them were clearly part of larger constructions. They were not freestanding statues. The excavators argued that the defensive wall could be dated precisely to 45-44 BC and had been built by the forces of Pompey’s sons who had survived the Battle of Munda, which took place nearby. Another series of excavations in 1973 confirmed the date of the wall (Corzo Sanchez 1977).

Urso was easily connected with western cities, as can be seen in the description of Caesar’s movements through the district at the time of the battle of Munda. It is not far from Córdoba, which was the hub of Roman administration in the Republican period. It also connected to the east, to Jaén, the region of the native Bastetani, and with the coastal road along to the Levant and the territory associated with the native Edetani. The location placed it in a perfect position to receive influences from the west and east. It had strategic military value, being situated on the crossing of roads. Cneius Scipio had quartered his troops there for a winter in the Second Punic War (Appian, Ib., 16), and Fabius Maximus Paulus used Urso as his base of operations against Viriathus in the Lusitanian War (Appian, Ib. 65). A Reconsideration of the reliefs The Osuna sculptures do not form a homogeneous grouping. Several monuments were dismantled to create the defensive wall, and these covered several hundred years of production. Some works show evidence of hellenizing treatment and others show none. Several of the pieces have no clear affinities with other work from the peninsula and defy any real attempt to explain them.

As products that predate the second half of the 1st century BC, the sculptures have been recognized as examples of native Iberian art (García y Bellido 1947, 238-251; Chapa Brunet 1997). However, one of the pieces possesses strong Roman elements. The subject is a cornu player (Fig. 1), a well known figure from the Roman army, who is shown 26

Post-colonial theory, the Art of the Western Provinces, and the Warrior Reliefs from Osuna

Fig. 2. Dueling warriors from Osuna in the Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Madrid (Archivo fotográfico, Museo Arqueológico Nacional). Nine relief panels can be grouped together by shared subject matter of warriors. The variation in stylistic treatment and in sizes of the figures argues against the pieces’ coming from a single monument. The individual funerary structures must have been impressive, since the surviving figures range from 0.57 m to 1.10 m in height (García y Bellido 1943, 93-130), smaller than life-sized, but still big and suggesting a substantial investment of labor. In carving the figures, the artists placed considerable

energy in making clear those aspects of the costume which would identify the specific origin of the figure. Two of the reliefs appear to have a narrative content shown through the obvious interaction of the figures either in a dueling arrangement (Fig. 2) where one has fallen at the feet of the other or in the meeting of the two figures placed facing each other on either side of a corner block (Fig. 3). These implied narrative treatments differ from the frieze of repeated identical warriors moving together (Fig. 4) in which no interaction is being suggested, no narrative implied. A single acroterion, probably from a funerary stele, presents a single mounted cavalry warrior holding aloft a sword (Fig. 5). He seems to operate in isolation, a kind of icon with emphasis on neither narrative nor surface pattern. The image of a cornu player, who now stands alone, could have been integrated into a larger narrative composition. His movement clearly suggests a response that is best understood as part of a larger composition, most likely narrative. He shares a similar size with the dueling pair and, like them, occupies a complex space. There were at least two different approaches to the presentation of images that may have been in use in the Osuna funerary monuments, one that favored a narrative context for the display of information and the other which preferred a repeated pattern of figures with no clear intent to suggest a storyline. In the late 1970s, a massive sculptural ensemble was unearthed at Pocuna in Jaén province (Agustín and Navarette 1987). The grouping dates from the late 5th to early 4th C. BC and shows a series of action figure units that together form a single stylistically united composition with a story line that viewers must have been able to piece together. The Porcuna find demonstrates that by the 5th C. large, complex sculptural ensembles were being

Fig. 3. Two facing warriors on a corner block from Osuna in the Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Madrid (Archivo fotográfico, Museo Arqueológico Nacional). 27

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Fig. 4. Frieze of warriors from Osuna in the Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Madrid (Archivo fotográfico, Museo Arqueológico Nacional).

Fig. 5. Acroterion with cavalry warrior from Osuna in the Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Madrid (Archivo fotográfico, Museo Arqueológico Nacional). 28

Post-colonial theory, the Art of the Western Provinces, and the Warrior Reliefs from Osuna

Similarly the dueling warriors are separated by armaments. The fallen figure holds up a caetra. The standing warrior wears greaves and possibly lorica squamata covering his skirt. The greaves pose problems, since in Republican times it was most common for Roman heavy infantry to wear only one greave to protect the leg thrust forward in fighting (Connolly 1981, 133). The identification of shield and sword types has been done partly by using comparisons with existing armaments from archaeological contexts and representations on other monuments. However, the tendency for most investigators has been to look for the specific identity of the warriors by focusing in on those passages in the texts of Polybius, Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, and Appian that describe arms and the specific peoples who carried them. Strabo was a thoughtful and somewhat critical user of the works of Polybius and Poseidonios, both of whom had spent time on the peninsula. For military matters, Polybius seems a reasonable choice, although how closely he regarded the details of native armaments might be questioned (Connolly 1981, 131). Poseidonios was clearly not at all interested in military matters. Diodorus is not a bad source, since he lived close enough to the events about which he was writing that he could have used first-hand accounts, but not having been to the peninsula, he had no means of checking his sources by any type of direct observation. Appian was the most distant from the events that he was describing. These are the normal problems for these writers and do not mean that their information is wrong or untrustworthy, but it is worth remembering that none of these authors was really concerned with the native issues involved in the conquest. They were all writing large works in which the Roman conquest of the peninsula formed but one section, and not the most important. It can be questioned how much energy they put into making certain about the details of native armaments.

Fig. 6. Drawing based on fragment of the frieze of warriors in the Musée d’Archéologie Nacional, Chateau de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, after Les Ibères, 1997: no.337. constructed outside of the region normally associated with major Phoenician or Greek presence. The narrative and non-narrative categories can be tied to differences in style. The artist of frieze is interested in patterns. The artist for two figures meeting around the corner is more intent on suggesting movement, though not in a necessarily rational manner, since the one complete figure (not illustrated) appears to float over the ground line and a similar concern informs the mounted horseman who seems to float in his space. This treatment of movement differs from that used by the artists for the dueling warriors or the cornu player. Both panels show much more interest in the reality of spatial movement, suggesting that the two could well have shared the same monument.

These attempts to join texts to images treat the images as illustrations to the texts which are assumed to be correct. The texts that are being used are those the conquerors wrote, a standard problem when using Greek and Latin sources to understand native peoples in the process of being conquered. It is essential to keep in mind J. Friedman’s warning when employing such sources to avoid being drawn into the discourse established by the conquerors when trying to understand the conquered (Friedman 1992; 1994). None of the Greek or Latin authors were ethnographers intent on capturing all the information needed to identify specific peoples (Wells 1999, 99-104). They were interested in explaining the process of conquest, and what they recorded about native peoples is at best arbitrary. In most instances they knew the native warriors as allies to the Romans or as enemies but never as equals. If the reliefs were made to honor specific warriors buried in the Urso funerary district in the 187 years between the capture of the peninsula in the Second Punic War (206 BC) and the conclusion of the Cantabrian Wars (19 BC), then they span the period of time during which the native population of the south became fully incorporated into the

The artists for all the reliefs encoded information in specific features of armaments and costumes, the goal of which had to be ease of recognition. The warriors wear short tunics. Two are marked by the large oval shields and tight, form-fitting helmets. The more complete figure with the oval shield (not illustrated) clearly grabs an Iberian falcata. The oval shield has been identified as a Celtiberian shield, as opposed to the Roman oval scutum of Caesar’s day (Connolly 1981, 151, 304). The mounted warrior in the acroterion also holds a sword, but one resembling more the Spanish short sword (Connolly 1981, 131, 150). Only two of the warriors that form part of the frieze now in the collection of Musée d’Archéologie Nacionale, Chateau de Saint-Germain-en-Laye (Fig. 6) are complete, but they show the pattern: figures dressed in belted and pleated tunics, wearing sandals, and moving to the right with the right arm held up, presenting a short round shield, usually identified as a caetra (Les Ibères, 1997: no. 337). The most notable features of the cornu player are the instrument, which can be paralleled by actual finds (Connolly 1981, 134) and the greaves, an unusual feature for a cornu player. 29

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expanding Roman empire. Treating these works as either examples of native art or Roman provincial art really misses the point. They are examples of renegotiation in Webster’s terms. They offer us a glimpse of how one aspect of native society, the warrior class, saw itself in the new reality of the Roman annexation (Wells 1999, 95-98). At the same time, they provide us with a momentary glance. This too is important to remember. Students of indigenous cultures in Latin America have demonstrated that the relationships between conquered and conqueror shift over any period of time (Alexander 2004). What was true at one moment is likely to be quite untrue at a later or earlier date. Thus the meaning encoded in images works within a specific momentary context, particularly when the items providing the meaning are so time-sensitive as styles of weapons and clothing.

of identity, and these writers are able to place the Spanish conquest into a native worldview (Restall 1998, 28-50).

While it may be possible to argue that under Augustus some type of formal policy emerged about acculturation for the western provinces (Mierse 1990), there is nothing to suggest any such formal governmental policy existed during the Republic. However, something was operative on the peninsula beginning soon after the annexations started and continued to be a feature of life throughout the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. It was a less formal approach, one that allowed for a native negotiation of identity within the new order that was being established. It involved native men in service as auxiliary troops to the Roman legions, by which means some of the natives became citizens and even were accorded knightly status (Balsdon 1979, 86). In this arrangement, native communities could become clients to the Populus Romanus, owing the Roman people officia in return for beneficia received. This may well have been the arrangement put in place during the first period of conquest and settlement during the 2nd C. BC (Badian 2000, 154). Another means -- which was clearly tied to the first -- was the client system by which selected elite native families were tied in social bonds to certain elite Roman families (Balsdon 1979, 70-71). Both Pompey and Caesar had extensive client relationships with native families on the peninsula at the start of the war. Serving as auxiliary soldiers and establishing bonds with elite Roman families in the client system were the devices available to select native men by which they could renegotiate their identities in the world post-Roman conquest.

The earlier investigators of the sculptures were quite right to spend time trying to find the identities of the figures shown, that is exactly what the artists are emphasizing. Their mistake lay in relying on Greek and Latin authors to record details of costume and armaments that had no real meaning to them. Instead one has to look at the information that the natives provided. There are no native texts the equivalent to the annals of the Maya scribes, but a number of native artists produced images of warriors during the same period that the Osuna reliefs were carved. Like the Osuna works, these too must be understood to have been the products of negotiation, but unlike the Osuna reliefs, they are self-contained and not the products of communities with strong non-native populations. They can be considered to be native production which speaks a native visual language. The oval shield, tight, short tunics, and even the unusual helmets worn by one group of warriors can all be paralleled in the painted scenes on a series of vases (Fig. 7) from the Levantine region of the Edetani people of Liria near Valencia (Nicolini 1974, 185, figs. II, 95). Like the images on some of the reliefs, the painted scenes hint at narratives, and the figures are clearly moving. In fact, they are posed in a manner like that shown in the relief sculpture, with feet floating above the ground line. In the far north are funerary monuments celebrating warriors (Sanchez-Palencia Ramos 1982, 37; García y Bellido 1947, fig. 397). These are individual figures presented in a stiff, hieratic manner with emphasis placed on the armaments, above all the small, round shield held in prominent position in front of the standing figure. Several of these statues have been found, and when set up together, they would have formed a repeated pattern. Interestingly, the same type of repetition seems to be at work on the reliefs, although here the style has been softened somewhat and the placement of the shield is different, although this may be a result of the need to make the shield most evident by placing it away from the body proper. As with the vase paintings from Liria, these too are dated to after the period of the conquest. The acroterion mounted figure can be rather closely paralleled by a series of coins struck at several mints in Celtiberian cities under Roman control during the Republic. First struck in silver, these coins served to pay auxiliary forces, and after 133

The Roman conquest and pacification of the Iberian Peninsula did not result in the eradication of native religion. The native sanctuaries continued to operate into the Roman period. The placement and form of native settlements did not shift during these decades. Oppida continued to function at least until the period of Augustus (Mierse 1990). Nor was there an end to the role of native elite warriors who now found a position in the auxiliary forces. It was quite possible for native elites, particularly in a place with a limited foreign presence, to continue to look for threads of meaningful continuity which joined past and present. A New Context

To understand how these images worked requires considering the dynamic processes of conquest and pacification (Alexander 2004, 15-35). The men who wrote the Roman narrative of conquest could only conceive of it from their position as conquerors. Nothing exists in written form that offers an alternative, native view of the process. There is, however, an interesting collection of texts from the early stages of the Spanish conquest of the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico (Restall 1998). These texts, written in Yucatecan Maya but using a modified Latin alphabet, chronicle the first stages in the conquest but through Maya eyes. While the authors are aware that their world has changed and new forces must be accommodated, the change has not resulted in any substantial loss of self or 30

Post-colonial theory, the Art of the Western Provinces, and the Warrior Reliefs from Osuna

Fig. 7. Drawing of warriors from a painted vase from Liria, after Nicolini, 1974, fig. 98. BC, the types continued in use for the minting of local bronze issues. The type is of a cavalry figure, no doubt a reference to the generic auxiliary forces that several native groups provided, most commonly holding either a palm that touches the shoulder or a pilum, but some communities from the Pyrenes, Baskunes/Barskunes/Benkota and Bentian presented the rider brandishing a sword. These figures wear helmets, unlike the acroterion figure, from the Pyrenean community of Arsaos come issues with a bareheaded rider holding a double ax (Guadán 1980, 163-167). Unlike the vase paintings from Liria and the standing statues from the north, coin images are clearly a product of a meeting of native and Roman. However, the rider holding a sword was also a type of small bronze votive figure offered at the southern Iberian sanctuaries as early as the 3rd C. BC (Nicolini 1974, 49-50, fig. 4). The image must have been intended to make the coin recognizable to the native population and therefore be acceptable as payment, and it had to speak a language that the natives would understand but also work in the new social and economic structure being promoted by the Roman authorities responsible for the striking. The greaves are an important aspect of the images of the cornu player and the dueling warriors. None of the native presentations show such an armament. Most likely these two figures are to be read as Roman rather than native warriors.

visual language intended to be easily read. The audience for these funerary monuments must have been the native population of the town of Urso. Here, in the cemetery which had interments stretching back 800 years, stood a series of large monuments, major works representing warriors drawn from the Levant, Pyrenees and the far north. It is this mixing that tells us when they must have been erected. Greek and Latin texts make clear that by the time of the civil wars the various native peoples, many of whom were under Roman governance and in the service of the Roman legions, could be distinguished by the way in which they dressed and the arms that they carried. As auxiliary troops, they were moved all over the peninsula to serve the needs of the Roman army. This had certainly not been the case until the Second Punic War. Prior to that, fights were of a local nature. The presence of monuments that celebrate native warriors but not from the region suggests that all of these must date from after the conquest, when such movements became far more common. The history of the fighting on the peninsula during the Republic separates into two distinct periods divided by the end of the Celtiberian War and the siege of Numancia in 133 BC. In the earlier period, natives were fighting to throw off the yoke of Roman rule (Badian 2000, 116-125); after 133 they take up arms to aid one side or the other in the Civil Wars in hopes of benefiting by being on the winning side. This is clearly at play in the whole concept of the client system which both Caesar and Pompey used to raise support for their cause on the peninsula.

García y Bellido (1943) discussed the connections between the Osuna images and the related figures in other media. However, there is more here than just the connection with probable contemporary native works from elsewhere on the peninsula. The Osuna funerary monuments spoke a

The Osuna warrior reliefs and the monuments from which they came celebrate with pride the actions of native elites 31

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they honor warriors, a traditionally honored group in the south as evidenced by the Porcuna monument. However, the context in which they must have been raised, the early 1st C. BC, suggests that these warriors are being placed into the new context of fighters in the Roman conflicts. However, they are more than generic warriors: they are clearly affiliated with specific regions, areas quite separate from Urso. Their costumes and arms identify the warriors. All of this would have been immediately obvious to any native viewing the images. More interesting in some ways is the fact that the figures are treated according to the visual stylistic language associated with the specific group from which they come. The Edetanian warriors on both the Liria vase and the corner block lift off the ground line and float in a similar manner. The northern warriors share the same stiff, repeated patterning as can be seen when looking a grouping of the freestanding statues. The Celtiberian horseman rides in the same way on the coin types and the acroterion. The Roman soldiers battle in a rational space. To any viewer trained to see the world through a Hellenic lens all the monuments except that incorporating the cornu player and the dueling figures would have seemed strange and difficult to understand. To the native gaze, the grouping of monuments spoke of traditional pride in warriors but in a new way, since so many different indigenous styles had been brought together at one spot.

who led auxiliary troops. Their identity was tied to their role in the Roman order that emerged after 133 BC. These do not bear witness to a lost independence, but rather to a place in a new structure. They really only make sense in that new structure where local affiliations are made clear by presentation of weapons even as the larger order is made manifest by the role that the auxiliary troops played. It is impossible to know whether the monuments belong together or represent the production over several decades. There is one period when it is conceivable that the district might well have received monuments honoring fallen native warriors from all over the peninsula and even Romans, and that is the Sertorian revolt (81-72 BC). There is no particular association of Sertorius with Urso, but according to Plutarch, he was all over the southern part of the peninsula, bringing with him his Lusitanian forces (Plutarch Sertorius 10-27). What certainly interested Plutarch was the way in which Sertorius combined the various native groups and the non-native foreign Italian and Roman populations into a coherent fighting force. That would seem to be what is celebrated if all of the funerary monuments are read as the product of one single period. To understand the Osuna reliefs of warriors requires that contemporary viewers try to assume the native gaze of the 1st C. BC. They were large monuments and clearly public. They in no way are hidden statements. Moreover,

References Agustín, J. and G. Navarrete, 1987 Escultura ibérica de Cerillo Blanco, Porcuna, Jaén, (Jaén: Disputación Provincial de Jaén). Alexander, R., 2004, Yaxcabá and the Caste War of the Yucatán. An Archaeological Perspective, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press). Almagro-Gorbea, M., 1983a, ‘Pilares-estela ibéricos’ Homenaje al Prof. M. Almagro Basch, III, pp. 53-68. (Madrid). Almagro-Gorbea, M., 1983b, ‘Pozo Moro, El monumento orientalizante, su contexto socio-cultural y sus paralelos en la arquitectura funeraria ibérica’, Madrider Mitteilungen, 24, pp. 177-293. Badian, E., 2000, Foreign Clientelae (264-70 BC), (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Brilliant, R., 1984, Visual Narratives: Storytelling in Etruscan and Roman Art, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press). Chapa Brunet, T., 1997, ‘Les reliefs sculptés d’Osuna’, in Les Ibères, (Paris: Grand Palais). Connolly, P., 1981, Greece and Rome at War, (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall). Corzo-Sanchez, R., 1977, Osuna de Pompeyo a Cesar. Excavaciones en la muralla republicana. (Seville: Universidad de Sevilla). Cunliffe, B. and S. Keay (eds.), 1995, Social Complexity and the Development of Towns in Iberia from the Copper Age to the Second Century AD Proceedings of the British Academy 86. (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Engel, A. and P. Paris., 1906, ‘Une forteresse ibérique à Osuna (fouilles de 1903)’, Nouvelles Archives des Missions scientifiques et littéraires, XIII, pp. 357-487. Espérandieu, E., 1907-38, Recueil général des bas-reliefs, statues, et bustes de la Gaule romaine. vols. I-II. (Paris). Fane, D. (ed.), 1996, Converging Cultures, Art and Identity in Spanish America, (New York: Brooklyn Museum and Harry N. Abrams). Ferris, I., 2003, ‘The Hanged Men Dance: Barbarians in Trajanic Art’, in S. Scott and J. Webster (eds.) Roman Imperialism and Provincial Art, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Fredrick, D. (ed.), 2002, The Roman Gaze. Vision, Power, and the Body, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press). 32

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Freeman, P.W.M., 1997, ‘Mommsen through to Haverfield: the origins of Romanization Studies in late 19th-c. Britain’, in D. J. Mattingly (ed.), Dialogues in Roman Imperialism. Power, Discourse, and Discrepant Experience in the Roman Empire, (Portsmouth, Rhode Island: Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series, no. 23). Friedman, J., 1994, Cultural Identity and Global Process, (London: Sage). Friedman, J., 1992, ‘The Past in the Future: History and Politics of Identity’ American Anthropologist, 94, pp. 837-59. García y Bellido, A., 1947, ‘Colonizaciones púnicas y griegas, el arte ibérico, el arte de las tribus celticas’, in Ars Hispaniae. Historia Universal del Arte Hispánico, (Madrid: Editorial Plus Ultra). García y Bellido, A., 1943, La Dama de Elche y el conjunto de piezas arqueológicos reingresados a España en 1941, (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas). Geary, P., 2002, The Myth of Nations, (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Green, M. A., 2003, ‘Poles Apart? Perceptions of Gender in Gallo-British Cult Iconography’, in S. Scott and J. Webster (eds.) Roman Imperialism and Provincial Art, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Guadán, A., 1980, La Moneda ibérica, catálogo de numismática ibérica e ibero-romana. (Madrid: Cuadernos de Numismática). Hales, S., 2003, ‘The Houses of Antioch: A Study of the Domestic Sphere in the Imperial Near East’, in S.Scott and J. Webster (eds.) Roman Imperialism and Provincial Art, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Henig, M., 2003, ‘The Captains and Kings Depart’, in S.Scott and J. Webster (eds.) Roman Imperialism and Provincial Art, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Johns, C., 2003, ‘Art, Romanization, and Competence’, in S.Scott and J. Webster (eds.) Roman Imperialism and Provincial Art, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Kampen, N. B. (ed.), 1996, Sexuality in Ancient Art, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Kershaw, M., 1997, ‘Postcolonialism and Androgyny. The Performance Art of Grace Jones’, Art Journal, 56, 4, pp. 19-27. Marvin, M., 1983, ‘Freestanding Sculptures from the Baths of Caracalla’, American Journal of Archaeology, 87, pp. 347-84. Mattingly, D. J. (ed.), 1997, Dialogues in Roman Imperialism. Power, Discourse, and Discrepant Experience in the Roman Empire, (Portsmouth, Rhode Island: Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series, no. 23). Mierse, W., 2004, Review of S. Scott and J. Webster, eds. Roman Imperialism and Provincial Art (New York 2003) in CAA (College Art Association) Reviews (electronic review). Mierse, W., 1990, ‘Augustan Building Programs in the Western Provinces’, in K. Raaflaub and M. Toher (eds.) Between Republic and Empire, (Berkeley: University of California Press). Miles, R., 2000, ‘Communicating Culture, Identity and Power’, in J. Huskinson (ed.) Experiencing Rome. Culture, Identity and Power in the Roman Empire, (London: Routledge). Millet, M., 1990, The Romanization of Britain: an Essay in Archaeological Interpretation, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Mommsen, T., 1901, The History of Rome, (London: Macmillan and Co). Montserrat, D., 2000, ‘Reading Gender in the Roman World’, in J. Juskinson (ed.) Experiencing Rome. Culture, Identity and Power in the Roman Empire, (London: Routledge). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1976, Romans & Barbaraians, (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts). Newby, Z., 2003, ‘Art and Identity in Asia Minor’, in S. Scott and J. Webster (eds.) Roman Imperialism and Provincial Art, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Nicolini, G., 1974, The Ancient Spaniards, (Farnsborough: D.C. Heath). Porterfield, T., 1998, The Allure of Empire. Art in the Service of French Imperialism 1798-1836. (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Restall, M., 1998, Maya Conquistador, (Boston: Beacon Press). Rodgers, R., 2003, ‘Female Representation in Roman Art: Feminizing the Provincial ‘Other’’, in S. Scott and J. Webster (eds.) Roman Imperialism and Provincial Art, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Schutz, H., 1985, The Romans in Central Europe, (New Haven: Yale University Press). Scott, J. X., 1990, Domination and the Arts of Resistance. Hidden Transcripts, (New Haven: Yale University Press). Scott, S., 2003, ‘Provincial Art and Roman Imperialism: An Overview’, in S. Scott and J. Webster (eds.) Roman Imperialism and Provincial Art, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). 33

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Stirling, L. M., 2005, The Learned Collector. Mythological Statuettes and Classical Taste in Late Antigue Gaul, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press). Thomas, N. and D. Losche, 1999, Double Vision, Art Histories and Colonial Histories in the Pacific, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Toynbee, J., 1961, The Art of Roman Britain, (London: Phaidon). Vilímková, M. and H. WEMMER, 1963, Roman Art in Africa, (London: Paul Hamlyn). Webster, J. 2003, ‘Art as Resistence and Negotiation’, in S. Scott and J. Webster (eds.) Roman Imperialism and Provincial Art, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Webster, J., 2001, ‘Creolizing the Roman Provinces’, American Journal of Archaeology, 105, pp. 209-225. Wells, P., 1999, The Barbarians Speak. How the Conquered Peoples Shaped Roman Europe, (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Williams, D., 1998, Romans and Barbarians - Four Views from the Empire’s Edge, 1st Centruy AD, (New York: St. Martin’s Press). Woolf, G., 2003, ‘Seeing Apollo in Roman Gaul and Germany’, in S. Scott and J. Webster (eds.) Roman Imperialism and Provincial Art, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Woolf, G., 1998, Becoming Roman. The Origins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

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Antiquity at the service of France’s ‘extreme rights’: GRECE, Front National and Terre et Peuple Glaydson José da Silva Center of Strategic Studies (NEE/Unicamp) and Londrina State University (UEL), Brazil

Introduction History, as an academic discipline, may have never experienced so many changes as those that it has undergone since the 1930s. Ancient history is probably uniquely attached to traditional approaches, and so it did not follow immediately new trends in historiography. The History of Classical Antiquity in particular and of the ancient world in general has in recent years, especially since the beginning of the 1990s, undergone great changes in the domains of History. The study of the relationships between Antiquity and the contemporary world, between past and present writings of ancient world History, has been, since then, the object of innumerable studies, and has contributed to the development of an Ancient History that seeks to be more self-conscious of its own limits. Until recently, the History of Antiquity was considered inclined to be limit itself to empirical and descriptive studies (Schiavone 2003) and little inclined to offer interpretative approaches (McDonald 1991, 830). Nevertheless, today it produces many different studies with the goal of attaining a better understanding of the subtle relationships between the studied past and the present lived by its interpreters. In a wider perspective, these works followed the principle according to which their objects do not become detached from their historical-interpretative traditions. In this sense, Antiquity has frequently been perceived as at the service of a justifying and legitimizing logic where one could see, throughout the twentieth century, its relationships with the issue of national identity, with authoritarian regimes, with racism, with male chauvinism, and with all sorts of political and social practices. However, ‘the study of Classical Antiquity does not need to reinforce misjudgments nor be a basis for oppression’ (Funari 2002, 30). This claim can be extended, generally speaking, to the studies of the ancient world. A critically-equipped gaze can demonstrate a kind of instrumentality of Ancient History and suggest that the debate on past and present relationships should also be part of the research in this field, widening its universe of subjects and approaches.

The claims about the present that used the ancient world show and continue to show a markedly discursive character in relation to Antiquity, which sometimes was created to fulfill the interests of those who reclaim some ancient heritage, that is to say, its beneficiaries. As Roger-Pol Droit (1991, 7) observed, ‘from Renaissance to Renaissance, Europe has invented all sorts of Antiquity’. This paper seeks to analyze the presence of Antiquity in the political discourses of the extreme rights, which use it as a way to legitimize the (political) rights that purportedly derive from (ethnic) rights of origin. For this purpose, we will take as our thematic scope the political universe of the French right-wing groups of recent decades. The French NOUVELLE DROITE and the uses of Classical Past The ascension in Europe of the political groups of the extreme right is a political phenomenon that is marked by the development of the context of the post-war (Sirinelli 1992, IV), which had intensified in the 1980s, especially with the fall of Communism (Milza 2002, 7). Under several designations, these groups of political radicalization were grounded in nationalist and even xenophobic outlooks. Classical Antiquity (but not solely it) often served as an instrument in the justification of these claims. In the case of France, the uses of the Indo-European, Greek, Roman, and Gallic pasts had and continue to have a sort of political instrumentality for groups such as the GRECE (Groupement de Recherche et d’Étude pour la Civilisation Européenne), nationalistic parties such as the Front National and small right-wing groups such as the one brought together around the magazine Terre et Peuple. Presently, the use of the history of the ancient world as a legitimizing instrument in the ideation of political groups, particularly political groups known as from the ‘extreme right’ of the political spectrum, is recurrent and yet has not have received sufficient specialized scientific attention. In France, a country with a long tradition in the field of studies of Antiquity, where the teaching of History was strongly determined by the ideals of the Nation-State, the historiographic production about the ancient world was

Glaydson José da Silva

It is around the Nouvelle Droite that many intellectuals, students, politicians, etc., will organize themselves. They will read the national History, using a very specific understanding of History, of civilization, and of man, through a historiographic practice in which the History of Antiquity will be markedly compromised by ideologies of justification and legitimization of rights and inequalities based on race and social class. The ideological ‘Nouvelle Droite’

always present and played a crucial role in political games. This is so in part due to the privileged place that the studies of the ancient world occupy in western societies generally, but also due to the possibilities that the History of Antiquity offered and can still offer today in the establishment of parallels with modern societies (Dubuisson 2001). The legitimization of xenophobic and racist claims by the groups in question is largely sustained through referral to the ancient world. We must go back to the roots of the radical right groups, after the Second World War.

‘elle est directement issue du constat d’échec que font, au lendemain de la débâcle de 1962, um certain nombre de militants engagés dans l’activisme Algérie française: ceux notamment qui gravitent autour d’Europe-Action, la revue et ce cercle animes par Dominique Venner et Jean Mabire, et de la Fédération des étudiants nationalistes. Pour ces militants, ages pour la plupart de moins de trente ans, l’échec est d’abor idéologique’  (Milza 2002,192-193).

Since the middle of the 1980s in the West, and since the fall of Communism in the East, Europe has come to experience ‘Un phénomène de radicalisation politique que les observateurs (politologues, sociologues, historiens, journalistes, etc.) désignent par des appellations diverses. On parle de ‘monté de l’extrême droite’ ou de la ‘droite radicale’. On evoque l’irresistible ascension du ‘populisme’ ou du ‘national-populisme’, sans toujours préciser si ces termes s’appliquent à des mouvements, à des programmes, à des personnalités, voire à des régimes issues d’une matrice droitière ou de gauche’ (Milza 2002, 7).

Created in 1963 and closely related to the emergence of the ‘Nouvelle Droite’, the group Europe-Action will have a short intellectual trajectory, marked by its Eurocentric and strong nationalistic convictions and by the founding of biological racism on scientific grounds. The group intends to be a rupture in French right-wing History. To its members, coordinated by Dominique Venner and Jean Mabire,

The groups of political radicalization known as being of the ‘extreme right’, and likewise the terms ‘right’ and ‘left’, are semantically imprecise. They have been designated, furthermore, as comprising the ‘ultra-right’, ‘extra-parliament right’, ‘right of the right’, ‘radical right’, etc. These terms do not reveal, however, anything more than a necessity to avoid repetitions (Milza 2002, 17) on the part of writers. The diversity of designations translates, then, a sort of difficulty in defining the analyzed object precisely.

‘l’extrême droite n’a rien invente de neuf depuis la guerre. Elle se promène au milieu d’um cimetière d’idées. (...) Ses légions squelettiques se déchirent avec le sentiment confus d’um autre age. (...) le monde a changé et que le moment est peut-être venu d’inventer autre chose’ (Milza 2002, 193).

Like the right, the extreme rights do not constitute a homogeneous entity. They have been defined, for long, as distinct from many other tendencies of the rightwing universe by their ‘absolute rejection of democratic institutions and by the violence of their behavior’ (Milza 2002, 17). However, today, these characteristics do not define the extreme right anymore in countries where liberal democracy has long been rooted in institutions and spirits. The extreme rights have a conservative and authoritarian (anti-egalitarian) culture that is taken to radical limits, and they are characterized by populism, by ethnic nationalism and by xenophobia, many times related to the ideals of Nazism and Fascism. They would be associated, in the France of the Post Second World War, with the ‘Nouvelle Droite’. This expression has commonly been used in the French specialized media since 1978 to designate the GRECE, but by extension, to refer, since 1979, to the group formed by the GRECE and the Club de l’Horloge (Taguieff 1994, 9). Nevertheless, a not infrequent usage, that has enjoyed some diffusion, is the one that designates, through that name, the French right-wing groups of the Post-War period.

Venner has explained that only the elaboration of a new doctrine could constitute an ‘answer to the infinite fragmentation of the right-wing groups’ and, above all, it needed ‘to fight more through ideas and by sagacity than by force’ (1962), refusing ‘an activist solution’ that benefits a fight ‘on the legal plane’. Racism is, in this domain, one of the main concerns of the Europe-Action (Venner 1966, 8). The GRECE - Groupement de Recherche et d’Étude pour la Civilisation Européenne The GRECE has a quite similar doctrinaire perspective as the Europe-Action and is composed essentially by its older members. The GRECE was declared in the Nicene prefecture in January 1969, and it is there where one can find the person who shortly thereafter would become the main theoretical reference for the ‘Nouvelle Droite’, Alain de Benoist. Having an intellectual formation marked by a racist, Neo-Nazi and Neo-Fascist culture, where the great leitmotiv is the exaltation of ‘European nationalism’, founded on the primacy of the white race, it is the GRECE that will edit the magazines Nouvelle École and Élements, which are the group’s doctrinaire publications. 36

Antiquity at the service of France’s ‘extreme rights’: GRECE, Front National and Terre et Peuple

To Benoist, ‘the (re) elaboration of ‘European nationalism’ will strive to give an universalizing basis to the defense of an European identity free of cultural mixture’ (Taguieff 1994, V); besides Benoist, other known personalities of the French right intellectual universe will compose the group, such as Roger Lemoine, Dominique Venner, Jean Mabire, Pierre Vial, and Dominique Gajas.

imperial union. We can take from Dumézil’s studies about the existence of an Indo-European linguistic substratum the idea of the existence of an Indo-European race and, thus, of an ‘Indo-European’ ‘heritage’ and mentality, related to the notions of original language, people and country, which leads consequently to the ideas of original racial superiority (Demoule 1999). The GRECE will publish, in the section L’Itinéraire of the numbers 21-22 of the Nouvelle École (January-February 1973), a dossier dedicated to that subject, with the title George Dumézil et les études indoeuropéennes. Alain de Benoist, who uses the pseudonym ‘N.E.,’ provides the introduction. The return to ancestors is, then, in the eyes of Benoist and the ‘Nouvelle Droite’, a new meeting with religion, with ideology, and with the organization of the Indo-European peoples.

Like Europe-Action and the GRECE, in 1974 the Club de l’Horloge will be founded under a quite similar intellectual logic, marking the History of the French ‘Nouvelle Droite’ at the end of the 1970s. It is from this ‘Nouvelle Droite’ of conflicting thoughts, not always homogeneous ideologies, but founded on common bases, that the thoughts of the right-wing groups regarding the ancient world will be nourished in the 1980s and 1990s.

‘The only positive [emphasis in the original] answer to the problems, to the challenges of our time, is in an attitude that could reproduce, adapting and reinventing, that same IndoEuropean attitude when faced with the Neolithic revolution.’ (…) The Indo-European heritage that we can find again and can cultivate in ourselves, we project it, then, twice in History, as representation of the past and as ‘imagination of the future. (...) When we speak of the IndoEuropean tradition, or when we bring to the light of day the forgotten traces of the myth, the religion, the ideology, and of the History of the people in which we wish to recognize our ancestors, we not only look back. On the contrary, as Janus, we also get a glimpse of the future’ (Benoist 1973, 10).

The conceptual universe of the ‘Nouvelle Droite’ organizes itself around some themes, the most important of which, because it occupies the center of the construction, is that of the ‘egalitarian myth’ (Milza 2002, 198). It is around Alain de Benoist and his criticism to social equality that the ‘Nouvelle Droite’, given a personality of its own, will be organized (Taguieff 1994, 9-106). Regarding this inequality, Benoist would say (1977,16): ‘À mes yeux, l’ennemi n’est pas ‘la gauche’ ou ‘le comunisme’, ou encore ‘la subversion’, mais bel et bien cette idéologie égalitaire dont les formulations, religieuses ou laïques, métaphsiques ou prétendument ‘scientifiques’, n’ont cessé de fleurir depuis deux mille ans, dont les ‘idées de 1789’ n’ont été qu’une étape, et dont la subversion actuelle et le communisme sont l’inévitable aboutissement’.

That Indo-European ‘nostalgia’ will appropriate the works of Dumézil several times. The emergence, in the beginning of the 1980s, of two works written by Jean Haudry (L’IndoEuropéen and Les Indo-européens, PUF 1980-1981) is quite representative of the current character of the historical appropriations of the Indo-European Antiquity made by the ‘extreme right’. Haudry is a professor at the École Pratique des Hautes Études and at the Université de Lyon 3, having being, also, a member of the Scientific Council of the Front National. Lyon 3 is known to bring together a great number of right-wing professors, university students and groups (Cf. Rapport sur le négationnisme et le racisme à l’université Lyon 3 – see reference in the bibliography).

Benoist and his adherents deduce from the work of ethologists and geneticists ‘que l’homme étant un animal (...), il n’y a aucune raison de penser qu’il n’est pás porteur, comme tous les autre animaux, d’um patrimoine génétique qui conditionne três fortement son intelligence, ses pulsations, sa sensibilité, voire sa moralité’ (Milza 2002, 199). The path is not so long from these statements to eugenic practices based on ‘biological realism’, which becomes legitimated by Ethology, by Genetics, by History, etc. To Benoist, ‘biological realism is the best tool against idealist chimeras’ (1965, 9). The theories of Georges Dumézil about the ‘socio-functional tripartite organization of ancient societies’, which would be characteristic of IndoEuropean societies, will therefore be greatly employed. For the ‘Nouvelle Droite’, ‘the existence of an ‘IndoEuropean culture’, which transcends the Nation-States, is biologically determined, and exists ‘according to the general rules of the living being’ (Benoist 1981, 251) is evident.

Haudry’s works, listed in the bibliography by titles produced by national socialist institutes under the Reich (such as the ones by the race specialist Hans Günther), have been strongly criticized in the historiographic milieu (Sergent 1982, for instance). Olivier Dumolin observes that ‘the manipulation of historical, archaeological, and linguistic conclusions about the Indo-Europeans offers a representative case of the biases in the results of research for the benefit of a cultural renewal of the right’ (1992, 382). To this author, that reemergence of the use of philological, historical,

The reference to the Indo-Europeans allows us to give a common origin to the European people and justify their 37

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The National Front

and archaeological sciences to racist ends has doubtless contributed to the recasting an old polemic about the presumed empathies of Dumézil with the extreme right, particularly at the end of the 1930s (383). Maurice Olender (1981, 208) inscribes the works of Haudry in the set of

In 1972, three years after the creation of the GRECE, the Front National was constituted around Jean-Marie Le Pen. Known today as the largest French organization of the extreme right, the Front National was, at the time of its creation, an agglutinating force for the right wing groups (Winock 1998).

‘Intellectual works in which erudition intends to legitimize claims of archaeological, anthropological, or linguistic, nature about the Indo-European origins.’

The party was still incipient in the 1974 presidential election, when it obtained 0.74% of the legal votes, but in the first round of the April-May 2002 election the socialist first minister Leonel Jospin won, with a historical record of legal votes from the extreme right (17%) for its candidate, Jean-Marie Le Pen. To Michel Winock, Le Pen vegetates for a long time in front of a minor group (1998).

Perceiving Christian Europe as the ‘greatest ‘acculturation’ enterprise that humanity has yet known’ (Milza 2002, 202), the GRECE, in the footsteps of the ‘Nouvelle Droite’, will disseminate the need for a return to paganism (Benoist 1981, 251), a kind of new meeting with ‘Europe’, in the reestablishment of the ‘regular’ order of things. As Milza observes (2002, 203),

If, on one hand, the GRECE claims to belong to a ‘Nouvelle Droite’, the Front National will refuse, vehemently, its designation as belong to the extreme right (Apparu 1978, 176; Milza 2002, 18-19) and, even, as a right-wing party. However, to refuse the epithet does not exempt it from classification in a delineated field of study, consensual according to subject specialists. Elected as one of the main fronts of the party’s political discourse, immigration is inscribed in the most current and, perhaps, in the most complex aspect of French discussions about identities today. The right wing parties repeatedly associate the following problems with immigration: a lack of public security, unemployment, health and moral decadence (Orfali 1990, 152). That is to say, they use the old notion of social crisis, so characteristic of the right-wing discourses. In conformity with a sort of typology of discourses about a crisis of order and a loss of values, the subject of decadence is articulated around three points: a piece of evidence, an analysis of causes, and a presentation of remedies (Chebel D’Applolonia 1999; Cuminal et al. 1997, 12).

‘Il faut ensuite, par um retour aux sources de la pensée antique, suppimer la distincition entre l’humain et le divin, caractéristique de la tradition judéo-chrétienne. En faisant du Dieu unique um être distinct de la nature et supérieur à l’homme, les religions révélées ont introduit dans le monde les germes de l’intolérance et du totalitarisme. Le retour à l’esprit du paganisme ne peut que faire reculer l’une et l’autre de ces deviances’. Totalitarianism was, originally, absolutely against the Indo-European mentality (Vial 1980, 10). It is in the context of this set of ideas that the claims of the GRECE and its ethics can be introduced, ‘pas de morale absolue, universelle, valable pour tous lês temps et pour tous les pays, donca pas de ‘droits de l’homme’ au sens humaniste du terme, mais une éthique utilitaire, débarrassée de toute référence paralysante au péché, et dont la fin suprême será le dépassement de soi. Ainsi pourra se dessiner le ‘suhomme’, qu’Alain de Benoist définit non comme um ‘superman à gros bíceps ou à gros QI’, mais comme celui qui ‘se met em situation ‘héroique’ de se dépasser luimême’ et s’applique à rester fidèe à la norme qu’il s’est fixée’ (Milza 2002, 203).

Immigration is at the heart of the extreme right’s political debates, for they see such ‘foreign invasion’ as a veritable threat to national identity. As Le Pen observes furiously in relation to the ‘indistinct’ and ‘uncontrolled’ concession of French citizenship: ‘La carte d’identité n’est pas la carte orange’ (1987, 10). It is, still, in the words of Jean-Marie Le Pen (1989) that we can perceive, through the gaze of the right-wing groups, the great danger that the immigrants offer to national identity:

The GRECE conceives its vision of man and the world in an anti-egalitarian perspective, as the image of nature and History, realizing that cultures are different and that

‘I accuse our opponents of being accomplices of a veritable political genocide, for to take from a people their identity is to take a huge part of their soul.’

‘They give different answers to the fundamental questions. (...) All the attempts to unify them end by destroying them (...)’ (Benoist and Champetier 2000, 14).

In the Front’s parlance, it is necessary to ‘call a spade a spade’, to call a Frenchman, a Frenchman. ‘Nous sommes dans une nouvelle période de migrations. Jamais sans doute les peuples n’ont autant bougé, attirés par les richesses de l’Occident, que depuis l’empire romain. Fautil rappeler que ces ‘grandes invasions’ son étudiées en Allemagne sous le nom de ‘grandes migrations’. On sait ce qu’il advint de l’empire

This intellectual logic of the GRECE will continue through the 1980s and, even today, it is defining the claims of the group. A very erudite perception of the GRECE’s present set of ideas can be found in the analyses of Pierre André Taguieff (1994) and Pierre Milza (2002, 207-210). It is from the GRECE that the ideological matrix of the Front National and the group Terre et Peuple will emerge. 38

Antiquity at the service of France’s ‘extreme rights’: GRECE, Front National and Terre et Peuple

romain. Les migrations de main-d’oeuvre, solicitées dans les annés 70 par um patronat qui voulait gagner toujours plus et souspayer les ouvriers em leur opposant une concurrence étrangère, se sont transformées en migrations de peuplement au moment ou le pays aurait dû arrêter ces flux venant du sud. Pour limiter l’impression négative de modification du tissu national on nationalise à tou de bras. Par le droit du sol notamment. Rome a bien tente la même chose pour se rallier les peuples vênus s’installer dans l’empire. Rome est tombé. Il semble décidément impossible de tirer des leçons objectives de l’histoire aveuglée de tous temps par les idéologies dominantes. L’histoire cettes ne se repete pás mais elle bafouille et les grandes migrations de notre siècle risquent bien de nous em apporter la cruelle confirmation’ (Text published in the National Hebdomadaire. Weekly edition of August 3 to 9, 1995, n 576, p. 11).

preceded us, your cultural moral heritage’ (Excerpt of a speech made by Le Pen in La Trinité, cited in Culminal et al. 1997, 96). ‘The nation is the commonwealth of language, interest, roots, its deceased, the past, the hereditability and the inheritance. Everything that the nation gives to you at your birth is already invaluable’ (Le Pen 1984). It is this almost naturalistic vision of the nation that guides the Front’s discourses about national identity, seeking a return to an ethnic nation based on a discourse of respect for individuality and difference, but as a segregating factor. ‘I believe that the alchemy of subtleties characterizes the European white man (...). We are of the same race and of the same spirit. We also respect the foreigner in this humanity’s universality that makes of every man, of every group or nation a differentiated being’ (Le Pen 1991).

Directly related to the loss of national identity and to the country’s problems, immigration perceived by the Front National is, primarily, representative of a fear in the face of foreigners, in the face of the ‘unknown’, which is manifested through a feeling of suspicion vis-à-vis the immigrant. To Riva Kastoryano (2001, 4), the debates about immigration and citizenship translate, undoubtly, into ‘l’appréhension de la classe politique et de l’opinion publique de voir la nationalité ‘désacralisée’ par une ‘citoyenneté pour les papiers’, um droit dépourvu d’identité’, and which can have as a consequence the vanishing of the French d’abord through assimilation or invasion.

In an article aiming to criticize the French textbooks, published in the National Hebdomadaire of April 1, 1987, we can read the following phrase among a selection of passages from the main textbooks in use: it is necessary to understand well that a nation is a future mosaic of communities. The entire article is about a textbook from the publisher Delagrave, whose title is not explicit in the article. The author has as his/her goal to show the aberrations of school textbooks, establishing a parallel with the educational situation of the country. Differently from the GRECE, whose ancient world is made with the aid of their Indo-European reading, the Front National bases their xenophobic and segregationist policies on the idea of an individuality of nations, which offers to them a very specific reading of France’s own myths of origin and, mainly, of Gaul and the Gallic peoples. This political position of the Front is already enunciated in the party’s beginnings, bound to the ideal of a deep France. In relation to immigration, their classic slogans endured decades, among these: ‘France to the French’, etc. It is in this domain that

‘Inside the diabolic framework of France’s destruction (...), followed by the biological extinction (...), the migratory submersion (...), and the disappearance of the nation (...), the fourth side is that of the cultural genocide’ (Le Pen 2002). Like all the extremist right wing groups, the Front National is a virulent critic of the present, and they see, in a return to a sort of nostalgic past, the only possibility of restraining the decay of the nation, of restoring traditional values and of fighting for and protecting the ‘homogeneity’ of French identity. As Brigitta Orfali has observed, the party does not appear as something new, like the image of the ecological movement, for instance, but as a reviviscence of the past (1990, 152). To the party, the nation is, first of all, an ethnic nation, bound to an organic conception of a land that has, above its economic aspect, a strong symbolic appeal (Barral 1992, 67). The nation is founded, also, by language, blood, and belonging to a historical France, that is to say, to a common heritage:

‘The construction of reality, from the enunciation ‘les français d’abord’, implies a specific dichotomy in rhetoric that is based on the opposition we/them (...) Then, the members of the Front National rarely use ‘I’, yet they say ‘we’, ‘France’, ‘the French’. (...) [This is] an implicit opposition (…) [that is] expressed in their closed world: ‘the foreigners’, ‘them’ – that is to say, the external and threatening world’ (Orfali 1990, 159). The violence and immigrants are, then, the great subjects of the Front National and they represent a true symbiosis, since for them the former is intrinsic to the later. The references to Antiquity in this field are many. Nicole Loraux argues in a sophisticated manner regarding the

‘What we have most in common among us, here, today, and with our French compatriots that are outside this room, is the notion of heritage, your cultural heritage accumulated through centuries of work and sacrifices, by the generations that 39

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Fig. 1. Poster produced by the Front National on the occasion of the 1998 elections in the Noisy-leSec region

Fig. 2. Poster produced for the Chantiers de la Jeunesse, during the Vichy Regime

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Antiquity at the service of France’s ‘extreme rights’: GRECE, Front National and Terre et Peuple

uses made by the Front National, against the French foreigners, of the notion of Greek democracy, for instance. Loraux (1981, 177), agreeing with Finley, considers that nothing should hinder the historian, in his or her attempt to understand the past. This position is directed towards the historian’s need to fight intellectually against the Front (1981, 189), in that case, against the contemporaneous uses of the notion of Athenian democracy as a pretext for the exclusion of foreigners. Loraux analyses, in that study, the uses by the party of ‘twenty-five centuries of legal and political tradition’ as a way to obtain a discursive authority over electors and members of the parliament (This is the historian’s critique of a speech on ancient democracy delivered by the deputy Marie-France Stirbois, from the Front National).

cultural code, and as such, it takes over specific functions, in contrast with those of the other cultural codes at work in the same epoch’ (Baczko 1980, 17). Anchoring national identity in the Gallic myth makes it possible, then, to reencounter the ideal, distant past, which has in the Gallic tradition, in its longevity, the answer to the present dramas of society. A poster produced by the Front National (Fig. 1), on the occasion of the 1998 elections in the Noisy-le-Sec region, recalls the importance of the past and of national identity for the party (it is a stylized reproduction of another poster produced for the Chantiers de la Jeunesse (Fig. 2), during the Vichy Regimen – Cf. Olivier 1998, 31-32). The Front’s affiche brings about an old Gaul, carrying a huge Francisca, with his hand placed in a fatherly manner on the shoulders of a young Frenchman, in the style of the 1990s. On the poster we can read, ‘Be faithful to your identity and protect it’, with the words, ‘BE FAITHFUL’, ‘IDENTITY’, and ‘PROTECT IT’ placed prominently and presented in capital letters. Below on the poster we can read, in lowercase letters: ‘do not be in isolation anymore, it is time for us to get together’.

Comparing the thoughts of Jean-Marie Le Pen and of Aléxis Carrel, Lucien Bonnafé and Patrick Tort would say (1992, 7): ‘Le chef de l’extrême-droite française règle ainsi um problème d’ascendance, suivant en cela l’ordinaire d’une recette immémoriale qui prescrit que l’ascendance crée, favorise ou garantit l’ascendant, c’est-à-dire l’emprise dominatrice qu’un individu ou un groupe exerce sur d’autres individus ou sur un groupe plus large’.

‘In association with each other, the Gaulish ancestor and the ‘Front youth’ affirm themselves as a kind of ambiguous couple, imposed on our gaze: the couple made up of the old warrior and young militant, the father and son, the past based on roots and that based on ‘France for the ‘French’’(Olivier 1998, 31-32).

To Le Pen and his party’s militants, ‘Biology and nature are the frameworks of explanation for the relationships (...) where the human being is a very specific animal, yet submitted to the same biological and natural laws as the other animals of ‘creation’’ (Cuminal et al. 1997, 11).

There is an explicit reference to the poster of Chantiers, used during the Vichy regime, linking the Front directly to Pétain. Between the ‘France Tojours’ of the first poster and the ‘SOIS FIER de ton IDENTITÉ’ of the second one, one can see a similar conception of History, of the past, of values, of youth, of advertising; there is a political and ideological convergence. Not without reason, there exists quite a consensus among analysts of the Front National regarding the perception of the Front’s political inheritance from the Vichy Regimen (Camus 1997, 157-161).

The party takes its inspiration from the France of Vichy, which has racist laws that rescind civil and political rights using the question of origins as a pretext. Le Pen extracts the references for his speeches from History, as a great field of allusions, and from its relationship with ‘national identity’, establishing parallels with heroes (above all with Joan of Arc) and with founding acts of national History, creating a mythical France that is necessary for the party and to which it appeals when justifying its ideological positions. The History of Gaul, here, occupies a place of prominence in the Front’s discourse, full of constant historical allusions (Silva 2005). As Anne-Marie Thiesse observes (1999, 21):

The supposed Gallic and Franc origins of the French people is used modernly to exclude migrants from discussing French national identity. The supposed ‘Gallic origin’, like every element that defines identity, is, thus, a factor of inclusion and exclusion. In contrast with historical and cultural homogeneity, there are, in this field, peripheral identities. Gaul and the Gallic people are recovered from the past while serving political interests, where one can read a will to unite, to differentiate and to dominate.

‘All birth establishes a descent. The life of a nation begins with the designation of its ancestors. And with the proclamation of a discovery: there is a pathway to the origins, which permits us to find again the ancient founders and to gather their precious legacies.’

‘La particularité du système de rattachement de la France à la Gaule est qu’il exprime, avec des variations suivant les temps (...) une revendication d’identité nationale (et par conséquaent de particularité) et une revendication de ‘primauté’(et par conséquent d’autorité) sur les autres peuples’ (Dubois 1981, 20).

Being a foundation myth par excellence, ‘The Gallic myth is, as every mythological discourse about origins, a discourse about the collective identity. It works, then, as a kind of

In Suzane Citron’s opinion (1991, 103-104), there is no Gallic memory. 41

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vote frontiste, qui s’est au contraire renforcé et diversifié’ (Camus 1997, 13).

‘(...).l’origine gauloise des Français est une élaboration intellectuelle, aujourd’hui parfaitement repérable, qui accompagna les connaissances nouvelles liées à l’humanisme des XV-XVI èmes siècles et s’imposa comme ‘vérité’ dans le cadre de l’histoire nationaliste et libérale du XIXème siècle’

The uses that the party makes of the national past remain to be studied, as does, the homogeneity of the French identity sought and divulged by the party. The near inexistence of works in that respect evidence the need for the historians, also those of the ancient world, to be part of the fight against racism, elitism, xenophobia, discourses in favor of inequality and other disastrous characteristics of the Frontist world.

‘Le mot ‘France’ renvoie dans les discours de Jean-Marie Le Pen au territorie et donc aux frontières mais aussi à une entité chargée d’une culture commune et d’histoire’ (Cuminal 1997, 98).

The Terre et Peuple Magazine There is explicit scholarly participation in the movement. Pierre Vial is a case in point. Lecturer at Lyon, he teaches Medieval history and is a long-time member of EuropeAction and GRECE. The Terre et Peuple and Vial’s ideological matrix is formed, then, on the pathways of thought of Dominique Venner and Alain de Benoist.

Present in the discourses and in the Front’s official press, references to Gaul and to the Gallic peoples are always made with the aim of distinguishing the French from the non-French. Like that reference, several others of a similar nature allude to the same intentions: ‘La france aux français’ or ‘La Gaule aux Gaulois’; ‘haine anti-gaulois’; ‘Gaulois et fier de l’etre’, etc. These sayings, dear to Le Pen and his partisans, are very similar to those of the ultranationalist youths of the GUD (Groupe Union et Défense), of the Jeune Résistence and of other right-wing groups. As Le Pen claims (2004), I am neither a xenophobe nor a racist, but, instead, a francophone (...) I am Gallic and the only thing that I fear is that the sky falls on my head, the power does not scare me. Beyond these references, analogies and parallels between the ancient world and the present time are very common in the party’s press, be they in articles, be they in interviews or, very commonly, in the almost weekly reviews of published books about Antiquity (in the National Hebdomadaire).

Having abandoned the GRECE for differences on ideological and political strategies, Vial began to participate in the Front National in 1988, at which time he quickly ascended within the party’s hierarchy. It is for that reason that many ideas of the Nouvelle Droite groups have entered and developed inside the Front. In 1995, Vial created the magazine Terre et Peuple, a pagan and antiCatholic publication for the ‘defense of identity’ that is based, like the Front National, on a personal leadership. On the occasion of the 1999 Front’s split, Vial will remain among the followers of Bruno Mégret and will perform very similar functions to those that he developed in the Front, which, now, will be developed together with the Mouvement National Républicain. Vial will find a great convergence with his ideas on ‘French identity’ and ‘European identity’, alongside other right-wing theorists such as Mégret himself, but also Jean-Claude Bardet, Jean-Yves Le Gallou, Pascal-Michel Delmas, and Philippe Millau, among others.

Founded on genealogy, the nation needs prestigious ancestors. The Front National’s discourse, an echo of an ‘essential France, pre-incarnated in Gaul’ (Citron 1995, 17-19) shares an investment in ancestral legacies with other sectors of the extreme right. The Front also has, like other right-wing groups, a nationalist and racist youth, proud to exalt their Gallic origins on the Internet, on t-shirts, on prospectus, in lyrics of its RIF (Rock Identitaire Français) groups, and the like.

Acknowledged by his neo-pagan and Eurocentric characteristics, the greatest writer of the Terre et Peuple becomes one of the greatest icons of the present French extreme right groups and a claimant for what he calls an ‘ethnic war’.

Myths about supposed Gallic origins in present in several political understanding of French identity. However, the Front foster the most radical ones. Several sectors of French society are questioning today the increase in the number of votes for the Front National in elections and the party’s number of adherents. The model of an authoritarian and conservative Republic that it proposes and its fateful and abstract social and economic policies, based on a hierarchical conception of human groups in relation to their origins are shocking, each time to a greater extent, the specialized media.

‘Nous allons tout droit vers une guerre ethnique et cette guerre sera totale (...). Il faut donc préparer mentalement, psychologiquement, moralement et physiquement le plus grand nombre possible de nos compatriotes à cette perspective’ (Vial 1995). Vial will lay out his main propositions in the editorial of the first number of his magazine: ‘L’actualité accentue, jour après jour, une évidence : les conflits ethniques, qui ont toujours existé, existeront toujours. Tous les prêchiprêcha de Kouchner et consorts n’y feront rien. Le seul remède, c’est de prendre conscience, lucidement, de cette réalité et d’en tirer la

‘La stigmatisation du Front National comme parti extrémiste ou l’affirmation de sa filiation directe avec les fascismes, la condamnation quasi unanime don’t il est l’objet par la classe politique, n’ont pas fair baisser le niveau du 42

Antiquity at the service of France’s ‘extreme rights’: GRECE, Front National and Terre et Peuple

conséquence : à chaque peuple sa terre. C’est la nécessaire adéquation, l’union organique entre une terre et un peuple, qui nous a conduits à choisir, comme titre de cette revue, ‘Terre et Peuple’’ (Vial 1999, 1).

of body and soul whom we resist in a war that we need to call by its name: a war of national liberation.’ Vercingetorix and all his symbols employ, in this domain, the truth, ‘against all manipulations of History’ (Vial 2001: 7-8), incarnating a Celtic world to which Europe and France are intimately related. Diego Sanromán (2004) observes that to claim the Gallic identity of the French is equal, on one hand, recognizing oneself as a member of a wider ethnic community, which can be extended to the entire European continent. On Vercingetorix, Vial would say (2001, 32):

The Terre et Peuple group, influenced by its close affinity to Hitlerism, see in French society and in European societies the eminence of a greater and decisive clash that is growing nearer (Vial 1999a, 1). To Guillaume Faye (1999, 7), one of the main writers of the magazine, ‘Le XXIe siècle sera un siècle de fer et de tempêtes. Il ne ressemblera pas à ces prédictions harmonieuses proféreés jusqu’aux années soixante-dix. Il ne sera pás le village global prophetisé par MacLuhan en 1966, ni la planète en réseau (network planet) de Bil Gates, ni la civilisation mondiale libérale et sans histoire, dirigée par un Etat onusien décrite par Fukuyama. Il sera le siècle des peuples en compétition et des identités ethniques. Et paradoxe, les peuples vainqueurs seront ceux qui resteront fidèles ou qui retouneront aux valeurs et réalités ancestrales, qu’elles soient biologiques, culturelles, éthiques, sociales, spirituelles et, qui en même temps, seront maîtres de la technoscience (...).’

‘(...) He is, first of all, a historical character whose authenticity we should respect. He appears (...) as the incarnation of the Celtic world, with which we are deeply, inwardly, related, for it is one of the essential components of our Great European Homeland. (...) For those who know how to understand him, Vercingetorix is always present. He calls Celtic Europe to battle, in the fight over the identities that is, today, the decisive game for our people, and the meaning of our engagement.’ Remembering the Carte Orange metaphor used by the Front, a vexed reader of the magazine synthesizes the present French situation in the following way:

The Terre et Peuple, self-defined as a cultural community whose aim is to conduct a ‘cultural fight of identity’ (Vial 1999, 1), like the GRECE and the Front National, will also be very attached to the study of the past of the national origins and will have, in the fight against the immigrants – the ‘invaders’ – one of their greatest ideological motivations. The group’s understanding of identity is very similar to those of other French extreme right groups, but it is marked by the exacerbation of an organic idea of union between cultural identity and ethnic identity, faces of a multiform and multipolar movement of identities that announces the ‘spring of peoples’ (Vial 1999b, 1). Identity is grounded on origin and blood. To Vial (2000: 1),

‘Today we do not need to buy an airplane ticket to discover other civilizations; we can, already, make a trip around the globe through 80 subway stations’ (Rolinat 2001, 7). Still in the domain of ‘metaphors’ and parallels, it is the long European saga, called by Faye a superior civilization, that this gazetteer narrates with the use of historical illustrations taken from the Greco-Roman Antiquity (1999, 7-9), while establishing parallels with the contemporaneous world. For Faye, likewise Rome or Alexander’s Empire, Europe has allowed her own prodigal sons, America, the Western World, and the peoples that she herself had superficially colonized, to devour her, and now she lives her fourth age. This will be to this civilization, which is the heir of the fraternal Indo-European people, the fateful century (...) of the destiny that distributes life or death (7-8). The Vial circle, having a political position contrary to those of the initial guidelines of the ‘Nouvelle Droite’, will propose an engagement that is more militant, more fearless, even approaching a kind of incitement to violence.

‘The ethnic dimension is unavoidable when we speak of identity. The denial and destruction of identity is half-breeding.’ He believes that the non-European immigrants are uprooted and suffer the consequences of a perverted liberal-capitalist system (2000a). The solution is their return to their lands and to their original peoples, where they will encounter belonging, roots, and answers to their problems (Vial 2004: 1). This assertion allows the group to avoid accusations of racism.

‘We neither practice nor want to practice intellectualism, but this does not restrain us from doing a kind of thinking that we will call intellectual, cultural, it does not matter. However, we are first of all militants (...), that is to say, fighters and proud of our attitude.’ (...) The intellectual battle and the political battle are inseparable. (...) (...) To have conscience about our own roots is necessary but it is not enough. (...)’ (Sanromán 2004).

The use of the Gallic past, here, is once more claimed as a return to an original purity in a society that is racially mixed. In the bulletin La lettre de Terre et Peuple, of 1998, Vial asks himself: ‘Our ancestors, the Gallic peoples?’ He answers, ‘Here!’ ‘We want that our children be (...) Gallic and proud of being it. It is unimportant that this may please or not the multicolored societies deprived 43

Glaydson José da Silva

menaced by two viruses: one is forgetfulness of oneself, inner death, and the other is opening to the other (1999, 8). For the survival of the ‘Europe of the peoples’, with collective ethnic groups and soul (Vial 2003), a European ‘communitarian feeling’ (Vial 2003a, 1) is necessary. The ‘hope for a Gallic resistance’ should not be missing there (Vial 2004, 1).

In the field of engagement, of the relationships between thought and action, Terre et Peuple has a much more combative approach than one of its main ideological matrixes, that is to say, the one that comes from Dominique Venner. The social crisis discourse is extremely like those of the Front National. To the ‘cultural war’, the ‘ethnical war’, Vial answers (1996): we need an army. We have the ambition to create this army. To create an army that should be a community of work, of combat.

The History of Antiquity is much present in the legitimizing explanations of these right-wing groups, in a sort of a remake of National Socialism. Despite the proximities, there is almost a consensus among the specialists regarding the conviction that the right-wing movements of that kind do not constitute a ‘resurgence’ of Nazism and of Fascism. However, their approximations to Antiquity are very similar of those taken to the fore by these regimens. We need to realize, in one moment as in the other, which choices of Antiquity are being made. It is important to investigate, today, how France, through the biases of the extreme rights, recreates, builds, its Indo-European, Greek, Roman, etc, past. ‘At the moment when the walls are knocked down, or the countries of the East make their return, when the question of European identity, its culture, its politics is posed again, at the moment when the Hydra of racism and xenophobia rear their heads, Greece and Indo-European heritage will be reclaimed » (Droit 1991, 7), it is not an inconvenience if we ask ourselves which place Antiquity occupies in our societies.

Defending the construction of cultural roots and fidelity to identity, the circle has History, since the Greeks and the Romans, as a witness of the failures and ruins of multicultural societies. The example of the Western Roman Empire is the most used in this respect, as it is by other right-wing groups. With the ‘eyes in the past’, a gazetteer sees that the future will bring, ‘Doubtless, predictable explosions; these will happen in India among the Hindus and the Muslims, in Brazil with the world’s most halfbreed population, and, perhaps, in our own country’ (Christelle 1999, 28-29). To face this woeful future of ‘ethnic wars’, Faye finds it necessary for France to cultivate its fidelity to identity and its historical ambition, all synthesized in a great metaphor in an article entitled ‘XXe siècle – L’Europe, un arbre dans la tempête’ (1999, 7-9). Composed of roots, trunk, and foliage – germ, soma and psyche – the roots represent ‘the ancestral soul and the future of the people’ and, because they are lead to new generations, all acts of half-breeding are seen as an improper appropriation and betrayal. The trunk is the cultural and physical expression of the people, fed by the roots, and the foliage, fragile and beautiful, is the civilization, the production and the profusion of the new forms of creations (…) la raison d’être of the tree, always menaced by storms. For Faye, Europe lives

Acknowledgements I wish to express my gratitude to Pedro Paulo A. Funari (Campinas State University) and to Laurent Olivier (Université de Paris I – Sorbonne) for their invaluable contributions. Responsibility for the ideas expressed herein rests, however, exclusively upon the author.

References: Documents Benoist, A., 1981, Comen peut-on être païen?, (Paris: Albin Michel). Benoist, A., 1977, Vue de droite. (Paris: Éditions Copernic). Benoist, A., 1965, Europe-Action, n.36, décembre p. 9. Benoist, A. et Champetier, C., 1999, ‘La Nouvelle Droite de l’an 2000’, Élements, 94, Février. Christele, L., 1999, ‘La societé multi-culturelle à l’épreuve de l’Histoire’ Terre et Peuple, n. 1, pp. 28-29. Faye, G., 1999, ‘L’Europe, un arbre dans la tempête’ Terre et Peuple, n. 2, pp. 7-9. Le Pen, J. M., 01/02/2004, ‘Interview to Ramón González Cabezas’, www.lavanguardia.es. Le Pen, J. M., 2002, Politique culturelle. Discours de Jean Marie Le Pen, (Paris: Avignon). Le Pen, J. M., 1991, ‘Editorial’, Identité, n 1-2. Le Pen, J. M., 1987, Dossier ‘Pour un vrai code de la nationalité’, National Hebdomadaire, n. 140 - Semaine du 26 mars au 1er avril, p.10. Le Pen, J. M., 1984, La vraie opposition: le Front national, brochure. National Hebdomadaire – Semaine du 03 au 09 août 1995, n 576, p. 11 44

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Rapport sur le négationnisme et le racisme à l’université Lyon 3. Lyon : Conseil Lyonnais pour le respect des Droits, 2002. Rollinat, J-C., 2001, ‘En France comme ailleurs, une terre pour un peuple, un peuple sur sa terre’ Terre et Peuple,, Numéro 7/8, p. 7. Venner, D., 1966, Europe-Action, 39. Venner, D., 1962, ‘Sur un nouveau phénomène revolutionaire’, Défense de l’Occident, pp. 26-11. Vial, P., 2004, ‘Appel pour un communitarisme européen’, Terre et Peuple, n. 19. Vial, P., 2003, ‘Il faut penser à notre ame’, Terre et Peuple, 17. Vial, P., 2003a, ‘Face au grande suicide’, Terre et Peuple, n. 18. Vial, P., 2001, ‘Vercingétorix – Le Celte’, Terre et Peuple, n. 7/8, pp 29-32. Vial, P., 2000, ‘Oser!’, Terre et Peuple, n.5. Vial, P., 2000a, ‘Europe, notre patrie!’, Terre et Peuple, n.6. Vial, P., 1999, ‘Planton notre drapeau’, Terre et Peuple, n. 1. Vial, P., 1999a, ‘Le mouvement identitaire’, Terre et Peuple, n 1. Vial, P., 1999b, Tere et Peuple, n. 2. Vial, P., 1996, ‘Entretien’, Europe nouvelles, n. 15. Vial, P., 1995, La Leerte de Terre et Peuple, 4. Vial, P., 1980, ‘Editorial’, Élements, 33. Articles and Books Apparu, J-P., 1978, La droite aujourd’hui. (Paris: Albin Michel). Baczko, B., 1981, ‘Sentiment monarchique et ‘gallicité’’, in : P. Viallaneix, and J. Ehard (eds.) Nos ancêtres les gaulois – Actes du Colloque International de Clermont-Ferrand, (Clermont-Ferrand : Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines de l’Université de Clermont-Ferrand II), Nouvelle série, Fascicule 13. Barral, P., 1992, ‘La terre’, in: J-F. Sirinelli (Ed) Histoire des droites en France. (Paris: Gallimard). Bonnafé, L. and Tort, P., 1992, L’homme, cet inconnu? Alexis Carrel, Jean-Marie Le Pen et les chambres à gaz, (Paris: Éditions Syllepse). Camus, J-Y., 1997, Le Front National – Histoire et analyses, (Paris: Editions Laurens). Chebel D’Applolonia, A., 199, L’extrême droit en France – de Maurras a Le Pen. (Paris: Complexe). Citron, S., 1995, ‘La construction du mythe national’, in: Citron et al. (eds.) Histoire de France – mythes et réalités: quelle place pour les peuples et les minorités?, (Toulouse: Érès). Citron, S., 1991, Le Myythe national - L’histoire de France en question, (Paris: E.D.I.). Cuminal, I. et. al. (eds.), 1997, Le Pen, les mots. Analyse d’un dsicours d’extrême droite, (Paris: Le Monde Editions). Demoule, J-P., 1999, ‘Destin et usages des Indo-Euroéens’, Mauvais temps, numéro 5, (http://www.anti-rev.org/ textes/ Demoule99a/index.html). Droit, R-P. (ed.), 1991, Les Grecs, les Romains et nous. L’antiquité est-elle moderne?, (Paris: Le Monde Editions). Dubois, C. G., 1981, ‘Nos ancêtres les Gaulois’ – le développement d’un mythe des origines nacionales au 16e siècle’, in: P. Viallaneix and J. Ehard (eds.) Nos ancêtres les gaulois – Actes du Colloque International de ClermontFerrand. (Clermont-Ferrand: Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines de l’Université de Clermont-Ferrand II), Nouvelle série, Fascicule 13. Dubuisson, M., 2001, ‘Réflexions sur l’actualité de l’Antiquité gréco-romaine’, Histoire de l’Antiquité. Orient, Grèce, Rome. (Liège). Dumoulin, O., 1992, ‘Histoire et historiens de droite’, in: J-F. Sirinelli (ed), Histoire des droites en France – Cultures, (Paris: Gallimard). Funari, P. P. A., 2002, Antigüidade Clássica – a história e a cultura a partir dos documentos, (Campinas: Ed. Unicamp). Kastoryano, R., 2001, ‘Nationalité et citoyenneté en Allemagne aujourd’hui’, Vingttième Siècle, 70, pp. 3-17. Loraux, N., 1991, ‘La démocratie à l’épreuve de l’étranger’, R-P. Droit (ed.) Les Grecs, les Romains et nous. L’antiquité est-elle moderne?, (Paris: Le Monde Editions). MacDonald, W. A., 1991, ‘Archaeology in the 21st century: six modest recommendations’, Antiquity, 65, pp. 829-839. Milza, P., 2002, L’Europe en chemise noire: les extrêmes droites européennes de 1945 à aujourd’hui, (Paris: Fayard). 45

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Olender, M., 1991, ‘Georges Dumézil et les usages ‘politiques’ de la préhistoire indo-européenne’, in: R-P. Droit, (ed) Les Grecs, les Romains et nous. L’antiquité est-elle moderne? (Paris: Le Monde Editions). Olivier, L., 1998, ‘Vichy, Le Pen et les gaulois. De la Révolution National au Front National’, Les nouvelles de L’Archéologie, 72, pp.31-35. Orfali, B., 1990, L’adhésion au front national. De la minorité active au mouvement social, (Paris: Éditions Kimé). Sanromán, D. ‘La nueva derecha en Europa: una revisión crítica’, Accion Chilena. (http://www.accionchilena.cl/ Doctrina/ciberfascismo.htm). Schiavone, A., 2003, La Histoire brisée. La Rome antique et l’Occident moderne, (Paris: Belin). Sergent, B., 1982, ‘Penser et mal penser les indo-européens’. Note critique, Annales Economie, Société civilisation, 4, pp. 669-681. Silva, G. J., 2005, Antigüidade, Arqueologia e a França de Vichy: usos do passado, PhD Thesis, Departament of History, Campinas State University. Sirinelli, J-F. (ed.), 1992, Histoire des droites en France. (Paris: Gallimard). Taguieff, P-A., 1994, Sur la Nouvelle droite. (Paris: Descartes e Cie). Thiesse, A-M., 1999, La creation des identities nationales. Europe XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Seuil). Winock, M., 1998, ‘Le Front National: portrait historique d’un parti d’extrême droite’, L’Histoire, 219.

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The construction of archaeological identities in Lebanon: archaeology, colonialism, nationalism and Frankenstein Tamima Orra Mourad

Masters degree from the American University of Beirut, and doctoral candidate, University College London

‘Perhaps a corpse would be reanimated; galvinism had given token of such things perhaps the component parts of a creature might be manufactured, brought together, and endued with the vital warmth’ (Shelley 1991, XXIV). ‘I have thus endeavoured to preserve the truth of the elementary principles of human nature, while I have not scrupled to innovate upon their combinations’ (Shelley 1991, XXVII). Introduction The existing identities in Lebanon today, both Phoenician and Arab, are products of problematic constructions concerning the East since the eighteenth century, where these identities are just a fragment of a much larger entity— the Semitic category. The construction of identities in the Near East were at first strongly shaped by philological studies, when the term “Semitic” began to be used to define a linguistic group. By definition, the adjective “Semitic” was used to designate to a linguistic group of “Oriental languages”. The scholars who studied Biblical geography and peoples first promoted the association between these languages, their common origin, and the idea that the ancient habitat of Semitic languages was the Near East. These studies had become particularly strong during the seventeenth century through the works of l’Anonyme de Bordeaux, Benjamin de Tudèle, J. Scalige (1540-1609), J. Selden1, Samuel Bochart de Caen (1599-1667), Christine de Suède, and Daniel Huet2. Such works relied upon the analyses and discussions concerning the genealogy offered by the Bible, studies of “Sacred Geography”, promoted by both religious beliefs and curiosity. During the mideighteenth century, some of the common elements of these languages such as phonology, morphology, vocabulary and syntax and the preservation of such characteristics despite the lapse of time and change of place had already been noticed. Such common elements suggested the idea of common origin; therefore they were set apart to constitute a linguistic group. What was first referred to as “Oriental languages” was about to receive a new name “Semitic”. The term was coined by A. L. Schlöser in 1781, and was used to refer to languages spoken by the peoples mentioned in the Bible, Gen. 10 (Moscati 1964). By the end of the eighteenth century, languages such as Aramaic,

Arabic, Hebrew, and other languages that were about to be discovered through archaeological expeditions in the Near East3 were to be fit into the newly created convention - the category of “Semitic languages”. This philological category and its construction, was strongly influenced by religious beliefs, geography, the natural sciences, and the semi-colonial socio-political environment of the nineteenth century is here contrasted with Mary Shelley’s horror story Frankenstein. This study focuses on the stages of the creation of these identities considering the local political problems, and the mentality and aims of the Western political and economic interference in the Near East, which helped to shape the cultural outline of both past and living peoples. The hazardous results of the “scientific construction” of identities in archaeology are here compared with Mary Shelley’s character Frankenstein. The character, like Semitic languages and peoples, was created in a laboratory as part of a scientific exercise. This terror novel, first published in 1818, not only illustrates that there was a critical view of science but serves as an analogy, since science has problematic consequences specifically when we resurrect the dead and reshape their identities. Philologists, archaeologists and their work are here compared to Victor Frankenstein, Shelley’s character also named by her as the Modern Prometheus. The “Modern Prometheus” and the East They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers, they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows’ (Shelley 1991, 33).4 Mary Shelley created Victor Frankenstein as a young “natural philosophy” student, totally devoted to the study   Semitic languages are spoken in western Asia, in the regions of Mesopotamia, Syria-Palestine, Arabia and Ethiopia. 4   Description of the power of the “modern masters of philosophy”. 3

  Author of De diis Syriis, 1617. 2   Author of Géographie Sacrée and Phaleg et Canaan, 1646. 1

Tamima Orra Mourad

of the structure of the human frame. In his laboratory, through researches in physiology and anatomy, he was desperately trying “to bestow animation upon lifeless matter”5. Victor was willing to follow his urge to fight the decay and corruption of the human body, so that through a successful scientific experiment, he could reach his goals of power and immortality. Shelley’s character fascinated by the power of knowledge, specifically offered by natural philosophy, engaged himself heart and soul with the idea of constructing and reanimating a human being while he worked in the dissecting room and slaughter house. Whether he was about to create a being like himself ‘or one of simpler organisation’, it was left to his own choice. What was more important to him was that he “possessed the capacity of bestowing animation”6. Feeling more powerful than ever, Victor began to put together the “materials” that he had long collected.

reconstruct the history of the ancient Near Eastern peoples, who were simultaneously placed into linguistic divisions of the “Semitic category”. Institutions such as the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, made remarkable discoveries and sometimes allegoric reconstructions of the Near Eastern past and peoples, among them Volney, the duke de Luynes7, de Saucy, the marquis de Vogué8, Waddington9, Ernest Renan10, and Clermont-Ganneau11 (Contenau 1926, 260). As a result, intersecting with the nineteenth century colonialism (or semi-colonialism) Orientalists began to shape the identities of past and living populations. The philological discourse of the nineteenth century played a role in the formation of the European identities, separating the roots of Indo-European languages from those of other language groups (Funari 1999). Philology had inherited the tendencies of the Eighteenth century, with their particular concern for India and Sanskrit in order to trace the languages of Indo-European origins. European languages were seen as related to Sanskrit, considered to be at the origin of all European languages. Languages were classified as being of two categories: those of noble and spiritual origin which allowed the development of intelligence and abstract universal thought, such as Indo-European languages, and the others that had “animal characteristics”, which led to the opposite (Funari 1999). These philological categories were used to classify cultural diversity with both past and living peoples, while “culture” and “ethnicity” was then conceived and referred to as “race”. Peoples that had a language of Indo-European origin were conceived as part of an “Arian race”, considered superior according to linguistic classifications. From a socio-political perspective, these classifications were useful, justifying the European colonial interference in the Near East, the homeland of Semitic languages, peoples and “races”.

Shelley’s character, Victor, was described as having a brilliant mind, blessed with a sort of “supernatural” power granted by science and a glorious career. Such views of science and scientists were popular in the nineteenth century (and still are). The only other character in Shelley’s novel, which had a compatible intellect and qualities was Henry Clerval, Victor’s best friend. Henry had decided to become a Master of the Oriental languages. According to Victor, it was “no inglorious career, he had turned his eyes towards the East as affording scope for his spirit of enterprise” (Shelley 1991, 53). Despite the fact that little is known about Henry’s career, it is noticeable that both characters had chosen noble professions, where they could afford to have a good rank in power. The similarities between the tasks chosen by the two friends go even further when one compares how Victor’s experiment and the studies of the nineteenth century Orientalists both came to interfere in the ‘shaping of the human frames’.

The process of shaping of Semitic identities through philology and archaeology had just begun. Philology had inherited its classificatory framework according to the branches and families from the natural sciences, such ramifications were also used by Orientalists to classify Semitic languages. The body of classical Semitic languages was build to a great extent based on the discoveries of the nineteenth century. The framework of the body of Semitic languages was also directly affected by the geographical distribution of languages, and where texts were found. For this reason, still nowadays the subcategories of Semitic languages are still named after their geographical position. The North-East Semitic, the North-West Semitic, the South-West Semitic…and within those subcategories the East Aramaic, the West Aramaic, etc. At a first glance, it seems that due to the nineteenth century’s discoveries the “Semitic” was either uncovered by parts, as languages were

It is not by chance that Henry, as a nineteenth century Orientalist, had taken advantage of his ‘spirit of enterprise’. The nineteenth century Orientalist is at its best defined as a mediator between East and West, ready to comply with the European colonial aims. This mediation was needed since the increasing decay of the Ottoman rule had given room for the increasing European economic and political interference. The Europeans had come to exploit the natural (and human) resources and settled in urban areas, the market centres for craftsmanship. As Europeans gained an increasing control of the Ottoman Empire, Orientalists were given the opportunity to work as diplomatic agents, or to simply conduct their scientific expeditions and excavations in their quest for data. The European semicolonial interference in the Near East, and their interest in the natural resources, roads for the transportation of armies, travellers and trade goods led to the discovery of the first archaeological sites. Orientalists who were first only interested in ancient texts, began to explore and to

7   The duke de Luynes and de Saucy were pioneers in the archaeology of Palestine (Contenau 1926, 260). 8   Founder of archaeology in Syria. 9   First to collect Greek and Roman texts in Syria. 10   Founder of the vogue of Phoenician archaeology. 11   Admired for his vast knowledge of Syro-Palestinian archaeology, he also mastered all the Semitic languages known at the time.

  Victor’s description of his experiment (Shelley 1991, 39).   For the first time Victor realised that science was not only about power and glory, but also dangers (Shelley 1991, 38). 5 6

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The construction of archaeological identities in Lebanon: archaeology, colonialism, nationalism and Frankenstein

discovered, or slaughtered into parts, as they were set into sub-categories, that were later placed together to form the “Semitic body”. As excavations took place and artefacts were analysed, philologists defined material culture by simply associating finds with languages and texts (Funari 1999). The establishment of the perceived relationship between language, “race” and material culture led to the hypothesis that archaeological culture areas coincided with identifiable peoples and tribes within a given territory, using a certain language or dialect. The application of such classificatory methods, resulted in the construction of cultural identities of past peoples, and their histories strongly affected by the semi-colonial contexts. By the end of the 19th century, most of the recently discovered Semitic languages had been deciphered and studied. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the work of European and Ottoman archaeologists was interrupted due to World War I. After the war, the Ottoman rule ceased and the Near East became part of the French and British mandated territories. Archaeologists restarted their work and languages, material culture and archaeological identities were about to gain a new socio-political role; as the blend of the two European exports: archaeology and nationalism. Identities were reshaped and became politically useful as ancestral identities to both colonial powers and local nationalist movements.

were again invited13 and welcomed to develop researches in the Levant. Languages and archaeological evidence were then associated with particular peoples, national genealogies, and demarcated the outline of territories for the formation of future nations. Such ancestral ethnic groups, classified into ‘races’and ‘civilisations’, were useful in delineating national boundaries according to racial groups. Archaeologists, and their production of knowledge published in books and journals, were useful not only to colonisers, but also to local trends of nationalisms. Some good examples of the interplay between archaeology, colonial and local nationalist interests are noticeable in George Contenau’s, Réne Dussaud’s, and James Henry Breasted’s identity constructions concerning popular nationalist movements in the territory of Lebanon. During the first three decades of the twentieth century, “Lebanism”, the movement for “Greater Syria”, and “Arabism” came to be defended by specific Christian and Muslim sects, according to their aims and hopes for the future. The orientalists working at the time, somehow aided such nationalist movements with ‘colonial-nationalist ancestral identities’ Orientalists through their constructions had a two-fold role. The first one was to legitimise their colonial presence, the second was to shape and reinforce identities useful to nationalist discourses that somehow suited the interests of the French and British colonial governments, or future American colonial aspirations.Along these lines, Contenau’s interpretation of Phoenicia, and Phoenicians (Contenau 1949), a fictional history from prehistory to Christianity, had the same aspects of the “Phoenicia” exposed by the “Lebanist” nationalist discourse of Phoenician origin. As Contenau’s archaeological discourse suited this particular nationalist movement, it also justified the French colonial presence. According to Contenau (1949), the Phoenicians were classified as Indo-Europeans and not as part of the Semitic category. While this discourse was welcome and useful to the nationalist movement aiming to form a separate Lebanese state, it was totally conflicting with other local ancestral identities and nationalist movements.

The “Post-Modern Prometheus in the Levant” During the mandated period, archaeologists restarted their work all over the Near Eastern territories. Archaeologists such as George Contenau and René Dussaud, were held responsible for the archaeological research and heritage management of the French mandated territories. The French colonial government also founded extensions of the Louvre in the mandated territories, institutions that would later become the national museums of Syria and Lebanon. It seems that during the 1920s and 1930s there was a “new excavation rush”, such as that of the mid-nineteenth century, in the Levant. This time, or perhaps, this generation of Orientalists focused on the identity and ancestry of the living populations. Such concerns are clearly noticed from the programme and results of conferences such as the Congrès Internationale d’Archéologie de Syrie-Palestine12. It was at this conference that British and French authorities and archaeologists agreed upon a programme of co-operation - between Orientalists, institutions and governments - to restore the mandated territories and the local inhabitants with their “beaux titres ancestraux” (Contenau 1926, 261). The concern with the investigation of ancestral ethnic groups in colonial settings, such as the territories under French and British mandate, reflects the initial attempt of foreign governments at justifying the borders of new states. For this reason, institutions that had left the Levant aside, such as the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres,

The “Greater Syrian” nationalist movement had never accepted Lebanon as a separate entity from Syria. According to them, the Phoenicians themselves had an Arab descent14. Such disputes over descent reflected local political and religious conflicts, as the Lebanists, mainly Maronites, defended a pure Phoenician descent and a separate state; the Greater Syrians, mostly Greek Orthodox, looked forward to an Arab, yet pre-Islamic descent. The idea that the Phoenicians had an Arab descent became popular among the Syrianists, but the idea had   The members of the Académie were also invited to the 1926 conference, when they were encouraged to restart their work. 14   Syrianists claimed that Phoenicians were ancient Arabs who had originally arrived in coastal Syria from Arabia. This argument was based on the historian Herodotus who had visited Syria during the fifth century BC. 13

  The confernces began on April 8, 1926, and participants spent three weeks visiting archaeological and historical sites and museums in Greater Lebanon, Syria and Palestine. 12

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never been developed in a ‘scientific’ fashion. The first to link the Phoenicians with the proto-Arab populations was René Dussaud. As a philologist, Dussaud believed that all the Semitic populations that had occupied the Levantine coast had migrated from Arabia, and despite shifts from nomadic to sedentary lifestyles, and changes of language whenever they became sedentary, they all had racial affinities. Dussaud argued that Safaitic, the proto-Arabic language of the texts found in the region of Safa, Syria, was the key between the Phoenician script and Modern Arabic, and consequently between the Phoenicians and the Arabs. As a philologist he went further and equated language, territory, and peoples; and created an ethnic group, the Safites. According to Dussaud, the ‘imagined Safites’ had been the first Arab populations to emigrate towards the Levantine coast, taking along with them the first Arab elements such as language, religious beliefs, customs and traditions (Dussaud 1904, 2). With this explanation, Dussaud tried to prove that Phoenicians had an Arab descent, and that there was a proto-Arab, preIslamic descent, the imagined ‘Safites’. Such construction justified the Syrianist nationalist claims concerning descent, and it also reflected the colonialist tendencies of Dussaud’s discourse.

Since the 19th century, orientalists-archaeologists played a twofold role as they unearthed, interpreted, shaped and brought ‘back to life’ their own versions of past identities. As mediators between past and present, their political and academic aims reproduced the aspirations of the colonial powers or governments they represented. As they tried to determine the ethnicity of ancient peoples in an environment of colonialism, nationalism and local socio-political and religious conflicts, orientalists constructed myths of archaeological ancestries that survived to our days. In the case of Lebanon, such myths of ancestry were and still are rather static, mutually exclusive, conflicting, and remained as catalysts of monstrous, monstrous sectarianism. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Pedro Paulo Funari for reading this article. The ideas presented here are my own for which I alone am therefore responsible.

To him, the Arab cultural elements brought to the Levant by the imagined ‘Safites’ would never have survived had it not been for the Roman conquests and its “tâche civilisatrice” that had consisted in reducing the number of nomads by settling the tribal imagined ‘Safites’ in a specific region. Dussaud’s conclusions concerning the imagined ‘Safites’ promoted a Syrian specific ancestry, whereas James Henry Breasted’s interpretations concerning the “Fertile Crescent”15 and the role of the Arabs in bringing ‘civilisation’ to the west flattered the Arab nationalist movement. Nationalism clearly politicised archaeological interpretation, and these archaeological identities gained popularity within the conflicting nationalist movements.

15

 

Conquest of Civilization, 1926.

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The construction of archaeological identities in Lebanon: archaeology, colonialism, nationalism and Frankenstein

References Anderson, B., 1983, Imagined Communities. Reflections of the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, (London: Verso). Bahrani, Z., 1998, ‘Conjuring Mesopotamia: imaginative geography and a world past’, in L. Meskell, (ed.), Archaeology Under Fire. Nationalism, politics and heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, (London: Routledge). Breasted, J. H., 1933, The Oriental Institute, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Breasted, J. H., 1935, Ancient times: a history of the early world, (Boston: Ginn). Breasted, J. H., 1938, The conquest of civilization, (New York: Harper). Breasted, J. H., 1947, The Dawn of Concience, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons). Contenau, G., 1926, ‘Le Congrès International D’Archéologie de Syrie-Palestine’ Syria, (Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner). Contenau, G., 1927, Civilisations anciennes du Proche-Orient, (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France). Contenau, G., 1931, Manuel d’archéologie orientale depuis les origines jusqu’a l’époque d’Alexandre, (Paris: August Picard). Contenau, G., 1949, Civilisation Phénicienne, (Paris: Payot). Contenau, G., 1950, Les premières civilisations, (Paris: Presses Universitaires). Dussaud, R., 1901, Voyage archéologique au Safa et dnas le Djebel ed-Druz, (Paris: Leroux). Dussaud, R., 1907, Les Arabes en Syrie avant L’Islam, (Paris: Ernest Leroux). Dussaud, R., 1931, La Syrie Antique et Médiévale Illustrée, (Paris: Librairie Orientaliste

Paul Geuthner).

Dussaud, R., 1949, L’art phenicien de II Millenaire, (Paris: Paul Geuther). Dussaud, R., 1955, La Pénétration des Arabes en Syrie avant L’Islam, (Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner). Fawcett, C. and Kohl, P. (eds.), 1995, Nationalism, politics and the practice of University Press).

archaeology, (Cambridge: Cambridge

Funari, P. P. A. and Podgorny, I., 1998, ‘Congress Review, Is archaeology only ideologically biased rhetoric?’ European Journal of Archaeology, 1,3, pp. 416-424. Funari, P. P. A., 1995, ‘Mixed features of archaeological theory in Brazil’, in Ucko P. (ed.) Theory in Archaeology. A world perspective, (London: Routledge). Funari, P. P. A., 1999, ‘Lingüística e Aqueologia’, Delta-Revista de Estudos de Lingüística Teórica e Aplicada, 15(1), pp. 161-176. Garbini, G., 1994, ‘History and historiography of the Semites’, in The East and the meaning of History. International Conference (23-27 November 1992), (Rome: Bardi Editore). Gathercole, P. and Lowenthal, D. (eds.), 1990, The Politics of the Past, (London: Routledge). Hobsbawm, E. J., 1997, Nations and nationalism since 1780: programme, myth, reality, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Hodder, I. and Preucel, R. (eds.), 1996, Contemporary Archaeology in Theory, (Oxford:

Blackwell).

Hodder, I. and Preucel, R., 1996, ‘Constructing Identities’, in I. Hodder and R. Preucel (eds.), Contemporary Archaeology in Theory. (Oxford: Blackwell). Hodder, I., (ed.), Theory and Practice in Archaeology, (London: Rouledge). Jones, S., 1997, The Archaeology of Ethnicity. Constructing identities in the past and present, (London: Routledge). Kaufman, A., 2001, ‘Phoenicianism:The formation of identity in Lebanon in 1920’, 173-194.

Middle Eastern Studies, 37(1), pp.

Larsen, M. T., 1994, ‘The appropriation of the Near Eastern past: contrasts and contradictions’, in The East and the meaning of History. International Conference (23-27 November 1992), pp. 29-52. Layton, R. (ed.), 1994, Conflict in the Archaeology of Living Traditions, (London: Routledge). Layton, R. (ed.), 1994, Who needs the past? (London: Routledge). Liverani, M., 1994, ‘Voyage en Orient. The origins of archaeological surveying in the Near East’, in The East and the meaning of History. International Conference (23-27 November 1992), pp. 1-17. Masri, A., 1981, ‘Traditions of archaeological research in the Near East’, World Archaeology, 13(2), pp. 222-239. Meskell, L. (ed.), 1998, Archaeology Under Fire. Nationalism, politics and heritage in Middle East, (London: Routledge). 51

the Eastern Mediterranean and

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Meskell, L., 1998, ‘Introduction: Archaeology matters’, in L. Meskell (ed.) Archaeology Under Fire. Nationalism, politics and heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, (London: Routledge). Moscati, S. (ed.), 1964, An Introduction to Comparative Grammar of Semitic Languages. Phonology and Morphology. Porta Linguarium Orientalium, (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz). Renan, E., 1863, Histoire generale et systeme comparé de langues semitiques, (Paris: M. Levy Freres). Renan, E., 1864, Mission de Phénicie, (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale). Said, E., 1978, Orientalism, (New York: Vintage). Salame-Sarkis, H., 1987, ‘De l’Histoire comme moteur des idéologies du suicide. Essai d’approche du modèle libanais’, Panorama de l’actualité, 11(48), pp. 29-50. Salibi, K., 1965, The Modern History of Lebanon, (London: Weinfeld and Nicholson). Salibi, K., 1988, A House of Many Mansions. The history of Lebanon revisited, (London: University of California Press). Seeden, H., 1990, ‘Search for the missing link: archaeology and the public in Lebanon’, in P. Gathercole and D. Lowenthal (eds.), The Politics of the Past, (London: Routledge). Seeden, H., 1994, ‘Western archaeology and the history of archaeological sites’, in The East and the meaning of History. International Conference (23-27 November 1992), pp. 53-72. Trigger, B. G., 1995, ‘Romanticism, nationalism, and archaeology’, in C. Fawcett and P. Kohl (eds.), Nationalism, politics and the practice of archaeology, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Trigger, B. G., 1995, A history of archaeological thought, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Trigger, B. G., 1996, ‘Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist’, in R. Preucel and I. Hodder (eds.) Contemporary Archaeology in Theory, (Oxford). Ucko, P. J., 1995, ‘Introduction: archaeological interpretation in a world context’, in P. Ucko (ed.) Theory in Archaeology. A world perspective, (London: Routledge). Ucko, P. J., 1995, Theory in Archaeology. A world perspective, (London: Routledge).

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Dom Pedro II Visits Antique Shop in Jerusalem: A controversy around Moabite antique pieces and the ‘Shapira Affair’ Reuven Faingold

FAAP University, Brazil

Introduction Late in the afternoon on December 4, 1876, the most important personality of Imperial Brazil, the wise and charismatic Emperor D. Pedro II (Rio de Janeiro 1825 Paris 1891) strolls through Jerusalem’s Old City. Upon visiting a typical antique shop, His Majesty takes a small notebook and enters the following record: ‘So, out of curiosity, I visited the bric-à-bric shop of the famous Safira, whose face does not strike one as that of a reliable man, and seemed to me to be a Schliemann without fanaticism, not very serious. He showed me his latest Moabite antique pieces, which looked like clay objects recently made by uncivilized people. He gave me photos of the little clay monsters. Before dinner, I took a Turkish Bath, not however as well applied as in Damascus…’1 From these words by the Emperor of Brazil, there arise a few questions that need to be considered carefully, such as: 1. Who was Mr. Safira, mentioned by Brazil’s second emperor? 2. Why, according to D. Pedro II, did Safira not seem ‘a reliable man’? 3. What were those Moabite Antique pieces mentioned by the monarch? 4. What kind of photos of the ‘little monsters’ would the Brazilian sovereign have received? 5. What finally happened to Safira and his archeological pieces? Those and other topics related to that short excerpt recorded by D. Pedro II in his ‘Journey Diary’ will be the subject of this present article. ‘Safira’ is the collector named Wilhelm Moses Shapira (1830-1884) 1   Pedro II, Diary of the Trip to Palestine by the Emperor of Brazil. MIP (Petropolis Imperial Museum), Diaries 18-19, file 37, doc. 1057, unnumbered pages. Critical and Modern Edition, in: Faingold 1999, 143.

Over 120 years ago, on March 9, 1884, at the Bloementhal Hotel, in Amsterdam, Holland, a desperate man committed suicide with a shot in the head. He felt persecuted, the victim of injustice, and not understood by others, or perhaps he suspected that finally his secret had been disclosed. That man, whose main goal was to get rich illegally by selling works of art, was called Wilhelm Moses Shapira (Ilan 1983). The Emperor D. Pedro II was not mistaken, for indeed ‘Safira did not seem a reliable man’. I believe that the monarch’s comparison between Shapira and Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890), at that time regarded as a model of integrity and authenticity, could not have been more accurate. For many, Schliemann was a highly trusted archeologist. He was the first to visit ancient Greece in 1859. He dedicated his life to excavations on the Hissarlik Hill (Asia Minor), where he believed he found Homer’s Troy. He also excavated Micenas, discovering the ‘Lions’ Gate’ and the archeological complex known as ‘Circle of Royal Tombs’. Some of the most widespread works by Heinrich Schliemann were certainly in the Library of Pedro II; after all, he was the most prestigious archeologist of that age and a contemporary to the Emperor.2 However, how did the polemical ‘Shapira Affair’ start? In July 1883, Moses Shapira brought to London a special manuscript of the Book of Deuteronomy (Devarim). The text included changes to the massoretic version, a fact that prompted suspicion among the London specialists as well as specialists from other countries. For weeks, magazines and newspapers published extensive reports featuring excerpts from the manuscript, feverishly discussing the piece’s authenticity. Soon thereafter, the manuscript was exhibited to the public in the British Museum, where it was viewed by William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898), Victorian England’s Prime Minister. Moses Shapira was a convert to Judaism who had settled in Jerusalem. He traded old books and sacred objects,   Schliemann’s major works, ‘Mykenae’ (1877) and ‘Ílios, Stadt und Land der Trojaner’ (1881), were written in german and translated into other languages. About the German archeologist, see: Thompson 1964. 2

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was familiar with the Jews’ sacred literature, and visited Jewish communities in faraway places, purchasing Torah scrolls and phylacteries that were improper for usage. Tourists who visited his shop in Jerusalem’s Old City were impressed by his cultural background and the great enthusiasm with which he explained details about every piece in his collection. A young member of the highly reputed ‘Palestine Exploration Fund’, the archeologist Charles F. TyrwhittDrake (1846-1874), who traveled through the Holy Land in the early 1870s, once stated: ‘In my research on the writing on manuscript rolls, I was helped by Shapira, a German Jew, a great expert on the Talmud and Jewish folklore, currently a member of the Protestant Community in Jerusalem’ (Ilan 1983, 9) Considering the above-mentioned text, it is clear that Tyrwhitt-Drake visited Shapira’s antique shop. There, he examined Hebrew manuscripts from the Tzana region, all of which had been put together in scrolls with red tones. The trade of ‘moabite ceramics’ The help offered by Moses Shapira to Drake was of great importance, since it allowed for the usage of that information to form a consolidated opinion upon the conclusion of the debate surrounding the authenticity of the Moabite ceramics (Fig. 1). Those ceramics caused special interest not only among specialists but also among the public in general. We believe that D. Pedro II visited Shapira’s shop at the precise moment when a great collection of pieces of ceramics was on exhibit. The collection consisted of hundreds of pieces with inscriptions in ancient Hebrew. It was exactly what our Second Emperor wanted because he was thirsty for knowledge, having learned how to read Hebrew by 1876 from systematic teaching by three masters: the Jewish-Swedish diplomat Leonhard Akerblom (1830-1896) and the German pastors Ferdinand Koch (1871) and Karl Henning (1874-1886).3

Fig. 1. Monstrengos (Little monsters) – Pieces of Moabite ceramic from Shapira Collection, published in Ilan 1983, 10 (hebrew). oldest stone with Semitic characters. On it, there were hundreds of sentences related to Mesha, king of Moab, and among them, one that allows for the reconstruction of the battle between the Moabite and Israelite People.4 At the time when those archeological pieces appeared, around 1868, they caused a singular commotion. On them were drawings of living beings, such as birds, a serpent and a scorpion, animals with horns, a goat with the head of a cow, and also pieces and objects with holes. Those inscriptions (never before seen) were the same in shapes and characteristics: twenty-three letters which were constantly repeated were identified, fifteen of which were part of the Phoenician Alphabet. Obviously, it was very difficult to decipher them. How was it possible, however, that no one had been able to find that kind of writing in the past?

That set of ceramics was called Moabite ceramics by Moses Shapira himself, since it originated from the Moab Hills, close to the Dead Sea. We do not know who sculpted the Moabite ceramics, and, naturally, for such an educated individual such as D. Pedro II, the creators of those ceramics must have been ‘people who were uncivilized’. The Moabite ceramics showed some resemblance to the inscriptions on the famous Moabite stone, a huge rock discovered a few years earlier and considered the world’s

Shapira did not hesitate and authorized Captain Claude Regnier Conder (1848-1910), a member of the Palestine Exploration Fund, to draw hundreds of pieces. The industrious Conder carefully checked the pieces’ authenticity, and the British Museum verified and purchased

  Regarding the Emperor D. Pedro II’s studies of Hebrew, see: Notebooks of Hebrew Studies (Líber Genesis I-II et Líber Psalmorum) at the Imperial Museum, and Faingold 2000; Costa, 1925; Haramati 1990, 17-18. Regarding the Brazilian monarch’s translations, see: Translation made [by D. Pedro II] of the four chapters of the Book of Ruth (Hebrew into Latin) IHGB (Brazilian Historical and Geographic Institute), can 311, file 44; and a brief article published in the Brazilian Press, Feder 1944. 3

  Papers relating to Shapira’s Forged Manuscript of Deuteronomy. British Museum, Add. 41294 [A document cited in all scientific researches], and compare with: Ilan 1983; Rabinowicz 1956-1957. 4

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Fig. 2. Detail of pieces 162 and 163 (Moabite Ceramic) from the Shapira Collection, published in Ilan 1983, 10 (hebrew). hundreds of those. Shapira prepared more pieces and assembled them in a second collection. There were some improprieties in those objects, such as grains of salt stuck to the pieces, but Shapira always found an explanation, claiming that those rare pieces were permanently in direct contact with the salt of the Dead Sea (Conder 1892).

those already found. In Dibon, Sheik Ali Diab showed them a niche of stone where there was an image of the goddess Ashtoret with horns on her head. Beside the niche, close to a hill were Phoenician inscriptions. In Medeba, another site in that area, stones with illustrations of the moon and the sun were found. That expedition yielded 30 or 40 objects, all of which were copied by Claude R. Conder, who enthusiastically told the Palestine Exploration Fund in London: ‘One day, you will thank me for this discovery’ (Conder 1873/74)

The pieces seemed new, as if recently manufactured, but Shapira also had a ready justification for that. He stated that they had been found in the ruins in a state of almost decomposition, and thus it was necessary to dry them in an oven for better preservation. Both Tyrwhitt-Drake and Chaplin, both experts on the matter, noticed that some objects were extremely similar to each other, as if an ‘assembly line process’ had been used, a very common phenomenon in factories.

In Germany, experts who had followed the story of the archeological excavations began to believe in the authenticity of the pieces gathered in the discoveries (Fig. 2). Moses Shapira came to be regarded as the Prussian Government’s official agent for archeological matters. The Emperor of Prussia himself purchased pieces traded by Shapira. To reply to the doubts expressed by the British, Shapira went along with Chaplin to the Moab desert, and there he obtained some of the ‘little monsters’ mentioned in the Bible. He found a little monster, black, one meter tall, with horns and a Pharaohtype beard. On that sculpture was a Phoenician inscription of 7-10 lines painted in several colors throughout.

Misgivings began to spread throughout England. Meanwhile, Moses Shapira claimed that those objects had been known before and that some had been totally ground down and sent by the caravans of camels to a cement plant in Beirut. In Dibon (Dhiban), the Bedouins found whole pieces of clay, and when this piece of news reached Shapira’s ears, he began to purchase those by means of an Arab emissary. After four months, accompanied by a German Cleric named Weser and one Dinsberg, Mr. Shapira decided to pay a surprise archeological visit to find antique pieces. He would thus put an end to the many doubts that existed in relation to his pieces, and, naturally, in relation to his moral and commercial integrity.

The French researcher Clermont-Ganneau In early 1874, the young archeologist and expert on Eastern matters named Charles Clermont-Ganneau (1846-1923) came to Jerusalem. In 1867, he served as a French consul to Ottoman Palestine, being later appointed vice-consul in Jafa, a seaport town in the heart of the Holy Land (Allegro 1965; Ilan 1983, 10-11).

Shapira, Weser and Dinsberg met with Ali Diab, a sheik from the Aduan Bedouin tribe who lived on the Eastern banks of the Jordan River, and from whom Moses Shapira had already purchased several antique pieces. The Bedouin took them to the sites of El-Aléh, Cheshbon, and Dibon. Excavating there, they discovered more objects similar to

In 1868, Ganneau was involved in deciphering the Stella of Mesha (9 BC), broken by wild Bedouins who wanted to make profits from the piece. At that same time, the French archeologist hired draughtsmen and a spy named Salim Al55

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and the buzz was going on around the Moabite Ceramics, he chose to put off for six years his major scientific discovery: the Book of Deuteronomy featuring versions that differed from the massoretic text.

Kari, who completed three lines of that Mesha inscription. Obvioiusly, Ganneau was thankful and saved Al-Kari’s lines. Upon publication of the photos and the arrival of the collection of objects in Germany, German experts began to suspect strongly that the whole affair regarding Wilhelm Moses Shapira was nothing but a fraud, a hoax of grand proportions. Suddenly, Clermont-Ganneau traveled to Berlin to see the collection, continued on to Jerusalem, and, putting together a truly detective-like operation, concluded that the complementary texts made by the spy Salim AlKari were neither authentic nor truthful. The French archeologist’s report (officially accepted by the German consulate) disclosed many forgeries and disclosed the fact that the very material used to make those pieces was the same used in the process of making clay in and around Jerusalem in the 19th Century (Barlett 1855; Faingold 1999, 33-34).

At the end of his career, Clermont Ganneau taught and researched Archeology along with Ernest Renan, a renowned expert on Eastern matters and professor at the recently founded Collégè de France in Paris. His works, all of which focused on the archeological findings in the Holy Land, were extensive. Among them, we shall mention only the following: La Palestine inconnue, 1876; Les frauds archéologiques en Palestine, 1885, and Archéological rechearches em Palestine, 2 vols, 1896-1899 (Faingold 1999, 148; Saba 1976). Shapira and the book of Deuteronomy On May 9, 1883, Moses Shapira wrote a letter from Jerusalem to Prof. Hermann Strack. In the letter, he claimed to have in his hands a narrow but long scroll, all in sheep skin, featuring excerpts from the Book of Deuteronomy, Biblical excerpts differing from the massoretic version, that is, the oldest copy of the Old Testament. In that letter, as in many others sent by Moses Shapira to scholars, he demonstrated thorough knowledge of Biblical versions, comparing and pointing out textual differences, as well as displaying an uncommon level of erudition (Allegro 1965, 46 and 89).

It must be stated that Charles Clermont did not blame Moses Shapira; instead, he blamed the spy Salim Al-Kari. The archeologist showed that the manuscript that Salim had in his hands was the same as the three-line inscription that Salim himself had copied in the Stella of Mesha. In other words, Ganneau stated that the Bedouins had cheated the German archeologists and scholars. In April 1874, Prof. K. Schlottmann, one of the main German researchers, wrote a consistent article against Clermont-Ganneau, entitled ‘Chauvinism in Archeology,’ where he claimed that the anti-German position was based on intentions of revenge by the French against the Germans (Allegro 1965; Zeitlin 1956/57).

Shapira took that manuscript of the Book of Deuteronomy to Leipzig in Germany, and many scholars certified its authenticity. Later, he traveled to London and introduced the manuscript to the Palestine Exploration Fund, telling members Claude R. Conder and Walter Besant (1836-1901) how the manuscript came into his hands. The whole incident began in 1878, when a Bedouin sheik approached Shapira and told him that a group of Bedouins had come across pieces of a manuscript covered with pieces of cloth near the Arnon Valley (Wadi Mujib). The Bedouins thought that they were amulets without any value and disposed of them. One of the Bedouins who were there took up the pieces of manuscript. Shapira offered the sheik a reward for taking him to the Bedouin who had taken the manuscripts. Moses Shapira met the Bedouin and bought the manuscripts. The Bedouin then disappeared, and Shapira never saw him again.

For years, the controversies between the French and Germans continued, and only in 1878, and the debate came to an end, when another delegation led by Manhaussen, the German consul, traveled to Moab in search of the ceramic, and discovered that they had indeed been cheated by the Bedouins. In face of the Manhaussen Report, Salim AlKari fled to Alexandria and Moses Shapira maintained his stance that there had been no fraud. Finally, in 1878, Shapira recognized that the Manhaussen Report was accurate when it mentioned forgery and fraud, but not before stating that ‘one must be able to distinguish the several types of fraud, and not all is fraud’. The museums of Berlin, Stuttgart and Basel quickly realized they had been cheated and that the objects they had purchased had no commercial value.

There is another version told by Shapira: he had purchased the manuscripts from a deserter of the Turkish army who was camping around the Dead Sea. Almost no one paid attention to that version.

That unfortunate episode disclosed by Clermont Ganneau did not give Shapira the reputation of forger, but he was regarded as responsible for spreading archeological forgeries. In the eyes of the world, he came out as a gullible man who had also been a victim of the Bedouins’ cheating (Ilan 1983, 11).

In the manuscript of the Book of Deuteronomy, the same letters that had been seen in the Stella of Mesha appeared. After each word, a dot had been added, and there were incomplete spaces where certain basic Biblical sections were missing. For example, in the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 33, the ‘blessing of Moses’ (Birkat Moshé) should

While Shapira came to London with scrolls of ancient manuscripts (discovered on the banks of the Jordan River), 56

Dom Pedro Ii Visits Antique Shop In Jerusalem

famous London Museum (Fig. 3).5 However, even when most scholars considered the manuscript to be authentic and legitimate, Charles Clermont-Ganneau came from Paris to put an end to that ‘dream’ and stated firmly, in the ‘Athenaeum’ newspaper, that the so-called Book of Deuteronomy was also a forgery. His version to tear down the other scholars’ theories was simple: the manuscript was written in lapidary writing (a form of writing that was common in stone sculptures such as the Stella of Mesha), and not in the scroll-manuscript writing (common in pieces written on sheep or gazelle skin). Other researchers argued that the manuscript was written on thin and very narrow scrolls and that Shapira had cut the edges of the Biblical manuscript to make it look thousands of years old, even writing nonexistent sections. Naturally, the wide repercussion in the press about an eventual forgery of the scroll-manuscript led the British Museum to abandon entirely any intention of buying that piece.6 Shapira did not give up and began visiting the most important museums in Europe with the intention of finding a buyer for the manuscript of the Book of Deuteronomy. Nevertheless, nobody was willing to gamble on such a controversial piece. Disconsolate and without any further wish to visit any museum, Wilhelm Moses Shapira traveled to Rotterdam and committed suicide gunshot.

Fig. 3. Caricature – Dr. Ginsburg catching the collector Moses Shapira. This caricature was published in Punch´s Fancy Portraits No. 152 and reproduced in Ilan 1983, 11 (Hebrew).

Sixty-three years later, in 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in the caves of Qumran, also in the vicinity of the Moab Hills. Those manuscripts, currently displayed in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, were extremely important for the study of the first years of Christianity. That discovery occasioned endless debates in several academic circles, mainly in Europe, the USA and Israel. However, even if, in those manuscripts, there were versions that differed from the massoretic text, no scholar or collector questioned the authenticity of the Qumran scrolls.7 In 1947, the affair involving Shapira was brought up in the academic circles. Some American scientists, such as the renowned Prof. Menahem Mansoor from the University of Wisconsin, even stated that, if the Qumran Manuscripts were authentic, there was no reason to believe that those of Shapira were forgeries. This was also the opinion of John Marco Allegro (1923-1988), a professor from the Universities of Manchester and Oxford and an expert on the Qumran Manuscripts, who wrote an entire book on Shapira. Nevertheless, it must be stated that most scholars have refused to accept Moses Shapira’s innocence.

have been included, but instead it appears in a version that is completely different from the one found in the massoretic text. Any other comparison among the texts of the Book of Deuteronomy (chapters 5 and 6 onward) will disclose significant textual changes. The manuscript scroll of the Book of Deuteronomy was exhibited in the British Museum in London, causing a stir among the public and prompting controversies among experts in Biblical interpretation. Wilhelm Moses Shapira, satisfied with the repercussion of his archeological piece, asked the Directors of the British Museum for the ‘small amount’ (sic) of One Million Pounds Sterling for the manuscript! (Saba 1976, 22). The return of Clermont-Ganneau Throughout the Nineteenth Century, European interest in archeological excavations in the Holy Land grew rapidly. There was a competition between England and France. The Germans did not fall behind, either. While the Old Continent discussed the high price of the Book of Deuteronomy, that piece was examined and thoroughly investigated by experts on the subject. Moses Shapira, from his hotel in London, corresponded with scholars to convince them of the piece’s authenticity. Prof. Christian David Ginsburg (1831-1914) from the British Museum, a converted Jew, copied entire sections of the manuscripts that are currently displayed in that

The manuscripts that had been in Shapira’s hands 5   For Ch. D. Ginsburg, see Allegro 1965, 33, 37, 43, 56, 62 and 85 and compare with Mansoor 1958. 6   For the British Museum’s giving up the purchase of the manuscript for One Million Pounds Sterling, see Ilan 1983, 11; Saba 1976, 22. 7   The bibliography on the Dead Sea Scrolls (the Qumran manuscripts) is extensive. See a synthesis and textual analysis in Zeitlin 19567/57, 196-211.

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disappeared in 1884. A few years after his tragic death, they were sold for only 10 guineas (approximately 21 Pounds Sterling) to an antiquarian whose house was burned down in 1887.

What about the rich archeological material that caused such intense disagreement among experts? Would it have been lost irretrievably? This is truly an enigma of history. Who knows, maybe someday, new archeological evidence will cast some light and further details on the polemical ‘Shapira Affair.’

References Allegro, J. M., 1965, The Shapira Affair, (London: W.H. Allen). Barlett, W.H., 1855, Jerusalem Revisted, (London), [reprinted Vilnay, Z. 1976 in Jerusalem]. Clermont-Ganneau, Ch., 1876, La Palestine inconnue, (Paris). Clermont-Ganneau, Ch., 1885, Les Fraudes Archeologiques en Palestine, (Paris). Clermont-Ganneau, Ch., 1896-1889, Archeological researches en Palestine, (Paris). Clermont-Ganneau, Ch., 1897, Album d’antiquités orientales, (Paris). Conder, C.R., 1892, Heth and Moab, (London). Conder’s reports to the Palestine Exploration Fund in Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement, July 1873 and April 1874. Costa, I, 1925, ‘D. Pedro II Hebrewist’, O estado de São Paulo newspaper. Faingold, R., 1999, D. Pedro II na Terra Santa: Diário de Viagem – 1876, (São Paulo: Livraria e Editora Sêfer). Faingold, R., 2000, Luzes do Império: D. Pedro II e o mundo judaico, (São Paulo: SESC e a Casa de Cultura de Israel). Feder, E., 1944, ‘An Emperor translates Hebrew poems’ Aonde vamos?. Haramati, S., 1990, ‘Keissar Brasil medaver ivrit’, ÊT-MOL 15, (88): 17-18. Harry, M., 1914, La Petite Fille de Jerusalém, (Paris). Ilan, T., 1983, ‘Ha-keramika moabit ve-sefer devarim’, ET-MOL 9, (51): 9-11. Manning, S., 1874, Those Holy Fields: Palestine, (London). [Reprinted by Vilnay, Z., Jerusalem, 1976]. Mansoor, M., 1958, ‘The Case os Shapira’s Dead Sea (Deuteronomy) Scrolls of 1883’ Transactions of the Wisconsin academy of sciences, arts and letters, XLVII: 183-225. Papers Relating to Shapira’s Forged Manuscript of Deuteronomy. British Museum of London, Add. 41294. Rabinowicz, O.K., 1956/57, ‘The Shapira Forgery Mystery’, Jewish Quarterly Review, XLVII: 170-182. Saba, S., 1976, ‘Mea shenot ziufim’, ET-MOL 4, 6: 20-22. Thompson, G.S., 1964, Heinrich Schliemann, discover of buried treasure, New York. Zeitlin, S., 1956/57, ‘Recent Literature on the Dead Sea Scrolls’ JQR XLVII: 196-211.

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The Invention of Antiquity in South America through images borrowed from Ancient Egypt -Egyptomania Dr. Margaret M. Bakos PUCRS/CNPq

Introductory remarks: problem and goal In a small alley on the outskirts of Porto Alegre, capital of the southernmost Brazilian state, in the front window of a snack bar called Pharaoh, there is an image of Garfield beckoning to potential customers while wearing the royal insignia of an Egyptian ruler and holding a full glass. In Ushuaya, Argentina, also known as the land at the end of the world, due to its proximity to the South Pole, an obelisk marks the anniversary of the town’s foundation. How can we understand the presence of this charming, gluttonous, sleepy cat, dressed as a pharaoh and publicising a bar, or that of a tekhen, an ancient Egyptian monument designed to represent a sun ray, placed to remind us of a historical fact at the southernmost point of South America? How is this system of shared references constituted and spread through different American cultures? This research suggests that schools, through primary education (Saballa 1995; Funari & Garraffoni 2004), along with the media and their products, particularly the print media and cinema, are key means. For example, Ciro Flamarion Cardoso, professor of Ancient History at the Universidade Federal Fluminense (Cardoso 2004, 189) says that reading the novel The Egyptian by Mika Waltari, at thirteen years of age was fundamental to awakening his interest and curiosity regarding Ancient Egypt.

Fig. 1. Garfield as Egyptian ruler at the snack bar called ‘Pharoh’

Given the dimensions and cultural peculiarities of these two cultural manifestations, the construction of the obelisk and the bar advertisement express a cultural identity based on a specific phenomenon, Egyptomania – that is, the reinterpretation and re-use of cultural traces from ancient Egypt, in such a way that new meanings may be attributed to their expression. The place of Ancient Egypt The context of Ancient Egypt has been shown to be propitious for the creation of figures present in the collective imagination (Baczko 1985, 4), some of them still very much alive, thanks to an extensive historiography of Greek origin (Funari 2006, 27-29) that was responsible for the enduring nature of such figures. Among them is the image of Egypt as the land of prosperity, endurance, and wealth – the wheat basket of the ancient world – a place in which, instead of hunger, great riches, immortal pharaohs and powerful gods were found. These fantasies, which were also shared by Asian contemporaries of the Ancient Egyptians, are in fact continually fomented and fed by the constant reuse of Egyptian imagery. It is also necessary to consider Egypt as an African country, with a millennial, umbilical history on the continent. This history is in the genesis, formation, essence and international character of the examples of Egyptomania. Even the Black Africans who were forced to cross the Atlantic Ocean in slave ships brought with them practices related to Egyptomania, as they participated in this millenary process. Nowadays, Ancient Egypt is remembered throughout the world, mainly through three icons: pyramids, sphinxes and obelisks. It is worthwhile then, to formulate some questions: when were these monuments created and how were they transformed into international icons, timeless metonymies of Egyptian civilisation? The purpose of this chapter is to offer some thoughts that may enable the development of a new understanding of the phenomenon under study: to point out, highlight, investigate, and analyse certain examples of Egyptomania on the American continent, in their peculiarities, focusing attention on the

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adoption of the image of Garfield, dressed as a pharaoh, by the owner of a Brazilian bar, on the choice of ‘Night on the Nile’ as a theme for a party held in Punta del Este, Uruguay, and in the story of the construction of the largest obelisk in South America, on the Av. 9 de Julio in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In contrast, Egyptomania is related to the practice of using traces of Ancient Egyptian culture – more precisely, the attribution of new meanings to such traces. The relationship with the past is much more complex than is the case with Egyptophilia. Although, at times, there is a lack of knowledge regarding the history of monuments and disregard for the original objectives and mystical, religious nature of the elements used, there is more interest in the potential value as a marketing tool, since one thing is unquestionably certain, Egypt is an ancient vehicle for advertising the modern: Egypt sells (Lant 1996, 585-599)!

Some working concepts Interest in Ancient Egypt appears in three different forms: Egyptophilia, Egyptomania and Egyptology. In 1995, when beginning research into the use of images borrowed from Ancient Egypt in Brazil, now extended to South America, we were unaware that the phenomenon we intended to investigate had a proper name and a definition. Furthermore, as there was no other research available on the subject, there seemed to be only a remote hope that the investigation would be successful. The richness and quantity of the examples found made the investigation delightful, however (http://www.pucrs.br/ffch/historia/ egiptomania). Additionally, encountering the concept of Egyptomania in 1997, described in the book by Jean Marcel Humbert (1994, 21), was quite fortunate.

This extraordinary fascination has been expressed in different ways, passing through various categories of art – sculpture, painting, theatre and cinema. Commemorative or funeral monuments, commercial and public buildings, theatres, apartments, houses, decorative and functional objects, jewels, nothing appears to be untouched by Egyptomania. Thus, understanding and giving an autonomous place to Egyptomania, as Jean Marcel Humbert suggests, is a difficult task (Humbert 1994, 26). In order to facilitate empirical research and the analysis of the findings, we added another concept that permitted an enhanced tracking and identification of the phenomenon we propose to study. In 2004, we adopted the notion of transculturalisation, based on recovering the propositions put forth by the concept’s originator, Fernando Ortiz. This appropriation also enriched and strengthened our theoretical framework, as it led us to question the identities of the examples of Egyptomania, first in Brazil and later on the American continent. According to Ortiz, the concept of transculturalisation considers the different phases of the transitive process from one culture to another. This does not merely mean the acquisition of a new and distinct culture in place of the original, as is expressed in the meaning of aculturalisation. The concept of transculturalisation represents a more complex process that also, necessarily, includes the disassembly of a preceding culture, implying a process of deculturalisation. And, it goes beyond this, implying the creation of new cultural phenomena, which can certainly be referred to as representative of transculturalisation. Ortiz creates, as Bolanos suggests, an appealing metaphor to exemplify his reasoning - the genetic formation of individuals: the creature always has something of both progenitors but at the same time is a creature that is different from either of the two (Bolanos 1999, 215). Now, recognising that the receptor is the subject in this process of Egyptomania, the oldest and most lasting phenomenon of transculturalisation of humanity, makes the study of Egyptomania even more enticing and encourages reflection and development of a new methodological posture, based on suppositions that advance towards a new theoretical model. This means that Egyptomania can be studied, on the one hand, in relation to this longevity, through the systemic updating of the three icons previously

There are exhaustive studies on the presence of Ancient Egypt carried out by specialists throughout the world, notably in Europe and the United States of America. Of particular interest are the works of the Frenchman JeanMarcel Humbert and North American James Curl. Egyptomania, according to Jean Marcel Humbert, is much more than ‘copy[ing] Egyptian forms – artists must ‘recreate’ them in the cauldron of their sensibility and in the context of their times, or must give them an appearance of renewed vitality, a function other than the purpose for which they were originally intend’. These decorative elements are brought back to life with this usage (Humbert, 1994, 21). Relatedly, Curl highlights the aesthetic character of the creations of Egyptomania, relating them to the history of taste (Curl 1994, XIV-XIX). Egyptomania is the most enduring transcultural phenomenon in the history of mankind: its presence is already noted in antiquity and persists until the present day. Even after so many centuries, it still retains an extraordinary force and vitality, manifested in the use, copying and creation of forms from Ancient Egypt, and represents much more than a passing fashion or mere exoticism. Nevertheless, not everything that appears to have a connection with Egypt is properly described as Egyptomania, explains Jean Marcel Humbert. For example, visiting Egypt, having a taste for antiques, and buying objects and placing them in exhibitions are expressions of Egyptophilia more than of Egyptomania. The practice of Egyptophilia is made apparent through demonstrations of appreciation of the exoticism of that society and the desire to possess anything related to the Ancient Egypt and/or its contemporary context. Interest, in this case, is based upon aesthetic values: beauty, splendour and grandiosity. 60

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mentioned – pyramids, sphinxes and obelisks. On the other hand, Egyptomania can be studied via investigations of a genealogical nature, of isolated cases peculiar to each site on the planet where such a creation is located or produced, seeking the particularity of its emergence.

of Chephrem and the obelisks. Also in this phase, the most beautiful of all writing forms – hieroglyphics – was developed, which used images from nature, not symbols, in order to form letters or words. Obelisks were then chosen as the first concrete supports for human written memory.

It is in this latter perspective that cultural identity gains importance as a category of analysis to be applied to the investigation of the agents in the process of reception and transnational production in relation to Egypt. Such a perspective permits the valuation of the discontinuities that can be perceived in these creations: the messages that stem from them, the surprises they produce, the dramatic and bizarre visions they express. The task is to emphasise and give validity to what occurred in the dispersion, in the productions of Egyptomania on this continent. Given this task, it is our intention, rather than to seek final truths, to point out the modifications, the diversions, converging on some choices: spontaneous and often naïve inventions, but no less significant for this in the context of the creation and of the creators.

The ancient empire produced – from the aesthetic, socioeconomic, political and religious points of view – a set of elements and institutions that were relatively representative of Egyptian civilisation, founded on the belief in the divine nature of pharaonic power. This belief produced magnificent death rituals and myths that fed the literary imagination, as well as hybrid images of humans and divinities, fauna and flora, that were so strongly present in everyday Egyptian life that they came to express a second nature, so original, fascinating, and magical that it guaranteed its continued existence until the present day. Of all the monuments that remain from Ancient Egypt, the pyramids are those that have the greatest appeal in the popular imagination. Built for purely magical and religious reasons, they have become one of the most everyday of symbols of Egyptomania.

It is fascinating to look for examples of and attempt to understand the heterogeneous meanings of the uninterrupted appropriation of images of these great icons of Egyptian patrimony. Finding examples of these icons with new meanings signifies, in short, going to the meeting point of modern inventions of the old world.

The word pyramid originates from the term ‘pyramis’, used by the Greeks as the name of a special kind of wheat cake. In the Egyptian language, they were always referred to as ‘mer’, a word whose exact meaning and pronunciation are unknown today. All the pyramids served as tombs for kings, and occasionally queens, between the 3rd dynasty (around 2750 BC) and the 17th dynasty (around 1600 BC). and later for the Ethiopian governors of the 25th dynasty (around 750-650 BC), and their successors, who reigned over the Sudan until the 4th century AD.

The third form of demonstrating interest in Ancient Egypt is through Egyptology, a science that developed out of the necessity to decipher the Rosetta Stone encountered by the scientific mission that Napoleon Bonaparte took to Egypt, led by Jean François Champollion, given the task of communicating the discovery to the French Academy of Belas Arts, on September 22, 1822. Egyptology deals with everything related to Ancient Egypt with scientific rigor, including the practice of Egyptophilia and Egyptomania, conferring a chronology to the historical study of the Ancient Egyptian icons that are valued by these practices. The present investigation is situated along these lines, seeking to aid in the search for answers regarding the possible meanings of this millenary reutilization of the abovementioned icons and the possibilities of constructing an identity that takes shape in the tension between those who appropriate and the original content of the appropriated object. The genesis of Egyptomania, however, is difficult to recover, not so much because it arose in antiquity, but due to the liberty, multiplicity, originality, beauty, and variety of techniques employed in such reutilization.

Images of the pyramids have served as references for the production of so many meanings that they have become symbols of longevity, perpetuity, and immortality throughout the planet. The fascination generated, in the Western world, by the pyramids, often explained by the mere magic that derives from everything pertaining to the Egyptian civilisation, however, is overwhelmingly due to the fact that these constructions have survived to the present day. The figure of the pyramid was introduced into Brazilian architecture in the middle of the 18th century, when Rio de Janeiro was beginning to establish itself as the main port of Portuguese America and capital of the Vice-Royalty. Given the significance the city acquired in the eyes of the Crown, an urbanisation programme was prepared for the city, taking Lisbon as a model. The design, bearing the hallmarks of the Enlightenment, began with the creation of a place of recreation in Rio de Janeiro: a public promenade, initiated in 1779 and inaugurated in 1783. On that occasion and in that context, the imposing Pyramid Fountain took shape in the Largo do Paço (Palace Square). It was designed to provide fresh water not only for ships, but also for the population in general. It combined a reservoir

The icons of Egyptomania: genesis and genealogy The three images of Egyptian history that have become icons of Egyptomania were invented around 2800 BC, when the first king of the III dynasty, Djoser, inaugurated the ancient empire. This monarch experienced a period of wealth and gave rise to the architectural project that led to the creation of the pyramids of Giza, the sphinx 61

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Fig. 2b. Fountain of the Saracuras, 1748 the ancient oriental paradisiacal traditions, were situated in a hierarchical order within the garden, marked by the passage from the dominance of the utilitarian (marginal street space) to the dominance of amusement (the elite of the space), whose non-figurative nature is in marked contrast to all the other works of the artist. They can be considered as precursors of the utilisation of this motif in both national and international sculpture. This set of work places the artist as the first Brazilian post-modernist landscape artist.

Fig. 2a. The Pyriamid Fountain, in the Palace Square, Rio de Janeiro, inaugurated 1783. and a fountain, thus merging the artistic and utilitarian, a characteristic of Enlightenment thinking and also of many practices of European Egyptomania. Additionally, the Fountain of the Saracuras was constructed in 1748 with the goal of supplying water to the Convento da Ajuda. Belonging to the Clarist nuns and given as a gift in 1911 by the Archbishop to the City of Rio de Janeiro, the fountain shows signs of the same appropriation: located on the Praça General Osório (General Osório Square) in the south of the city, it is wrought in dark granite, with functional and ornamental details in bronze; its spouts are in the form of saracuras - wading birds very similar to the ibis - one of the forms of the Egyptian god Thot, who, according to the myth of Heliopolis, showed men the art of writing. In the same context of a marked European influence on Brazilian urbanisation were built the triangular pyramids of Mestre Valentim, whose model was reproduced in the 20th century to decorate the promenade by Flamengo Beach, as can be seen in Figure 3.

Fig. 3. Pyriamid decorating the promenade by Flamengo Beach

The pyramids of the public promenade, in a garden in the best aristocratic style in which there was space for 62

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example of a neo-Egyptian terraced house: the organisation of the façade and the internal distribution of the building are common to the eclectic residential architecture of Rio de Janeiro. The building is a beautiful example of Brazilian Egyptomania as well as an example of the crusade against what was called, by English artists, the ‘virus of ugliness,’ which threatened the architecture of the industrial cities, at the turn of the 19th century.

In the first decades of the 20th century, engineers managed to create, together with artists, beautiful buildings throughout Brazil. The style of the buildings is sometimes referred to as eclectic. The most outstanding feature of these creations is the lack of concern with artistic result of these compositions, that at times is beautiful, like the façade of the Egyptian House, an elegant four-story building, located on the corner of Rua do Ouvidor (Ouvidor Street) and Avenida Rio Branco (Rio Branco Avenue), in the centre of Rio de Janeiro, one of the oldest areas of occupation in the city. The exact date of this construction is unknown, but it is certain, according to photographic evidence, that it already existed in 1930. On the second-floor balconies there are two-winged human figures that remind one of caryatids. A man and a woman hold above their heads a kind a cup covered by a dome-like lid. The male figure has muscular, hairless arms and is reminiscent of the copy, made by Denon (1847-1825), which also served as a model for porcelain figures from Sevrés, of an original male figure from a tomb in Thebes. By the adaptations made, the sculptures on Rua do Ouvidor appear more like a common type of sculpture of a standing pharaoh (similar to those exhibited in the Tivoli Palace, in Rome) than the original models from pharaonic times. Both the male and the female figures have nemes, headdresses, and pectorals in Egyptian style.

Since the figure of the pyramid was introduced into Brazilian architecture, in the middle of the 18th century, not only has it been adopted for very different purposes from those it originally had in Old kingdom Egypt, but also the very shape has been modified. Accordingly, if we ask what the perpetuation of Egyptian elements within the South American imaginary really means, we can say they are part of a continuous process of the Invention of Antiquity. Nonetheless, without doubt, it is the pyramidal form that most attracts attention whenever it appears evoking the original Egyptian significance: the cult of immortality. Some examples are two private residences constructed in the second half of the 20th century and located, respectively, in Pelotas and Dom Pedrito, Rio Grande do Sul State, Brazil.

Still in the city of Rio de Janeiro, on the Pedro Alves Street, 40/42, in the district Santo Cristo, there is an unusual

In Natal, Rio Grande do Norte state (Brazil), there is a gymnasium called Pyramid built in the shape of a pyramid. In the same Brazilian state capital, there is the beautiful Pyramid Hotel, which offers its guests all the comforts of the contemporary world. Throughout Brazil there are more than 300 establishments dedicated to different activities - from filling stations, commercial outlets, computer equipment shops and florists, to services and factories, especially in the construction industry – that employ in their name and/or product publicity characteristic elements of Egyptian culture (Bakos 2004, 133). The figures and, as Schnitzler noted, the terminology employed in advertisements relates to collective memory, a cultural heritage shared by humanity as a whole (Schnitzler 2004, 165). In the elegant district of Recoleta, in Buenos Aires, a delicate modern pyramid, in front of a historical cemetery wall, overlooks the memorial of the anniversary of the city. In the same Recoleta, we can find a nice sphinx with a statue at the back of the monastery. In Chile, aside from Pyramid Radio Taxis, there is the Pyramid Golf Practice, and The Pyramid Motel, among other establishments that have adopted the name of this monument of humanity. The Sphinx of Giza, at 19.8 metres high and lying at the foot of the road that leads to the monumental pyramid of Chephren, is the second great icon of Egyptomania. The monument was hewn from a single block of stone and apparently was abandoned after other blocks were removed for the construction of the pyramid.

Fig. 4. Balconies of the ‘Egyptian House’ on Ruo do Ouvidor, Rio de Janeiro 63

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Fig. 5. Private residence built in the shape of a pyriamid, Rio de Janeiro The Sphinx is a hybrid composition that consists of the body of a lion with a human head. It represents a royal figure wearing the nemes, a headpiece worn specifically by monarchs, and a false beard, another attribute of monarchs. Originally, and for many years afterwards, the Sphinx took the form of a recumbent animal, with its front legs extended forward and separated one from the other, although some were made walking and more rarely sitting. The sentiments attributed to the Sphinx have suffered numerous transformations, based on different practices that confer upon it various roles, constructed upon its original, Egyptian, meaning, that allude to eternal life and to its character as a friendly protective entity. These meanings remained until its appropriation and transformation by the Greeks, who conferred upon it the characteristics of an angry, malignant, and destructive creature, capable of annihilating those who fail to discover a secret, as is characterised by the myth of Oedipus.

oldest example of the practice of Egyptomania registered in the history of the Brazilian political cartoon presents a criticism of the foreign travels of Emperor D. Pedro II. The philosopher king was, on the occasion in 1871, returning from his first visit to Egypt, where he had dedicated himself to Egyptology. The engraving shows Dom Pedro represented by the head of the sphinx, the fabulous creature with a human head and the body of a lion. The Brazilian monarch is also wearing the nemes, of striped fabric, used only by the kings of Egypt. The adornment is usually capped by a sacred Uraeus, an image in the form of a snake. In the caricature, the artist substituted the symbol of Egyptian royalty with the emblem of the Brazilian crown. In his headdress, moreover, there are inscriptions referring to three Brazilian questions that needed to be resolved: the political, the economic, and the religious. At the foot of the Sphinx, the artist placed a group of people with their arms raised staring at the monarch as if demanding that he take action.

The Sphinx has a varied history of transculturalisations that go from its appropriation for political criticism to its use as a form of publicising and advertising for commercial products. It is, however, at least a little ironic that the

The then-President of Chile, Ricardo Lagos, recently figured in an example of Egyptomania similar to that to which the Brazilian emperor was exposed. In a political cartoon, he was pictured as a pharaoh seated on a throne. 64

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Fig. 7. Ricardo Lagos as Pharoh millennial pyramids and Sphinx, with its connotations of eternal wisdom, is very expressive and well constructed. Finally, we come to the obelisks, the third and most important icon of Egyptomania. The obelisk, in its origin, is a tapered stone monument in the form of a needle, with a top in the shape of a pyramid. The shape, both of the obelisk and the pyramid, derives primarily from the Benben stone on the temple of the sun in Heliopolis. It was believed that the first rays of the rising sun fell on this stone, which was considered sacred at least from the first dynasty (3100 – 2890 BC). The Egyptians called the obelisks ‘tekhen’, which meant sunray. It was the Greeks who gave these monoliths their current name: obelisks, which in their language meant ‘needle’ or ‘pine.’

Fig. 6. The Emperor D. Pedro II as a sphynx, 1871 A brief, incisive comment accompanied the image: ‘a pharaoh without a Pyramid!’ The criticism was made because he intended to perform a massive and ambitious project of urban renewal in 26 Chilean cities. Another noteworthy example of the use of the Sphinx appears in an advertisement for Royal typewriters, published in Globo Magazine, which circulated in Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil) from 1926 to 1967 and was considered to be a portrait of that state’s society at the time. The magazine, deemed one of the most important means of communication of the economic and cultural life of Rio Grande do Sul, together with articles referring to the rapid modernisation of the city in the decade of the 1930s, dealt with commercial competition that forced large companies to resort to ever more imaginative forms of advertising to create an atmosphere of curiosity, in order to offer and sell their products better.

Although the exact date of their invention is unknown, there are indications that the kings of the 5th dynasty (24942345 BC), fervent worshippers of the sun, were the first governors to decorate the façades of their temples with these monuments. In this dynasty, the pyramids, central elements in the funerary complex, were always linked to a large mortuary temple located at the edge of cultivated fields and included obelisks as part of their architectonic decoration. The oldest surviving obelisk, in Heliopolis, celebrates the southern expansion of the Egyptian kingdom towards inner Africa, led by Sesotris I (Habachi 2003, 46). Early on, the obelisk became popular with cultures outside Egypt, such as the Canaanites, Assyrians, Greeks, and Romans. Assurbanipal, an Assyrian ruler, was the first foreign leader to take an obelisk away to his homeland as a trophy of war and symbol of his power. The Emperor Augustus was the first western ruler to order the transport of two of these enormous granite monoliths from Egypt to Rome.

As was generally the case with magazines at the time, Globo was a very important vehicle with an extended period of useful life, since until the next issue reached the newsstands, the current issue was passed around in different social settings, from the subscribers the in state’s elite to ordinary readers, for example, in the waiting rooms of numerous services. The typewriter advertisement attempted to establish a relationship of confidence between consumers and the North American typewriting machine, which in the publicity text, was described as the most sought-after in the world. The association the advertisement makes between the typewriter and the Egyptian context, with its

This tradition of transferral, inaugurated by the rulers of antiquity, was repeated for almost 2000 years: presently, Rome has the largest collection of original obelisks in the world, but in London (Victoria Embankment) and in Paris (Place de la Concorde), there are obelisks offered 65

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by the Egyptian government to the colonial capitals. In 1880, the first Egyptian obelisk arrived in the New World, being place in Central Park, in New York City. The use of Egyptian style for public architecture represents an attempt at harnessing the authority of Egyptian civilization for the new nation. (Champion 2004, 161). In Brazil, there are over a hundred obelisks, although none of them are original. Generally in monumental proportions, their presence is a constant factor on the American continent, where they correspond to the different ambitions of those responsible for the construction projects of such monuments. It can be said that obelisks are significant in two different ways. On the one hand, they universally symbolise power and those who maintain power (Hassan 2003, 23); on the other, from their origins, they are monuments destined to transmit to posterity the memory of notable deeds or people to a certain community (Le Goff 1992, 435). While such meanings remain alive until today, the motivations for the construction of monuments have changed, together with the concept of who deserves to be honoured by them, which allows for the evaluation of the other meanings attributed to obelisks and the deeds and/or persons they are aimed to immortalise. In the construction of an obelisk, powers come into play that transforms it into their instrument and symbol. This applies to the political and judicial spheres, and to understand each one requires inquiry into the individual examples in search of a set of phenomena. Each monument can be easily studied, as we suggest, in the particular circumstances in which it is designed and erected. Thus, numerous questions arise in the analysis of an obelisk:

Fig. 8. Advertisement for Royal Typewriters aim of contributing to the beautification and ornamentation of the city, should be constructed (Tartarini 1999, 127). The place chosen to erect the monument was the Plaza de la República, at the intersection of Corrientes and Av. Norte Sur, a particularly appropriate place, as it satisfied both practical and symbolic necessities. The execution of the project was entrusted to Alberto Prebisch (1899 – 1933), considered at the time the most important representative of modern rationalist architecture in Argentina.

1) Which political discourse suggested/imposed the construction of an obelisk, and what is the reason for choosing this monument and not another? 2) Which legal discourse chose/imposed what, when, how, and where the obelisk should commemorate, and how was this engraved in its monumental base? 3) Who is the author of the monument: what are the identities of the proponents and the builders? 4) What are the erudite and/or aesthetic criteria present in the monument? 5) What was the form of reception and interaction from the political/economic/media community in relation to the monument?

Prebisch had travelled, at the end of 1933, to the United States, on a study grant from the Argentinian-North American Cultural Institute. He stayed there until 1934, visiting many cities and certainly Washington, where urban works were being concluded, and where there had been, since 1833, an obelisk of 167m. in height, which had been selected by means of a competition, as a homage to George Washington.

These questions were proposed in the bibliographical study of the largest obelisk in South America – the obelisk on Av. 9 de Julio, in Buenos Aires. We can see the results. The Mayor of Buenos Aires –Veda y Mitre – following the suggestion of a friend, decreed, on February 3, 1936, without previously consulting either the City or National Councils, that, in order to give more splendour to the celebrations of the fourth centenary of the foundation of the city of Buenos Aires, a commemorative obelisk, with the

It is said that the idea of building an obelisk had come up in conversation between the political elite in power and Prebisch, due to his knowledge concerning the obelisks raised in other parts of the world. In response to the question from the mayor concerning the viability of building an obelisk that was not a true oriental-style monolith, that is, hewn from a single stone, Prebisch presented a solution in only 72 hours: The obelisk would be 60m tall and 7m by 7m at the base, built in hollow, reinforced concrete and 66

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Fig. 9. Advertisement for HSBC entirely dressed in light travertina stone; its estimated cost was $ 75,000 dollars (Tartarini 1999, 132). Due to the enthusiasm of the political elite and the cordial relations with the architect, the contractors, the plans, the budget and the salaries were quickly agreed upon. However, there was a chorus of complaints from the opposition press, suggesting that an undertaking of such dimensions would need the approval of the Congress: had the Plaza de la República become the private property of the Mayor’s Office?

painful and they may be reluctant to say so, it is a sad and coarse work (Tartarini 1999, 135).

It is fitting to note the opinion of the Argentinean engineer Benito Carrasco, who was opposed to the project. His opinion was very important in this present study because it is based on erudite knowledge: he offers an objective discourse on the aesthetic and political aspects of the obelisk.

In practice, with the passing of time, these quarrels were set aside and the obelisk came to gain an exceptional status, becoming one of the symbols of the Argentinean capital. An important city guidebook has, on its front cover, the image of a charming couple dancing the tango with the obelisk in the background.

Given this situation, it can be seen that every obelisk has a particular meaning within its context and location. All the obelisks in the world have an artistic, historical meaning: monument, commemoration of an event, of a victory, of a civilisation, of an ideal. It remains only to inquire into these aspects related to such obelisks in order to understand their meanings.

In relation to the obelisk on Av. 9 de Julio, it is worth mentioning the very creative advertisement for a car insurance company, which currently shows, on an enormous poster, a car colliding with the obelisk in Plaza 9 de Julio in Buenos Aires, followed by the question: ‘Why should you pay the same insurance premium as him?’ This brief, very intelligent argument, acquires greater popular appeal with the use of the image of the obelisk. The scene of the unfortunate driver destroying, along with his vehicle, the symbol of the city, without doubt causes a great impact. This is a very nice example of Egyptomania because, despite its frequent presence in ancient Egyptian monumental and funerary contexts, the obelisk has rarely been used in advertising (Schnitzler 2004, 165). Thus, as Bernadette Schnitzler points out, although advertising may be guided by economic priorities, it can offer a space for reflection on modern tendencies and sensibilities, in the case in point, the absurdity an attack on the obelisk would represent.

Fig. 10. Refrigerator magnet in shape of an obelisk

So, regarding any obelisk, it can always be asked: What does it represent? In the words of Carrasco: ‘Nothing? Absolutely nothing? There is no historical representation. It has no symbolic value, as it is void of meanings. It is not related to anything, having neither moral support nor spiritual meaning’. If its construction means nothing in relation to history, can we contemplate it from the artistic point of view? Does it not manifest some aesthetic tendency? Is it not the work of some sculptor? Many Argentineans, like Carrasco, may think that although it is 67

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In Buenos Aires, it is also possible to buy refrigerator magnets with the image of the obelisk, together with images of tango dancers and the logos of the sports clubs that enjoy the widest support, such as Boca Juniors, as we see below: The investigation of the relationship between the consumer/ producer, at an industrial level, of pieces of Egyptomania, is also an excellent virgin field of historical research, as is the case of the stone pyramids, obelisks, and other objects, sold by the thousands, throughout the world. Such an investigation is currently underway in the south of Brazil. In relation to obelisks, it is necessary to report the existence of phenomena peculiar to their research within Egyptomania, such as the almost complete loss of the original meaning of the word and the transformation of the symbol (Bakos 2004, 74). Again, as occurred with the figure of the pyramid, so too with the adoption of the obelisk, we found the creation of a new antiquity in South America, in which the original purpose and shape has been changed, as shown by the example from Cuzco, Peru. One of the best examples of the transformation of the monument is to be found in Rio de Janeiro: the fruit of a project for the reurbanisation of Rio de Janeiro started in 1996, the obelisk in Ipanema – in reality a rounded column, thirty metres tall, with a sphere on top instead of the original pyramidal shape – caused a great deal of controversy at the time.

Fig. 11. Obelisk with wings at the Cuzco airport, Peru wrote that there were no obelisks in their cities. When we became aware of their existence and again wrote or sent photographs, we received, in the second reply, the confirmation that in fact there were obelisks.

For some Cariocas (natives of the city of Rio de Janeiro), this monument, besides being in very bad taste, would hamper the traffic entering the district of Ipanema. The protests were also concerned with a portico, to be erected and used as a walkway, which was not built because the residents of the neighbouring buildings impeded its construction, alleging that their apartments would be exposed to the view of passers-by. For these reasons, the monument has become known as the ‘obelisk of discord.’

Despite the research difficulties, the dozens of obelisks we listed allow us to state that the reasons for which they were erected fall into four categories: in homage to individuals, as boundary markers, to commemorate dates, and to commemorate anniversaries of colonisation. With the help of Egyptology, we continue to see popular icons of Egyptomania everywhere. It is important to point out those that refer to the period of Amenophis IV, later known as Akhenaton. Egyptian power reached a watershed under his rule. By denying old traditions, building a city in an isolated location, today known as Tell el Amarna, and accepting the existence of a single divinity – Aten – he virtually neglected Egypt at a time when the Hittites were becoming a powerful rival nation. After his death, although Ramses from the 19th to 20th dynasties fought bravely, the empire was lost.

Another very bizarre example is the obelisk at the Cuzco airport in Peru. Visitors arriving in the historic city by air are surprised by the sight, upon exiting the terminal building on the way to the car park, of an obelisk with wings. This winged monument is probably unique in the world. Its history and the memory that it keeps are moving. It was built in honour of the first Peruvian pilot to fly over the Andes, who later died in a tragic accident while landing in the city of Puno, in the north of the country. The very word ‘obelisk’ seems to have disappeared from the basic colloquial vocabulary. When we researched obelisks here in Brazil, people frequently did not know the meaning of the word. The lack of knowledge led to a second big problem. We sent 145 questionnaires to the capitals of all the Brazilian states and several other cities in the countryside of some of them. We obtained a response rate of only 28%, that is, 41 messages. In three, people

In literature there are two main forms of appropriation of the figure of Akenaton and other personalities, explains Ciro Flamarion Cardoso. In the first, the narrative takes place in a recent epoch and the Egyptian pharaoh appears in the plot in a supernatural form; in the second, he appears as the result of the archaeological discovery of ‘lost tombs’. There is, moreover, the convergence of the two events at the same time. (Cardoso 2004, 179) 68

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Fig. 12. Washing machine powder advertisment There are numerous other examples of the practice of Egyptomania that appropriate images of Akhenaton and his family, demonstrating, in numerous ways, the degree of fascination that the life of the pharaoh and, mainly, of the royal family exercise in the world’s collective imagination. Due to its prestige, the family was even called into service for a soap powder advertisement here in Brazil.

mistress/queen, the goal was to move the centre of the Roman Empire to Alexandria. This ambition resulted in the assassination of Caesar and open confrontation between the Egyptians and the Romans. We all know of the defeat of the Egyptian armada, commanded by Mark Anthony, in the battle of Actium, 30 BC, by Octavius. This episode, which determined the end of Ancient Egypt, the death of Cleopatra, and the divination of Octavius as Augustus, is the most important historical landmark of Egyptomania. It concerns the transculturalisation of the divine power from the pharaoh to the monarch of the Empire, whose cornerstone was based on the Republican system. At the height of this change, so many appropriations

The dispute between the last of the powerful queens of the Macedonian line, Cleopatra VII, and her half-brother, Ptolomeu, drew the attention of Rome towards Egypt. When Julius Caesar invaded the country with his armies in support of Cleopatra, he was seeking to turn Egypt into a satellite of the Roman Empire. However, with the 69

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Fig. 13. Directors of the Hotel Conrad occurred that no museum would be able even to produce a catalogue.

invitation, 38 x 15 cm, with 26 pages. Its distribution was free and unrestricted, but obviously, it was aimed at tourists with money visiting the city and the Conrad Casino at that time of the year. With high-quality paper and magnificently printed, the brochure contains colour images of the tourist points of the city of Punta Del Este: restaurants, stores, and attractive and sophisticated designer products. There is no doubt that the advertisements were designed for wellheeled and fanciful tourists, accustomed to VIP, 5-star service in vehicles equipped with televisions and bars with all drinks available and including, of course, champagne. Note the question that accompanies the illustration:

The great power of the monarch, transculturalised from Egypt to Europe, passed over land and sea and became part of the American collective imagination. This is seen currently in the practice of Egyptomania with the use of the title pharaoh, royal insignia, robes, costumes, and everyday objects from the Ancient Egyptian court. A motel in São Paulo, of monumental proportions, has the name pharaoh. Its owners, when interviewed for the research, explained that the choice of name and of decoration seeks to establish an association between the idea of the riches, prosperity and solidity of pharaonic power and, by analogy, their clients (Bakos, 2004, 95).

‘Make your dreams come true. Who has never dreamt at some time of living, at least for one day, the dream life seen in the films?’

There is a dance bar in Santiago, Chile, called Pharaoh that uses, in its publicity, images of pyramids, Ancient Egyptian gods such as Anubis, the jackal, Horus and images of the Egyptian monarch with his royal insignia.

There are two advertisements in the brochure regarding the ball to be held in the Conrad Hotel. The first, located at the top of the front cover, is based on the scene of an Egyptian-style hall, with six columns in the background covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions and images of Egyptian gods.

On December 30, 2004, the brochure advertising the New Year’s Ball at the Conrad Hotel, in Punta Del Este, the famous Uruguayan beach resort, had as its title ‘A night on the Nile’. One wonders, in the 3rd millennium, about the choice of the theme for a party in the southern extreme of South America.

Charming and relaxed, the central figure represents Mangoldses III – the Pharaoh of the Conrad dynasty. On his right, there is a beautiful young woman, richly dressed, wearing free interpretations of Egyptian tunics and jewellery, known as Silvilufertiti – the Marketempress. To the left, the Pharaoh is accompanied by another Egyptian governor, standing, wearing a white crown, from Upper

In order to understand the context of the party better, note the generous dimensions of the brochure containing the 70

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Egypt, entitled Vipnamenotep I, the Pharaoh of Kasinops. Again, to the left there is yet another seated monarch, also wearing a crown from Upper Egypt, called Sernakamon II, the Governing Pharaoh.

a meeting point of specific forms of valuing Ancient Egypt: Egyptology, Egyptomania and Egyptophilia. Final Remarks We finish in multidisciplinary consonance, to parody the thought of two social scientists: Jean-Michel Du Bon Sallmann (1995), from anthropology, and Zilá Bernd, comparative literature. The first recommends the good use of sources from cultural history. In the analyses of Egyptomania, this means understanding that no creation in this field is neutral, that it is necessary to study the context of their production and the logic of the creator that not always corresponds to the logic of the historian. The second, in divulging the definition of a new American identity through the thoughts of several authors, teaches the researcher new paths. In the case of Egyptomania, we learn that there is a diverse and long journey through frontiers, some imperceptible, until Ancient Egypt arrives at the American continent. Moreover, this line of thought leads us to suggest the adoption of the concept of transculturalisation in place of the word ‘re-use’, in relation to examples of Egyptomania, which with the prefix ‘re’ implies return, nostalgia and repetition, while transculturalisation implies the notion of crossing, change, and transformation. Thus, the examples of Egyptomania presented here should be analysed in relation to their impure identity and valued for their differences, as they constitute our memory and are inventions of antiquity in South America.

Besides the central figures, who appear to be directors of the hotel, as they also sign their names above their titles, there are six more characters, all dressed in clothes and ornaments from Ancient Egypt. The second advertisement for ‘A night on the Nile’ is found on page 4 of the brochure. The scene is constructed around an image of the Hotel Conrad. The original Sphinx from Chephren, with its 19m., is particularly conspicuous in this composition because of the disproportion between its size and that of the building. It appears, this time, as a protective figure of the Hotel Conrad, instead of the mausoleum of Chephren, although the Great Pyramid of Cheops is located to the right and helps to compose the pharaonic context, exemplifying ostentation and power. The images fixed in the sand take on a particularly apt symbolism: the uncountable grains supporting the monuments would represent the multitude the Hotel Conrad has the capacity to shelter and entertain (Chevalier 1969, 825). A small caption at the foot of the image completes the message. It states that the great hall of the Conrad Hotel is going to be decorated with six hundred meters of papyrus specially imported from Egypt and decorated with recreations of the sculptures of the Sphinx and Tutankhamon, in which 11 tons of sand will be used. The hosts are going to exhibit an original costume of the imperial guard of Ramses II. The advertisement further promises a majestic night in which more than five hundred gods and goddesses, from every region together with members of the nobility, will enjoy a pharaonic night and be entertained in a grand style.

Acknowledgments I would like to thank to all those who contributed in the completion of this paper. I am grateful to Ana Paula Jesus (PUCRS) for the very creative advertisement on the obelisk on Av. 9 de Julio, to Diego Vargas Barcelos (PUCRS) who provided the political cartoon of Ricardo Lagos and Tania Lubisco for the brochure of New Year’s Ball at the Conrad Hotel. My greatest thanks go to Pedro Paulo Funari and Renata Senna Garraffoni, who offered me the opportunity to reflect on this fascinating topic. Financial support was provided by a grant from Conselho Nacional de Pesquisa (CNPq) and Mr. Tim Donovan revised the manuscript.

The Egyptian appropriations of the New Year’s party in Uruguay were produced with a basic minimum of historical knowledge, as is demonstrated by some of the details of the organisation and publicity for the event. Some criteria are shown and care taken in the choice and the visual presentation of some icons of Egyptian history – the Sphinx, the pyramids and the royal insignia. They represent

References: Albano, S., 2004, Michel Foucalt: glosario de aplicaciones. (Buenos Aires: Quadrata). Baczko, B., 1986, ‘Imaginação social’, Enciclopédia Einaudi, 5: 296-332. Bakos, M.M., 2004, ‘Egyptianizing motifs in architecture and art in Brazil’ in Humbert, J.M & Price, C. (eds.) Imhotep today: egyptianizing architecture. (London: UCL), pp. 231-245. Bakos, M.M., 2004, Egiptomania. O Egito no Brasil. (São Paulo: Paris Editorial). Bakos, M.M., 2004, ‘El antiguo Egipto en Brasil: história de la egiptologia en Brasil’. ArqueoWeb Revista Eletrônica, 5, 3. Bernd, Z., 2003, Americanidade e transferências culturais. (Porto Alegre: Movimento). 71

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Bolanos, A., 1999, ‘Alejo Carpentier: o concerto da transculturação e da identidade’, in: In: Bernd, Z. & Lopes, C. (eds.) Identidades estéticas compósitas., (Porto Alegre, Canoas: Centro Universitário La Salle), pp. 214-238. Cardoso, C., 2004, ‘Egiptomania na literatura’, in Bakos, M.M. (ed.), Egiptomania. O Egito no Brasil. (São Paulo: Paris Editorial), pp. 173-190. Champion, T., 2004, ‘Beyond Egyptology: Egypt in 19th and 20th century. Archaeology and anthropology’, in Ucko, P. & Champion, T. (eds.), The wisdom of Egypt: (London: UCL). Chevalier, J. & Gheerbrant, A. (eds.), 1969, A dictionary of symbols. (Cambridge: Basil Blackwell). Curl, J., 1994, The Egyptian revival: a recurring theme in history of taste. (New York: Manchester,: Manchester University Press). Fazzini, R. A. & Mckercher, M., 2004. ‘Egyptomania and American architecture’, in.: Humbert, J.M & Price, C. (eds.) Imhotep today: egyptianizing architecture. (London: UCL). Funari, P. P. A. & Garrafoni, R. S., 2004, Textos didáticos. História antiga na sala de aula. (Campinas: IFCH/ UNICAMP). Funari, R., 2006 Imagens do Egito Antigo. Um estudo de representações históricas (São Paulo: Annablume/Fapesp). Goff, J. le, 1992, História e memória. (Campinas: Editora da Unicamp). Hassan, F., 2004, ‘Imperialist appropriations of Egyptian obelisks’, in Jeffreys, D. (ed.), Views of ancient egypt since Napoleon Bonaparte: imperialism, colonialism and modern appropriation (London: UCL). Humbert, J.M. (ed.), 1994, Egyptomania. Egypt in Western Art 1730-1930. (Ottawa: Éditions e La Réunion des Musées Nationaux). Humbert, J.M. (ed.), 1994, L’Égyptomanie à l’éupreuve de l’archéologie (Paris: Musée du Louvre). Jacks, N., 1999, Querencia. Cultura regional como mediação simbólica. (Porto Alegre: Editora da Universidade). Lant, A., 1996, ‘L´Antiquité égyptienne revue par le cinéma’, in.: Humbert, J.M. (ed.). L’Égyptomanie à l’éupreuve de l’archéologie, (Paris: Musée du Louvre). Tartarini, J., 1999, ‘El obelisco’, in: Prebisch, A. (ed.), Una vanguardia con tradición. (Buenos Aires: CEDODAL). Saballa,V., 1995, ‘Egiptologia no Rio Grande do Sul: simbologia e manifestações’, in Bakos, M. M. et Pozzer, K. M. P. (eds.). III Jornada de estudos do Oriente antigo: Línguas, escritas e imaginários. (Porto Alegre: Editora da PUCRS). Sallmann, J. M., 1995, ‘Du bon usage des sources en histoire culturelle. Analyse compare des process d´inquisition et des process de beatification’ Revista de História, 133, pp. 37-48. Schnitzler, B., 2004, ‘Hijacked images: ancient Egypt in French commercial advertising’, in MaCdonald, S. & Rice, M. (eds.), Consuming ancient Egypt. (London: UCL). Schwarcz, L., 1998, As barbas do Imperador (São Paulo, Ed. Schwarcz).

72

Egypt and Brazil: an educational approach Raquel dos Santos Funari

Research Associate, Center for Strategic Studies (NEE/Unicamp), Brazil

Introduction: Egypt and Brazilian children A blockbuster which fascinated a massive number of teenagers and young adults in the 1990s, The Mummy presented a mix of special effects in which mummies, tumblebugs, sarcophagus, and Egyptian paintings were brought to life on the screens of movie theatres. On newsstands, pharaos and the Sphinx also helped selling dozens of publications-from cartoons to scientific magazines, most of them aimed at young adults, a reliable group of consumers when Ancient Egypt is the subject (Bakos 1994; 1996). On broadcast television, as well as cable channels, it is always possible to watch a science fiction film or documentary in which Egypt is the theme. In games, archeologists, mummies and pharaohs are part in adventures and thrilling hunts in a virtual world (Donadoni 1990; Gómez Espelozin and Pérez Largacha 1997). In the web, when accessing any search site it easy to find thousands of references and Web pages on the subject, from those maintained by researchers and institutions to those done by young adults fascinated with the world of pyramids and the Sphinx. So then, why not taking advantage of this mass communication appeal which sees in the Egypt a neverending inspiration to make the learning of History more attractive to teenagers and children? The more students understand that History is not a subject related to facts far away in time and space but a possibility to interact with the world (Pinsky, and Pinsky 2003, 28; Karnal 2003), the more they will wish to know, identify, compare and relate the past to their own realities (Teodoro 2003). When I started teaching History some years ago I faced groups of students aged ten to twelve who seemed eager for activities that could raise their attention and interest. One of first themes dealt was Ancient Egypt, whose mystery attracted and fascinated them. Nevertheless, the

material available was not always interesting. Many times, emphasizing dynasties and the chronology made the subject tiring. At that time it was not exactly usual to use other sources such as films or any more creative pedagogical strategy. Besides, the reduced number of lessons made it difficult to pursue further discussion. In fact, traditional material available to teachers and students was not particularly useful. In History books, contents were organized in chronological or time sequence (Ancient, Medieval, Modern and Contemporary) and catalogued in strict theme frames (Brazilian History and World History). This way, elementary students almost never dealt with the theme of Egypt as the main content. This would not prevent Egypt from being dealt with in groups of younger learners. Activities like listening, singing and role playing stories as well as drama games made them get started, exercised their imagination, stimulated the creative process, increased understanding and encouraged interacting with narratives. These activities certainly reinforce the learning of reading and writing. Ancient Egypt as content appears in Brazilian History books for groups of students aged 11. However, the texts present much summarized representations. It is basically about society, the pharaoh, the Nile River the writing (hieroglyphs), religion, pyramids and the Sphinx. After this fast presentation, the subject will be dealt with in the following school year. Even then, the texts found in books deal with the subject in a simplified and even shallow way. Complex as they may be, the topics in this kind of material are summarized in a single paragraph and most of the times out of context. The lives of countryside people in ancient Egypt are described with little or no link to the social structure of the civilization. Egyptian history as a whole is presented in a static way not exactly related to the other civilizations contemporary to it, and this only reinforces ideas that were filled with preconceived or even meaningless notions. A good example of it is the famous quotation by Herodotus on the Nile River: ‘Egypt is a gift from the Nile’. This is frequently found in books without showing the reader the point of view of the Greek historian

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coming from the historical conditions of Greece in the fifth century BC.

Did not harm animals Did not do evil instead of good Did not make a poor person poorer Did not make others suffer or cry Did not kill.

This deficiency is still more alarming when it is noticed that most students own only course books. Research carried out by Vera Mazagão for the polling Instituto Paulo Montenegro/Ibope concluded that 59% of the most commonly found books in Brazilian homes are, in fact, course books. Only the Bible1 (86%), dictionaries (65%) and cook books are more common than course books.

Students were then asked to answer the question: Did a dead person when facing Gods and Goddesses say these sentences? Think about each sentence. Which of these actions would be grounds for punishment? Which would be considered faithful even if not contained in law?

A proposal of innovative activities It cannot be denied, however, that in recent decades, some books aiming to make classroom strategies more efficient lead students to gain true knowledge. Books are part of developing learning strategies, the basic tool for understanding history as a narrative of the past. History is a series of speech about world and society that can be interpreted in many ways through different understanding. What is written and taught about the past in this way is connected to current reality. The new standards set in History teaching and the study of Egyptomania and Egyptology allowed a great step forward the learning of Ancient Egypt. Some examples follow.

In the book Nova história crítica (‘New critical history’) by Mário Schmidt (2004 98; 101), there is an item ‘Critical Reflections,’ in which an interesting reflection about racism is proposed based on Ancient Egypt, the great dark skinned Civilization. In the cinema and on television, the actors who play the ancient Egyptians are normally white-skinned and even blue-eyed. Nevertheless, Egyptian people were darkskinned Africans. As you can see in the sculpted panel, the two young nobles in the times of the pharaoh have African features: thick lips and curly hair put up in a plait. They wore make up on their eyes and eyebrows. Unfortunately, for a long time, prejudice from Europeans against darkskinned people led them not notice who the real creators of the wonderful Ancient Egyptian Civilization were. (Nowadays, however, Arabs, mostly white skinned people, mainly compose the Egyptian people).

In the book Navegando pela História (‘Navigating History’) by Sílvia Panazzo and Maria Luisa Vaz (2004 85), the following activity is proposed: ‘Imagine you own a travel agency and name it. Collect what you have learned about Ancient Egypt as well as Egypt at present times to organize a trip to that country. Write a short text on Ancient Egypt so as to raise the interest of tourists. In this leaflet, also include short trips to the Nile River and a visit to the Pyramids, religious temples and other monuments built in the Middle Ages. You and your group should add pictures of the places to be visited. Beside each picture, write a short note explaining the importance of the tourist sights, giving attention to and pointing out the transformations that happened in Egyptian society’. That is an interesting proposal since it gives the chance to deal with essential concepts in History, such as time, images and statistics, among others. The pupil builds speech and above all, does so in a pleasant, fun way.

In a society like Brazil’s, where racial prejudice is normally concealed, this activity generates the possibility of a discussion on the importance of the points in common when comparing Brazil to this great civilization on the African Continent, stigmatized by slavery (Bernal 1996; 2003; Castilhos 1984). It also gives the opportunity to figure out how an image of the past can be built in a nonaccurate way. In general terms, all these activities are related to the Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais (National Syllabus), which are the directions set by the government. These propose that cross-cultural themes be explored in the classroom, as well as the concepts of cultural diversity and citizenship. In the case of History, it is understood that through it people build their identities. History is interpretation, the work of Historians, just as are other discourses about the past (Jenkins 1999).

In the book História em documento, imagem e texto (‘History through documents, image and text’) by Joelza Rodrigues (2004 115), there is a small text about values. Students are then asked to compare the contents of the text to the current rules of companionship. This type of task allows students to notice commonalities and differences among societies and historical periods and also stimulates expressing points of view:

Proposals One thing that can be explored in class is guided searches in which students are asked to organize a theme dictionary on Ancient Egypt, focusing on specific aspects of the civilization such as religion. Such an exercise will enable students to get in touch with different writers as well as encyclopedias, dictionaries, books and even texts taken

Did not commit unfaithful acts against men Over 50% of the people who say they own books own only one: the Bible (Veja magazine year 36,n.29,23/07/2003,p.30). If this is indeed the case, then we can treat it as a reference source referring to Egypt, since themes such as the slavery of the Hebrews (history of Joseph and Moses) and the escape of Mary, Joseph and Jesus are commonly read.

1

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these possibilities. In the book Cleópatra e sua víbora (‘Cleopatra and her viper’), by Margaret Simpson (2002), there are documents on historical facts that can be used by teachers in a pleasant way. It shows that History is not static and allows students to be in touch with Ancient Egypt in a fun way. The author presents a text on the Nile River:

from the web. When dealing with the Web, a careful follow-up should be performed, since simply copying and pasting texts does not lead to learning. With course books and resource materials, the same thing occurs. Egypt, with its undeniable appeal, creates an excellent field to exercise different abilities to interpret and produce knowledge by students, not only based on course books. Set in a contemporary Brazilian city, Deus me Livre (‘God Forbid’) deals with social problems in a poor neighborhood harmed by plagues from Ancient Egypt, Biblical passages from the Old Testament about slavery and the Hebrew flight from Egypt. This way, when discussing such an old civilization, students will also analyze contemporary problems such as the absence of sanitary structures and social injustices. Egypt, which seemed so distant in time and space, turns out to be absolutely present.

A long string of Egypt was green and fertile. The Nile is a very long river that runs in the middle of Egypt. It receives the waters of Ethiopia and Central Africa and ends in the Mediterranean Sea. Last century, the twentieth, an enormous blockage was build but before it, the river flooded, becoming even wider. Water covered many kilometers. When the level went down, the river had left black mud in which everything that was planted would blossom. Egyptians grew things in these enormous fields for thousands of years, since pharaoh times, even before it. They became experts in agriculture. They built up channels to irrigate further lands with the water from the river. Along the Nile, to the south, in the so-called High Egypt there were villages, towns and temples (Simpson 2002, 32-33).

When working with Portuguese language teachers, the production of a writing task about Ancient Egypt, done individually or in groups, can be suggested to students. The piece of writing that follows, produced in a similar experience, shows how this kind of activity can be creative and enriching from a pedagogical point of view. In this case, an old Egyptian document is given life when the pair of young writers includes it in their narrative:

In the collection ‘A vida no tempo dos deuses’ (‘Life in the time of the gods’), I published the book O Egito dos faraós e sacerdotes (‘Egypt of pharaohs and priests’) (Funari 2001), designed for students aged eleven. The book deals with the History and culture of Ancient Egypt, proposing the analysis of everyday life of different social groups, such as countryside people, royalty and the priesthood. It also focuses on the changes in this civilization up to Cleopatra, the last independent queen. In this work, the reader has contact with some aspects that are less stressed and little dealt with in books, such as the lives of workers, housing and the existence of villages mostly in Egyptian civilization. Other activities proposed in the book can make lessons more enjoyable and more dynamic, such as the production of a variety of learning games, such as crosswords, dominoes, flash cards, creation of panels and even simulations of the dissection of organs. It is worth remembering, however, that Egypt is the civilization students had heard about before coming to class. As a result, there will be no lack of resource materials so that teachers can create their own activities in class: magazines, booklets in newspapers and even the Bible, a permanent reference source on Egypt. Teachers will certainly have loads of possibilities to work with.

The theft of the tomb We were in Egypt. It was a sunny day. The place was absolutely deserted and the water from our bottle was gone. When we got to a river, we decided to fill the bottles and, to our surprise, we found out that this river was called the Nile. Let us say the prayer of the Nile. Amanda, we don’t know what it’s like. Oh, Marcelo let’s check the History book. It’s on page 57. Right! Is the book on you? No, but I know it by heart. Save, you, Nile! Which spreads on this soil. And brings Egypt to life! Mysterious is your way out of shadows. In this day in which life is celebrated! While irrigating the fields created by Rá You make the cattle live You-never-ending-that waters the soil’ (Amanda and Marcelo, Centro Educacional Brandão, São Paulo).

The most important thing is to focus on the enjoyable aspect in the learning process and raise students’ interest in History. Memorizing is only temporary, so it should be replaced by students’ own production, essential for them to learn to produce and organize ideas (Funari 2003, 101).

There are still many resource books on Egypt that could be used by teachers. It is worth mentioning that these books are of great importance for the diversifying possibilities for activities. Two other examples are enough to show

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Raquel dos Santos Funari

Acknowledgments Many thanks to those who helped in the research and in the writing of this chapter: Margaret Bakos, Juan José Castilhos, André Leonardo Chevitarese, Maria Helena Rocha Oliveira Costa, Pedro Paulo A. Funari, Melissa Ferronato, Fekri Hassan, Lynn Meskell, Ana Pinõn, Lílian Ferreira dos Santos. Thanks also for the institutional support of the Center for Strategic Studies (NEE/UNICAMP).

References Bernal, M., 1996, Atenea negra. (Barcelona: Crítica). Bernal, M., 2003, “A imagem da Grécia antiga como uma ferramenta para o colonialismo e para a hegemonia européia”, in: Funari, P.P.A. (ed.) Repensando o mundo antigo (Campinas: IFCH/UNICAMP). Castilhos, J.J., 1984, ‘Los antiguos egípcios, negros o blancos?’, Aegyptus Antiqua 5, pp. 14-18. Donadoni, S.; Curto, S. and Donadoni Roveri, A. M.. Egipto Del mito a la egiptologia. Milan: Fabbri, 1990. Funari, P.P.A., 2003, ‘A renovação da história antiga’, in Karnal, L. (ed.), História na sala de aula: conceitos, práticas e propostas, (São Paulo: Contexto). Funari, R. S., 2001, O Egito dos faraós e sacerdotes. (São Paulo: Ática). Gómez Espelosín, Francisco Javier & Pérez Largacha, Antonio. Egiptomania. El mito de Egipto de los griegos a nosotros. Madrid: Alianza, 1997. Jenkins, K., 1999, Re-thinking History, (London: Routledge). Karnal, L. (org.). História na Sala de Aula: conceitos, práticas e propostas. São Paulo: Contexto, 2003. Panazzo, S. & Vaz, M.L. Navegando pela História, 5a. série. São Paulo, Quinteto, 2004. Rodrigues, J. História em Documento, 5a. série. São Paulo, FTD, 2004. Pinsky, J. and Pinsky, C.B., 2003, ‘Por uma história prazerosa e conseqüente’, in Karnal, L. (ed.), História na sala de aula: conceitos, práticas e propostas, (São Paulo: Contexto). Simpson, M., 2002, Cleópatra e sua víbora. (São Paulo: Cia das Letras). Schmidt, M. Nova História Crítica, 5a. série. São Paulo, Editora Nova Geração, 2004. Teodoro, J., 2003, ‘Educação para um mundo em transformação’, Karnal, L. (ed.), História na sala de aula: conceitos, práticas e propostas, (São Paulo: Contexto).

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Section II Ancient economy, politics and society: evidence and interpretive models

The symbolic meaning of the Vitruvian city Alexandros Ph. Lagopoulos Department of Architecture, Aristotle University Thessaloniki, Greece

De architectura Vitruvius’s De architectura represents the actual zero point of Western architectural theory. His text could not have been written without the earlier written works of a whole series of Greek architects, which have unfortunately all been lost. Vitruvius makes repeated references to their names and uses their ideas, although he seems to know their works from secondary sources (Fleury 1990, XLI); he also makes abundant use of Greek technical terminology. However, even if Vitruvius may be considered as the end of the line of late Classical and Hellenistic theoretical thought on architecture, transmitted to him through vulgarized manuals (Gros 1988, 50, 53), his book is not a copy of a Greek model. Vitruvius states that he is the first to have written an integrated work on architecture, and Philippe Fleury subscribes to his view and the originality of the book; it seems that the Greek authors were limited to the writing of case studies. For more than five centuries, the understanding of the Vitruvian city was based on the interpretation of the chapters on the city alone (chapters IV and VII of Book I), that is, on the interpretation of a (sub)text detached from its context, the whole of the ten books of De architectura. Such an operation, faulty even in empirical terms, is even more so for semiotic theory, for which the full meaning of a part of a text can be grasped only by inserting it within the text as a whole. Below, I propose to analyze the work of Vitruvius with the help of semiotics, especially the concept of code. I mean by code what Algirdas Julien Greimas and Joseph Courtés (1979, 39, 197-198) call a ‘partial semantic code’, a concept akin to Greimas’s concept of ‘isotopy’. A code is a structured set of sememes (a sememe is the signification of a word), either isolated or as parts of elementary phrases, all of which have a common central seme (the unit of meaning which together with other semes composes the meaning of a sememe). Thus, a code constitutes a matrix categorizing reality, a specific perspective on the world, or otherwise a specific relevancy within the cultural universe of a society. In his discussion of the city, Vitruvius proposes a city founded on salubrity, i.e., the hygienic code, to be achieved through avoidance of the prevailing winds, and it is the salubrity factor that until recently has attracted the almost

exclusive interest of scholars who have commented upon the Vitruvian city. I shall try to show, however, that this factor, of the order of the material, cannot for Vitruvius be detached from three other crucial components, of the order of the symbolic: the cosmic, the anthropomorphic, and the aesthetic codes. The theory of architecture in De architectura Vitruvius writes (in chapter II of Book I) that architecture consists of ordering (ordinatio – he refers to the Greek word τάξις), disposition (dispositio – he refers to διάθεσις), eurythmia (he transliterates ευρυθμία), symmetria (from συμμετρία), appropriateness (decor) and distribution (distributio – he refers to οικονομία). He defines ordering as: a. the proper adjustment of the measures of the individual components of the work – which for Fleury (1990, 106, n. 2) is inseparable from the proportions between the measures of the members of the work – and b. when applied to the whole work, as the establishment of proportions resulting in symmetria (see also Watzinger 1909, 210-211 and Frézouls 1968, 445). The ordering is constituted by quantity (quantitas – he refers to the Greek ποσότης), which is the choice of modules based on the whole work and the harmonious realization of the whole work due to the different parts of its members (cf. Falus 1979, 257). Disposition is: a. the proper placing of the elements of a work and b. the tasteful realization of a work of high quality that results from this placement. The reference here is to the process of drawing of the future building, in plan and front elevation – both in scale – and in perspective. For Vitruvius, the aim, but also the effect, of disposition as an activity is eurythmia, since disposition is accompanied by quality (vs. quantity); eurythmia should be related to the effect of the architectural composition on the eye of the viewer. Eurythmia implies: a. a graceful semblance (venusta species) and b. a proportionate appearance, residing in the composition of the members. It is achieved when the relations between the height, the width and the length of the members are correct, and in the whole when all elements correspond to the proper symmetria. Vitruvius further defines eurythmia – which as presented here may

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be misleading – in Book VI (II: 1-5). According to this passage, since certain things appear to the eye as other than what they really are, the architect must make (subtle) adjustments, i.e., add to or subtract from the symmetria of the building (cf. III.III.11) according to the nature or requirements of the site. The operation of adding or subtracting leads to a balanced appearance and presupposes not only theory but also a fine judgment: first we define the symmetria and then, on its basis, the modifications are correctly deduced. In this manner, he writes, eurythmia will be convincing to the viewer. Eurythmia is thus founded on and deduced from symmetria. Now, if we compare chapter II of Book I and chapter I (1, 3, 4 and 9) of Book III, symmetria is conceived: a. as the commensurability of each member of a work – that is, of its dimensions – to the whole work, whence (see Gros 1990, 60, n. 4) b. the commensurability between the members (see also Watzinger 1909, 211). We understand that these two kinds of relation, which are considered as established by nature or by art which imitates nature, are the foundations of beauty (Frézouls 1968, 442, 443, 445-446). Symmetria is founded on proportio – Vitruvius gives the Greek term αναλογία – and is linked to the definition of a common unit of measurement, a module. Thus, symmetria is a system of proportions (see also Falus 1979, 256, 259, 260, 262, n. 23, 264).

Fig. 1. The gnomon on the leveled marble slate (according to Fleury 1990). of this philosophical cosmic order in the domain of the ‘arts’ was symmetria, namely the commensurability of the parts of a work to each other and to the whole (Pollitt 1974, 15-16, 17, 26, 162, 167; Grassi 1962, for example, 49-53; Raven 1951, 147-148). Symmetria is an aesthetic (or rather quasi-aesthetic) and cosmic principle, through which the work of art is imbued with and participates in the cosmic harmony. As we shall see, the concept is used by Vitruvius in exactly the same sense (see also Gros 1990, LVI-LVII and 57, n. 2); indeed, this is not the only case in which Vitruvius’s thought shows Pythagorean influences (Kessissoglu 1993, 89-90, 100). Symmetria is the nuclear concept of De architectura (see also Gros 2001, 16, 22) and, as I shall show, of the Vitruvian city.

Appropriateness is generally the carefully workedout aspect of a work of art of high quality realized with approved elements (members following the principle of symmetria? – see Fleury 1990, 116, n. 3). It is achieved by rule, by custom or through adjustment to nature. In the first case, the type of a temple is adjusted to the nature of the god adored therein, and in general a building is adjusted to the status of its owner (VI.V.3); in the second case, the parts of a building must fit together.

The windrose and urban planning theory The city proposed by Vitruvius is related to a windrose. He starts by stating that according to certain authors there are four winds: solanus blowing from the equinoxial sunrise, auster from the south, favonius from the equinoxial sunset and septentrio from the north. But, he says, those who have studied the subject more profoundly teach that the winds are eight, and he gives as example the octagonal ‘Tower of the Winds’, as it is called today, in Athens.

Distribution is: a. the suitable use of materials and the plot, and b. the wise equilibrium of expenses for the work: use must be made of local materials. Thus, it follows from Vitruvius (see also VI.V) that distributing also includes the architectural response to the needs of the owners, their wealth, profession and social status, their personality, the uses required, the geographical character of the site (urban vs. rural) and the status of public buildings – factors that are combined in different ways.

The directions of the eight winds, according to Vitruvius (I.VI), are found in the following manner: a horizontal marble slate is placed in the middle of the city (it can be replaced by a well-prepared and leveled ground). In the middle of the slate is placed a bronze gnomon – an instrument consisting of a vertical rod on a horizontal base (Fig.. 1). About the fifth hour before midday the extreme point of its shadow is marked, and then a circle is traced through a compass with the position of the gnomon as centre and the distance between it and the above point as the radius. A second point is marked when after midday the extremity of the shadow again touches the circle, this shadow being equal in size with the morning shadow. With these two points as centers, two intersecting arcs are traced, and the straight line passing through their intersection and the centre, and extending to the opposite part of the circle, gives the N-S direction. In this manner, Vitruvius locates true north and the meridian line.

Edmond Frézouls observes that, while symmetria is presented as being on the same level as the other concepts, in reality it rules them, as is attested by its omnipresence in De architectura. The appearance of beauty is eurythmia, but the essence of it is symmetria (Frézouls 1968, 444-445). Symmetria is, as it were, objective beauty. The principle of symmetria was the nuclear concept of the classical Greek worldview. For Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, numbers and their relations are the essence of all things, indeed of the universe (κόσμος), and through them the order of the latter is constituted. In this manner, numbers in Pythagorean philosophy acquire an ontological status and a sacred nature. The equivalent 80

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Vitruvius then asks us to take the 1/16 of the circumference of the circle and, with as centers the two intersections of the meridian line with the circumference, make marks on the latter both to the right and to the left of this line – he obviously means for us to take as radius the chord corresponding to the above arc, but he does not clarify how to perform this operation (Plommer 1971, 161). Two diameters should unite these points by twos and thus the two eighths corresponding to the south (auster) and the north (septentrio) wind will be defined. The remaining parts of the circumference should be divided in equal parts, three to the right and three to the left, and with the tracing of the appropriate diameters the equal divisions of the eight winds will be obtained. The remaining winds (and sectors) are solanus (E), eurus (SE) coming from the winter (solsticial) sunrise, favonius (W), africus (SW) from the winter sunset, caurus (NW) and aquilo (NE) – Fig.. 2. The number of the winds (eight), writes Vitruvius, is related to both their names and the orientations from whence they blow (I.VI: 6-7, 12-13). This analytical description of the tracing of the eight-part windrose is linked, as we shall see, to a tantalizingly laconic description of the tracing of the street network of what is obviously a new city (see also Fleury 1990, XCVI).

Fig. 2. The eight-part windrose of Vitruvius according to the most ancient extant manuscript of his work, Harleianus 2767. Three manuscripts of his text include a figure of the eight-part windrose (Granger 1931).

The theory of the elements holds an important position for Vitruvius. Organisms are constituted, as he writes (I.IV: 5-8), by the elements, the stoicheia (στοιχεια) of the Greeks, which are heat, humidity (water), earth, and air, and the qualities of living beings are determined, according to their species, by mixtures of these elements naturally proportioned. We recognize here the Pythagorean principle of isonomia (ισονομία), that is, the right proportion and equilibrium of the opposing elements of the body. Isonomia was for the Greeks the manifestation of the cosmic order in the domain of biology and closely akin to symmetria (see Raven 1951, 150). It is clear from the very nature of the elements that they are cosmic also for Vitruvius. Much later in his work (VIII. Praef.: 1-2) he is explicit on this point. Another term used there for the elements is ‘principles’: they are the principles of all things and, not only are all things born from them, but they also are nourished, grow and are preserved by their power. Too much or too little of one of them seems to destroy, for Vitruvius, the necessary equilibrium of the four elements.

the quality of water, and pasture (earth), which he proposes to study through the inspection of entrails according to the Ancients (this kind of procedure was used by the Etruscans); then follows a discussion of the combined conditions under which the establishment of the walls on a marsh is acceptable, one of which is its being in contact with the sea. After discussing the positive and negative characteristics of sites, and the orientation of the city walls, Vitruvius turns to the construction of the walls and to their towers, passing thus from salubrity to the military factor (I.V), but he returns to salubrity with the next and crucial chapter. Operating from the outside inwards, he refers to ‘the division into lots ... and the orientation of the avenues (platearum) and the alleys (angiportuum)’ – elsewhere he also uses the term vicus. These – and here we have the reference to the network of streets and its relation to the winds – ‘will be rightly oriented if we plan not to let the winds blow through the alleys’ (I.VI.1); the winds can be cold, hot or humid. Thus, after the discussion of the salubrity of the site in respect to three of the four elements – and that of the military factor – Vitruvius comes now to the last element, air. Protection from the winds allows a site and an organism to be healthy. This protection is achieved if the tracing of the avenues and alleys is not oriented in the direction of the winds, but follows the ‘angles [he means the vertices] formed between two directions of the winds’ (I.VI.7). Thus, we shall be able to protect the dwellings and public streets from the violence of the winds, which break on the angles of the buildings and are dissipated. Otherwise, the rush of the winds coming from the open spaces of the sky and their abundant blowing constrained in the narrow alleys lead to their circulating with violence.

Francesco Pellati stresses the existence of a strong, though not direct, impact of Empedoclean theory on the views of Vitruvius concerning the elements, while also indicating the Pythagorean influence on both. He rightly considers that for Vitruvius sites are composed solely of the four elements and are related to their various combinations (Pellati 1951, 243-245, 254, n. 1, 256, 258-259). In fact, the four elements are introduced from the very beginning of Vitruvius’s planning theory. In the narrative of Book I, he refers, as we saw, first to the topography of the site (earth), fog, frost and marshes (water), temperature (fire) and breezes (air). He then discusses heat in connection to orientation. Still in the context of the salubrious site, after the theory of the elements (I.IV: 9-12) he passes to 81

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Fig. 3. Galiani’s reconstruction of the Vitruvian city as an octagonal radial-concentric city (Portoghesi 1968).

Fig. 4. The grid system of the Roman surveyors for the tracing of the street network and the blocks of a settlement (according to Müller 1961).

The Vitruvian city

the land and is convenient for infrastructures. But for the Romans, as for the Greeks, it was also filled with cosmic connotations. Fleury (1990, 186-187, n. 2) is firm that Vitruvius proposes a grid plan (see also Schlikker (1940, 42-43, n. 26)). He concludes that the vertex of the gnomon is placed on a vertex of the octagon; the result is that each of the sides of the gnomon will pass below the next vertex of the octagon and through the second vertex (Fig.. 5a). On the basis of this operation, Fleury traces a grid plan (Fig.. 5b) that also establishes, in the spirit of Vitruvius, a hierarchy of streets, including two types, the main streets or plateae and the secondary ones, angiporti, and gives the latter an orientation perpendicular to the former.

Before analyzing the deeper meaning of the Vitruvian city, we need to examine its pattern. On this point, Vitruvius is laconic in the extreme. We just saw above that the streets are oriented to the ‘angles’ between two directions; these are the points marked on the circumference of the windrose, which according to Vitruvius are also the vertices of an octagon. He adds one more piece of information: in order to orient the network of the alleys, one should place the gnomon ‘between the vertices of the octagon’ (inter angulos octagoni) (I.VI.13); he adds a drawing showing, as he says, the way to avoid the harmful winds by moving the alignments of the avenues and alleys out of their course – unfortunately, the drawing has been lost.

The cosmic man and the cosmic site

By far the most common interpretation of this description is that it refers to a radial-concentric plan. For example, Galiani, who published his edition of Vitruvius in 1758, proposes placing the vertex of the right-angled gnomon in the centre of the windrose and its sides between the centre and the vertices of the octagon. But this operation does not follow the Vitruvian precept of ‘between the vertices’ (cf. Fleury 1990, 186, n. 2) – see Fig. 3.

Living organisms in general and man in particular constitute for Vitruvius, as for the Greeks, mixtures of the four elements. These mixtures have specific and different proportions for birds (cf. the element air), fish (cf. water), and terrestrial animals (cf. earth), proportions that secure their equilibrium and thus their good health. We may conclude that, since man is a composition of the four cosmic elements, he is a microcosm. The condition of this microcosm is dependent for Vitruvius on two kinds of orientation, each of which represents a relation to a cosmic element. The first element is fire, related to the heat of the sun; when out of proportion, heat destroys the equilibrium of the elements. The second is air, which acts in a similar way: the winds must be well proportioned, that is, not violent but sweet. The tracing of the windrose and the street network, and that of the walls in respect to the sun, are, then, the urban planning devices through which one can achieve the right dose of the corresponding element and thus maintain the cosmic equilibrium in man.

If we assume that Vitruvius instructs us to put the vertex of the gnomon in the centre of the windrose, thus paraphrasing ‘between the vertices’ to mean ‘between the centre and the vertices’, then we come up with a radial plan. Admittedly, the temptation to do so and to arrive at a radial plan is strong, since the circle, its centre and the symmetrically disposed diameters are the elements of the Vitruvian windrose. In other words, the pressure of the text pushes us toward the radial plan. The fact, however, that this reading violates the literal text prompts us to seek another reading, which is not only literal, but also in line with actual Roman practices.

Thus, the cosmic equilibrium of the substance of man-asmicrocosm is secured by the elements and is mediated by the orientation and form of the city. But the site on which

In fact, the Roman urban model was a grid plan (Fig.. 4). It has the advantage of a quick and easy division of 82

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Fig. 5. a. The gnomon and the operation effected with it. b. The grid plan as traced after this operation (both according to Fleury 1990). the city is located is also of the same nature as man. For Vitruvius (I.IV.4), there are healthy and unhealthy sites, and even in the former organisms become weak from the heat in summer, while even the very unhealthy sites become healthy in winter because cold strengthens. Fleury (1990, 127, n. 4.1) observes this shift from organism to site and considers that there may have been an omission in the text of a second reference to the organism, because for him it is not literally sites that become solid from cold, but men living in them. But it is quite possible that there is no word missing and the shift is due to the close analogy for Vitruvius between sites and organisms.

this circumference that the origins of the winds and the trajectory of the sun meet. According to Frontinus and Hyginus, the Etruscan augurs, the haruspices, divided earth into a right northern part and a left southern part; thus, we can deduce that the dividing line, the E-W axis, corresponded to the apparent course of the sun (see Fleury 1990, 160, n. 4). According to Pliny the Elder, the Etruscans divided the celestial circle into sixteen parts – i.e., an eight-part division subdivided into equal halves – arranged around two main axes orientated N-S and E-W, the former being the principal one. The line of view was from north to south, and there was a left, eastern and favorable part and a right, western and unfavorable

Sites, like organisms, are in fact discussed by Vitruvius in relation to the four elements. The site is in its substance homologous to the organism, since it is composed o the same four elements and each element must show specific properties. Not only is man a microcosm, but so is the site on which the city will be founded. The cosmic windrose and the cosmic city In Book VI (I.5), Vitruvius gives an image of the universe according to which the upper and lower parts of the universe meet on a circumference located on the plane that also includes the horizontal section of the earth (and passes through its centre); this circumference is the celestial horizon (see also Gros 2001, 22). The horizon extends as a circle between east and west and is naturally level. We may deduce that the trajectory of the sun touches this horizon, sunrises and sunsets being points on it. After the reference to these two cardinal points, Vitruvius traces a straight line from north to south. The fact that the circumference of the earth is concentric to the celestial horizon, and the similarity between the windrose and the circle of the horizon including the cardinal points, lead to the conclusion that the windrose also connotes the horizontal section of the universe, that is, it is an abridged cosmogram. It is on

Fig. 6. The Etruscan division of the celestial circle: 1: Left, eastern and favorable part. 2: Right, western and unfavorable part. 83

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one (Fig.. 6). The same north-to-south direction, or one towards the east, was used by Roman priests during the foundation rite of a settlement, when they projected the celestial templum on earth, as well as by surveyors (Müller 1961, 26, 38-45).

as I have tried to show, the site is a composition of the four elements and thus is governed by the same laws. The cosmic order is thus manifested in man in its aspect of isonomia. Man is also the vehicle of symmetria. We read in chapter I (1-4) of Book III that a temple cannot but follow symmetria, which characterizes the members of a properly-shaped man. Nature has shaped the human body according to certain norms. The navel is the centre of the body. If a man lies on his back with hands and legs spread diagonally, and we consider his navel as the centre of a circle, the circumference will pass from the extremities of his fingers and toes. As Gros observes (1990, 66, n. 3 and 2001, 22), the inscription within a circle or a sphere demonstrates the accomplishment and perfection of a composition. But also, writes Vitruvius, we discover a square: the height from the soles of the feet to the top of the head is equal to the width of the outstretched hands (III.I: 3-4). Gros (1990, 67, n. 4) notes here that Vitruvius establishes an implicit relation of equivalence between the two geometrical figures, but does not specify any kind of geometrical relation between them; Gros comments that their relation, i.e., the squaring of the circle, is one of the obsessional themes of ancient geometry.

The similarity of the Vitruvian windrose with the Etruscan celestial circle adds new evidence for its cosmic nature and shows its integration into the Etruscan and Roman tradition. Simultaneously, this integration reveals the continuity between his windrose and the Italian urban planning tradition. In fact, during the traditional foundation rite of a settlement, the augur sought to project the celestial templum on earth. To do so, he would sit on a stone, which was thought of as attached to the centre of the universe. The form of the earthly templum, the projection on earth of the celestial templum, included two perpendicular oriented axes, symbolically identical with those of the celestial circle. The templum was one of the elements linking the settlement to the universe. The Roman foundation rite was in all probability the continuation of the Etruscan rite. It was composed of three parts: inauguratio, limitatio and consecratio, and the creation of the templum was the nucleus of inauguratio. The cardo, the S-N axis of the settlement symbolizing the axis of the universe, and the decumanus, the E-W axis of the settlement symbolizing the course of the sun, followed the axes of the templum. Given the contiguity of the forum with the intersection of these main streets of the settlement, the templum was linked to the forum (see, for example, Müller 1961, 17-21, 24-35, 39-45; Rykwert 1976, 46-50, 90-91).

The conclusion that Vitruvius draws from the presentation of the rules that the body obeys is twofold: first, that nature has composed the body in such a manner that its individual members hold proportional relations to its total form; and second, that this is why the Ancients established the principle that there must be a perfect proportional correspondence between the parts and the whole of a work (see also III.I.9). Gros (1990, 70, n. 3) also points out that Vitruvius’s views on the circle and the square add meaning to the concept of the totality of a work; the inscription of a façade or volume within a simple geometrical form reveals to the eyes of the observer the value and harmony of symmetria.

It becomes, I believe, clear that not only the form of the windrose, but also its function, derive from the templum tradition. The windrose represents Vitruvius’s reinterpretation and rationalization of a long tradition, a kind of technocratic view of tradition. It is intended to replace the traditional templum with a new one, having a similar form, the same function – to guide the orientation of the street network – and the same location in relation to the forum. The templum was intended to bring the order of the universe down to the earth, and into the street network and the settlement. The cosmic windrose of Vitruvius should have the same aim, with the difference that it is explicit about a practical matter, the salubrity of the city, and leaves in the background the symbolic matters and the cosmic code. In the same way that the traditional settlement emerges from the cosmic templum, his city emerges from the cosmic windrose. This city then is cosmic, and ought to be so, because, as we saw, the Roman city was cosmic.

Returning to the main line of the argument, nature shaped the human body according to symmetria, and buildings, especially temples, must imitate the body by following the principle of symmetria (see also Gros 2001, 17). The laws of nature, which are quantitative and proportional, give to the body the symmetrical property of eurythmia, that is, a graceful semblance, and lay the foundations for the beauty of buildings: aesthetics derives from the laws of nature (see also Brown 1963, 106). The conclusion is that, just as for the Pythagoreans, so too for Vitruvius there is a cosmic order connected to the four elements and founded on number and proportion, of which symmetria is the aesthetic aspect. This is, in fact, not a pure aesthetics but a quasi-aesthetics, because it is a cosmic aesthetics: objective beauty is not a subjectively pleasing quality, but the result of the application of the laws governing the cosmos. Vitruvius’s city, as a work of man and as a cosmic city, must of necessity incorporate the laws of nature and symmetria, and as a model for built space, should have the attribute of beauty. The model for this city, the windrose, since it shows the dynamic structuring of

The body: the cosmic and the aesthetic We saw that the good health of the various kinds of living creatures is due to the specific proportions in each of them of the four cosmic elements. Thus, the cosmic interplay of the elements, active in the universe, is transferred to the individual organisms, including man, and acquires in each case a different structure. The organism is the field of a specific structuring of the cosmic elements: the laws of nature are integrated into the laws of the universe. Similarly, 84

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the cosmic element air, should also show symmetria (cf. Steckner 1984, 269).

of man. We get the impression that the windrose allowed Vitruvius to formulate a perfect geometrical complex, to which he also assimilates the body, although the constraints of the latter forced him to a looser conceptualization. The aesthetic perfection surrounding the urban competes with that of the body. The above inscription of the urban leading to a coherent combination of two perfect geometrical figures crowns, to use Gros’s observation on the circle, it’s meaning as a totality incorporating symmetria and reveals its beauty. But there is even more symmetria in the windrose.

The aesthetic city and the aesthetic windrose The cosmic richness of the Vitruvian city has with very few exceptions passed unnoticed, and the same is true of its aesthetics. For example, the excellent French historian of urban planning Pierre Lavedan (Lavedan and Hugueney 1966, 362-363) retains only the obvious, the salubrity factor, in Vitruvius’s urban proposal and the resulting orientation of the streets; as for aesthetics, he finds it only in the rules of proportion and symmetria for individual buildings. Fleury also writes (1990, CIII) that aesthetic considerations are totally absent from the Vitruvian city – and the interests of Caesar and Octavian in the renovation of Rome ignored – and justifies this presumed lack by stating that the description of the city is in an abridged form, and the intended readers of the work were not architects, but clients.

Vitruvius (III.I: 5-9), wanting to found the units of measurement on nature, makes reference to the perfect number of the Greeks, the number 10; this number he considers perfect because it follows from the number of the fingers of the two hands. Let us recall here that 10 was the perfect number for the Pythagoreans (called also ‘memory’) and is also the number of the books of Vitruvius’s own work.

We may, however, have a more concrete and deeper grasp of Vitruvius’s urban aesthetics by examining the context of his urban proposal. As we saw, his city is implicitly or explicitly connected to a square. The square had two major and interrelated qualities. First, it was considered as one of the fundamental geometrical figures and a constituent of the cube. Second, the fact that the ratio of any two sides of a square is equal to 1, the first integral number, had attracted attention. The importance of these qualities makes it plausible that they are consciously incorporated in Vitruvius’s urban square. If this is so, his proposal must be integrally related to proportion and to the aesthetics of the square. The square is also the unitary, generative and constantly repeated element of the city.

On the matter of the perfection of the number 10, Vitruvius also mentions Plato and contrasts his view with that of the ‘Mathematicians’ – the neo-Pythagoreans and the Euclideans as distinguished from the Pythagoreans – for whom the perfect number was 6 (see also Gros 1976, 689-700, 1990, 73, n. 1 and 2001, 18). Vitruvius knew that 6 was the foundation of the principle, which he attributes to the Pythagoreans, that a text should be no more than three cubes long, because the number of 216 lines of the cube corresponds to the volume of a cube with an edge having a length of 6 (216=63); this cube was called by the Pythagoreans σφαιρικός (spherical), because 216 ends with 6, and αποκαταστατικός, because, since each edge of it equals 6 units, it shows everywhere the same perfection (see Kessissoglu 1993, 103).

The possibility that this square is semantized with an aesthetic code increases further from its inscription within a circle. For the Pythagoreans, beauty derives from simplicity, regularity and order. This frequently implies reference to a centre and uniformity around it, a pattern which attains perfection with the circle and the sphere (Schlikker 1940, 67). For Vitruvius also, not only is the circle as such perfect, but the combination of the circle and the square marks his aesthetics of the body.

Later, as Vitruvius explains, the ancestors combined these two perfect numbers into one ‘most perfect’ number, 16. We should recall here the Etruscan division of the celestial circle into sixteen parts. On this basis, the number 16 would not only be derived from the body, but also from the universe. We may conclude that Vitruvius’s eight-part and octagonal windrose was considered by him to be related to the most perfect number, 16, both because of the numerical relation between 8 and 16 (16/2=8), and because he arrives at its form through a notional sixteen-sided polygon. Thus, the windrose seems to incorporate 16 in an indirect manner, and it also probably incorporates indirectly the number 6, in the form of the επίτριτος (6+(1/3)6=8).

In fact, the geometrical complex of the windrose-cumcity is almost the same as the geometry accompanying the human body (cf. Gros 1990, 172, n. 2). The geometry of the windrose is based on a centre, the combination of a circle and a square, the perpendicular axes of the former and of the latter, and radii (identified with the semi-axes). These same elements, in a less rigid geometrical form, accompany the human body: the navel as centre, the circle and the square, the perpendicular axes of the circle formed by the diagonally spread members, which also correspond to radii, and the perpendicular axes of the square, formed by the height of the body and the outstretched hands (though the four parts of these axes are not all equal).

Thus, the Vitruvian windrose is founded on perfect numbers, just as are the body and the universe. As in the case of the body, it articulates them with a geometry including a unit of measurement and symmetria. The unit is the radius of the circle. The symmetria is that there are 8 parts (delimited on each side by the unit), all parts are equal and each part is 1/8 of the whole. To conclude, the Vitruvian city is isomorphic to the structure of the human body (an anthropomorphic code)

With the windrose Vitruvius gives a specific geometrical relation between the two figures of circle and square, as he did not do in their encounter when delimiting the extremities 85

Alexandros Ph. Lagopoulos

eight and sixteen parts. He considers that the square within a circle is the preeminent cosmological diagram of the first Book and that the importance given to the orientation of the city parallels that given to the relation between the city and cosmography. The comparison between the homo ad circulum and the windrose leads Marconi to conclude that Vitruvius applies to the city the theory of the microcosm.

and depends on two major symbolic codes: a cosmic and a (quasi-) aesthetic code (see also Lagopoulos 2000). An important recent text by Gros investigates precisely the relationship established by Vitruvius between the body on the one hand, and the cosmic and the aesthetic on the other. Gros argues that Vitruvius relates the body to two purely abstract geometrical figures considered as perfect (an operation he opposes to the reality of the living, threedimensional body), which follow from and complement the numerical symmetria; the conception of these figures as perfect would be due to the influence of texts of Platonic inspiration. The number 6 for Vitruvius relates the body to the cube, allowing in this manner for the transition from numbers to geometry, and the same relationship is also valid for the square, while the circle relates the body to the sphere: the perfect man partakes of both the earth and the sky. This conception, which for Gros represents the high point of Vitruvius’s speculation, shows the coherence that exists in the work of Vitruvius between the body and the cosmic and aesthetic dimensions (Gros 2001, 15, 17-21).

What I feel is missing from Marconi’s argumentation is the systematic evidence from Vitruvius’s work that would support it. This is what I have attempted with the present essay. My conclusion is that behind Vitruvius’s urban text and his literal urban discourse there is a subtext – or rather a super-text – a world view, as Gros puts it (2001, 22), and a connotative discourse; and behind the codes of salubrity and defense there are the connotative cosmic and aesthetic codes and a connection to the anthropomorphic code. These codes are closely related to each other and unified by the laws of the universe and the sacredness attached to it. Their shared quality of symmetria offers Vitruvius an ontological anchoring for building and the city (see also Grassi 1962, 163). Thus, the above codes are not simple additions to, nor peripheral extensions or decorations of, the urban text. They are, in Vitruvius’s discourse, the hidden prime movers of the urban, and structure the nucleus of his ideology on built space, an ideology that was already present in his Greek sources.

Among the very few exceptions to the rationalist interpretation of Vitruvius’s city, in addition to the abovementioned article by Gros, is an excellent article by Paolo Marconi (1972). Discussing the windrose, Marconi stresses the role played in its construction by the circle, the pattern of the inscribed square and the divisions of the windrose into References

Falus, R., 1979. ‘Sur la théorie de module de Vitruve.’ Acta Archaeologica (Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae) 31 (1-2), 249-270. Fleury, P., (ed.), 1990, Vitruve, De l’architecture: Livre I. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Frézouls, E., 1968, ‘Sur la conception de l’art chez Vitruve.’ In J. Burian and L. Vidman, (eds.), Antiquitas graecoromana ac tempora nostra (Acta Congressus Internationalis Habiti Brunae Diebus 12-16 Mensis Aprilis MCMLXVI), pp. 439-449. (Prague: Academia). Granger, F., (ed.), 1931, Vitruvius, De architectura, vol. I (The Loeb Classical Library). Cambridge, (MA: Harvard University Press and London: Heinemann). Grassi, E., 1962, Die Theorie des Schönen in der Antike. (Cologne: M. DuMont Schauberg). Greimas, A. J. and Courtés, J., 1979, Sémiotique: Dictionnaire raisonnée de la théorie du langage. (Paris: Hachette). Gros, P., 1976, ‘Nombres irrationnels et nombres parfaits chez Vitruve.’ Mélanges d’Archéologie et d’Histoire de l’Ecole Française de Rome 88 (2), 669-704. Gros, P., 1988, ‘Vitruve et les ordres.’ In. Guillaume (ed.), Les traités d’architecture de la Renaissance, pp. 49-59. (Paris: Picard). Gros, P., 2001, ‘La géométrie platonicienne de la notice vitruvienne sur l’homme parfait (De architectura, III, 1, 2-3).’ Annali di Arcitettura, 15-24. Gros, P. (ed.), 1990, Vitruve, De l’architecture: Livre III. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres). Kessissoglu, A., 1993 Die fünfte Vorrede in Vitruvs ‘De architectura’. (Frankfurt: Peter Lang). Lagopoulos, A. P., 2000, ‘The cosmic and the aesthetic: Two hidden codes of the Vitruvian city.’ In Pierre Pellegrino, ed., L’espace dans l’image et dans le texte. (Colloque d’Urbino), pp. 132-140. (Urbino: QuattroVenti). Lavedan, P. and J. Hugueney, 1966, Histoire de l’urbanisme: Antiquité. (Paris: Henri Laurens). Marconi, P., 1972, ‘Il problema della forma della città nei teorici di architettura del rinascimento.’ Palladio n.s. 22: 49-88. Müller, W., 1961, Die heilige Stadt: Roma quadrata, himmlisches Jerusalem und die Mythe vom Weltnabel. (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer). Pellati, F., 1951, ‘La dottrina degli elementi nella fisica di Vitruvio.’ Rinascimento 2-4: 241-259. 86

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Plommer, H., 1971, ‘The circle of the winds in Vitruvius i.6.’ The Classical Review 21, 159-162. Pollitt, J.J., 1974, The Ancient View of Greek Art. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press). Portoghesi, P., (ed.), 1968, Dizionario enciclopedico di architettura e urbanistica, vol. I. Aalto-Cina. (Rome: Istituto Editoriale Romano). Raven, J.E., 1951, ‘Polyclitus and Pythagoreanism.’ Classical Quarterly 45, 147-152. Rykwert, J., 1976, The Idea of a Town: The Anthropology of Urban Form in Rome, Italy and the Ancient World. (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Schlikker, F. W., 1940, Hellenistische Vorstellungen von der Schönheit des Bauwerks nach Vitruv (Schriften zur Kunst des Altertums). (Berlin: Archäologisches Institut des Deutschen Reiches). Watzinger, C., 1909, ‘Vitruvstudien.’ Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 64, 202-223.

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Gladiator fights on the Northwestern frontier of the Roman Empire Renata Senna. Garraffoni Paraná Federal University, Brazil

Pedro Paulo A. Funari

State University of Campinas, Brazil

Introduction The importance of Archaeology for the study of the ancient world is now widely accepted. In recent decades, the epistemological developments in the study of material culture were crucial for a critical approach to the ancient world. These developments have changed the status of the material evidence as a source (Funari 2002). As the primacy of the ancient written sources over the material evidence has been criticized, the material evidence has become a useful instrument for a better understanding of the Roman past. Considering that the aim of the present conference1 is to discuss the frontiers of the Roman world, it is important to emphasize that recent archaeological research contributed to rethinking many aspects of the cultural and social organization at the frontiers of the Empire, such as the role of army and the relationship between Romans and native peoples2. Several issues, such as the image of the Roman army shaped in modern times by the contemporary experience of imperialism or the notion of ancient limes, have been discussed (Isaac 1988), and modern scholarship has become more accurate, avoiding the use of misleading analytic procedures. In relation to the concept of limes, for instance, many scholars have pointed out that although limes is a Latin term, it does not correspond to the Roman notion of frontier but is more related to the modern notion of a border between nation-states than to a proper Roman concept (Isaac 1988). This debate is one example of a theoretic perspective that emphasizes the urgency to rethink concepts and interpretative models to understand the Roman world. In this context, a post-processual archaeological approach is useful for understanding Roman and native peoples’ cultural relationship in frontier areas. This perspective allows us to think these cultural frames in a less normative experience and it also becomes an interesting way to 1 This paper was read at the 20th International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies, which was celebrated at León, Spain, in September of 2006. 2 See, for instance: Funari 2000; Funari and Carreras 1998; Funari and Carreras, 2000.

explore power relations, expressed in terms of concepts such as domination and resistance at the frontiers of the Roman Empire (Funari, Hall & Jones 1999). Taking these issues into account, the aim of this paper is to discuss the active role that the material evidence plays in discourses of power and identity. For this occasion, we decided to present some considerations on a controversial subject: gladiators’ presentations on the frontiers of the Roman Empire. Traditionally accepted as a symbol of Roman power, the Roman amphitheatres seemed to us an interesting subject to discuss some interpretative models and to propose another approach to this particular kind of Roman entertainment in a less homogenous way. The Roman amphitheatre Recent studies have demonstrated that the first century AD is a very important period for gladiatorial presentations: different emperors, from Augustus to Hadrian, gave many munera to celebrate their victories. The increase of gladiatorial presentations and wild-beast hunts, uenationes, are always associated with imperial triumphs, and scholars have being pointing out the central role that spectacles played in Roman public life (Edmondson 1996). To support all of these presentations many amphitheatres were built in various parts of the Roman Empire; they became a polemic subject among scholars. Numerous archaeological investigations at different Roman sites have been finding structures of this unique type of building. Since the 19th century different kinds of publications have studied spectacula: some scholars presented reports on their excavations and discussed the architectural frames of the building and others have developed theories and concepts to understand not only the amphitheatres themselves but also the role these shows played in their interior, as a social, for that matter, Roman activity. The most traditional approach is the theory of Romanization in which the amphitheatres were understood as symbol of Roman power. This approach selects a feature to describe a typical Roman city, such as the forum, bridges, theatres, amphitheatres, and so on. The repetition of these structures

Renata Senna. Garraffoni and Pedro Paulo A. Funari

in different parts of the Roman Empire indicated that the city of Rome was a kind of model that might be imitated in all of the Roman provinces as shared features of Roman culture (Mierse 2000). The most ubiquitous interpretive model is grounded on the Weberian Idealtypus.

amphitheatres in Roman London, as well as, to our mind, on some frontiers of the Roman Empire. These distinctions must be made because the idea of ‘mixed structure’, for instance, in which the building was defined for spectacles as either theatre or amphitheatre, is more a modern convention than a Roman use. Bateman, following Golvin’s model, argues that this kind of structure is more common in Western provinces, as it can be found in some parts of Gaul, linked to non-Roman cult centres. Theatre and amphitheatre were not considered as different and opposed, but several frontier peoples possibly interpreted them as multifunctional architectural structures.

Concerning amphitheatres, this interpretive model has turned these buildings and their spectacles into a static activity, supposing that their structure reflected a fixed hierarchical order common to all parts of the Empire. Edmondson, in his study of the Roman arena, argues that this model must be rethought because Roman society was not an abstracted and absolute system, but it was constituted through practice. In this context, he believes that the Roman amphitheatres must be understood in a dynamical way, considering the structural particularities of each building, their location and the possibility of redefinition of the social boundaries during the gladiatorial presentations inside of them.

To emphasize this relationship between Roman buildings and local cults is interesting because it allows us to think about them as spaces of interaction of Roman and native peoples. It also indicates that the Romans did not build the same kind of structure: in some situations they preferred to construct an amphitheatre and in other parts of the Empire they decided to erect the ‘mixed structure’, which means that the frontier amphitheatres were not identical and did not have the same social and cultural functions.

Edmondson also states that because of the lack of evidence many scholars put together material of different periods and geographical areas and produced a homogeneous picture of the buildings and the gladiator fights. He argues that such an approach must be reconsidered and points out the possibility of studying local variation to shed some light on this debate.

If some buildings were erected near local shrines, others were constructed beside forts, as a complement to them. Those are known as the military amphitheatres. This definition is also a modern one, because for some scholars it is related to the area in which they were constructed, and for others the definition is based on size, as they argue that the properly military ones are smaller. There is, however, little agreement about this point. Golvin and Bomgardner (2000), for instance, suggested that the so-called ‘military’ amphitheatre is not very different structurally from the ‘civil’ ones, built by soldiers, an argument that is not accepted by Bateman. Bateman, supported by Le Roux, argues that soldiers were supposed to perform many tasks and regarding buildings, they not only built amphitheatres, but they were also supposed to construct many other structures such as temples, roads and so on, which means that they could have built many amphitheatres.

As the aim of this paper is to discuss the gladiatorial fights on the Roman frontier, this dynamic approach to the arenas seems an interesting way to discuss the relationship between Romans and natives in frontier territories. We understand that the amphitheatres expressed cultural features in historical context, interacting with different social groups and materializing points of view. In short, the amphitheatres in the Roman frontier will be not understood here as a scenario of the gladiatorial presentations but as spaces that produced cultural meaning and social relationships. Amphitheatres of the Roman frontier Golvin (1988) describes the different types of Roman amphitheatres, considering their form and function. Most of those, which were built on the frontiers, are known as mixed structure (theatre and amphitheatre), and a great number are located within the military area. These particularities, which can be observed in Britain, lead Bateman (1997, 73) to argue that to understand British arenas it is important to ask ‘for whom and by whom’ they were built.

In this context, for Bateman the difference was in neither the form nor the construction, but rather in the function. His hypothesis is based on the idea that an amphitheatre located near a military fort was a symbol of military power and Roman justice, where prisoners were punished. This function was different from those of the ‘mixed’ amphitheatre nearby the local shrine, as we have seen above.

According to Bateman, these questions are important to suggest some of the contexts in which British amphitheatres were built. He also states that these buildings must be understood in terms of the relationship between the central state and the local political elite, the imperial building program and the degree of military intervention in the province (Bateman 1997, 74). These areas can provide a kind of starting-point to understand the role of

All those particularities must be emphasized because they show us the ability of Romans in building different kinds of buildings according to each necessity. The archaeological remains of those structures have shown that a variety of different construction techniques were used to built the walls, the drainage system, the chambers and surface according to the material that were available and according to the local topography. This can explain the 90

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diversity of shapes and sizes: although the amphitheatres have some structures that are common to them, the material used in the construction (such as marble, stones, bricks) and decoration depends on local province. The spectacles were not the same ones: in North Africa were found bones of different kind of African wild animals (Bomgardner 2000), but in British amphitheatres it is more common to find horse, sheep or cattle bones (Bateman 1997). Some scholars have also emphasized that in African amphitheatres more wild-beast hunts were expected than gladiatorial shows because most of them have a complex system of carceres for animals.

the conflicts and confrontations, as well as allows us to construct less homogeneous interpretations. Concluding remarks Many scholars have interpreted the amphitheatres as a symbol of Roman power and constructed an analytical model grounded on a normative principle that assumes that people who went to watch the gladiatorial presentations in amphitheatres were acculturated, that they were transformed from native people into Romans. As the acculturation model has being criticized in the last decades, the idea that people drop their own culture to adopt another one has been rethought because this implies a homogeneous concept of society and identity.

On the other hand, if one looks at Pompeii’s evidence such as the graffiti, it is easy to understand that gladiatorial shows were very popular in that region. The variety of graffiti and wall painting led us to consider the different perceptions of the gladiators’ presentations (Garraffoni 2005). Common people who went to the amphitheatres to watch the presentations have written most of those graffiti: some emphasized the swords or helmets, others the gladiators’ combat. There were also those persons who preferred to depict aspects of gladiators’ daily lives, such as training at the ludi and their skills, victories or defeats. Through these graffiti markings, gladiators became professionals with names and histories.

Most scholars who have defended acculturation as a sociological model have understood the arena and the gladiatorial shows through the lenses of literary sources. As we have noted, Edmondson argued that this perspective has explained the arenas as fixed structured that reflected static social order. The archaeological evidence from Roman amphitheatres, in contrast, suggests a great diversity of buildings. With different forms, functions and uses, they can provide an interesting corpus to construct a more pluralist approach to this particular kind of Roman entertainment. To study the archaeological evidence in its context contributes to demonstrating that archaeology is not a mere ‘handmaid to history’ and can help us to understand the past in different perspectives. (e.g. Funari et Zarankin 2001; Storey 1999).

Considering this, one can understand that the Roman elite, supported or not by the central Empire, erected those amphitheatres but the local people could have understood them differently. For some persons located near the military areas, munera could symbolize justice and punishment, whilst for others who saw them near the local shrine, they could express religious feelings and the games, a way to celebrate their spirituality (Clavel-Lèvêque 1984).

Acknowledgments: We owe thanks to José Remesal, Cesar Carreras and the members of CEIPAC (University of Barcelona), G. Storey, R. Hingley and W. Mierse. We must mention the support of the following Brazilian foundations: CNPq, Araucária Foundation, and Fapesp, whose grants enable us to carry out this research and provided support to attend to the XX Congreso Internacional de Estudios sobre la Frontera Romana in September 2006. We also would like to thank Campinas State University (Unicamp) and Paraná Federal University (UFPR). The ideas presented here are our own, for which we are, therefore, solely responsible.

These different perceptions challenge us to understand the Roman amphitheatre through a more pluralist approach. If one considers each context, the way each was built, their forms, functions and usages, the amphitheatres might not be understood only as symbols of Roman power, as states a more traditional approach, but can also be used as a place for popular riot, such as the one that occurred in AD 59 at Pompeii. This diversity is suggested because we believe it is important to assert that there were many possibilities to act in society and that archaeology can help us to study

References Bateman, N.C.W, 1997 ‘The London amphitheatre: Excavation 1987-1996’, Britannia, 28, pp. 51- 85. Bomgardner, D.L., 2002, The story of the Roman amphitheater, (London: Routledge). Carreras, C. and Funari, P.P.A., 2000, ‘Estado y mercado en el abastecimiento de bienes de consumo en el imperio romano: un estudio de caso de la distribuición de aceite español en Britannia’, História Econômica & História de Empresas, III.2, pp. 105-121. Clavel-Lèvêque, M., 1984, L’Empire en jeux – espace symbolique et pratique sociale dans le monde Romain, (Paris: Editions du Centre Nacional de la Recherce Scientifique). 91

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Edmondson, J.C., 1996, ‘Dynamic Arenas: Gladiatorial presentations in the city of Rome and the construction of Roman society during the Early Empire’, in: W. J. Slater (ed.) Roman theater and society, (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press). Funari, P.P.A. and Carreras, C., 1998 Britannia y el Mediterráneo: Estudios sobre el abastecimiento de aceite bético y africano em Britannia, (Barcelona: Publicacions Universitat de Barcelona). Funari, P.P.A. et Zarankin, A., 2001, ‘Abordajes arqueológicos de la vivienda doméstica en Pompeya: algunas consideraciones’, Gerión, 19, pp. 493-512. Funari, P.P.A. et Zarankin, A., 2003, ‘Social Archaeology of Housing from a Latin American perspective: a case study’, Journal of Social Archaeology, 3, 1, pp. 23-48. Funari, P.P.A., 2002, ‘The consumption of olive oil in Roman Britain and the role of the army’, in: P. Erdkamp (ed.), The Roman Army and the Economy, (Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben). Funari, P.P.A., Jones, S. and Hall, M., 1999, Historical Archaeology – Back from the Edge, (London: Routledge). Garraffoni, R.S, 2005, Gladiadores na Roma Antiga: dos combates às paixões cotidianas, (São Paulo: Editora Annablume/ FAPESP). Golvin, J-C., 1988, L’Amphiteatre Romain – Essai sur la théorisation de sa forme et de ses fonctions, (Paris: Publications du Centre Pierre). Isaac, B, 1988, ‘The meaning of the term limes and limitanei’ in: Journal of Roman Studies, 78, p. 146. Mierse, W.E., 2000, ‘To Build a city: Ancient urbanism on the Iberian Peninsula’, Revista de História da Arte e Arqueología, vol. 4, pp. 13-22. Storey, G.R., 1999, ‘Archaeology and Roman Society: Integrating Textual and Archaeological data’, Journal Of Archaeological Research, 7, (3), pp. 203-248.

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Modeling the Macro-Economics of the Roman Empire, or Globalization as World-Systems Without the Guilt Glenn R. Storey

Department of Classics and Anthropology, University of Iowa, USA

At a deep level, Roman imperial studies should continue to help us interrogate our own world and the values that we hold and seek to export to others. At a ‘deep level’, because consideration of this issue is rarely addressed in academic works; this was true in the early twentieth century and remains so today. Richard Hingley, Globalizing Roman Culture, 2005, p. 119 Introduction I wish to offer here a commentary on some current trends in the study of the ancient economy, discussing competing macro-models for the Roman Empire, and in the process, explicitly, rather than at a ‘deep level,’ ‘interrogat[ing] our own world and values’ as Hingley puts it. My starting point will be recent attempts to ‘globalize’ thought about the ancient world, including consideration of why that might be happening. Morris (2003) seems to detect a similar need to ‘deconstruct’ the origin of recent scholarship on ‘Mediterraneanism’ (Horden and Purcell 2000), as ‘shaped by larger social trends’ (Morris 2003, 32), and ‘Is it just a coincidence that more humanists started thinking about the Mediterranean as a whole at just the same time as social scientists and the European Union?’ (Morris 2003, 37). I respond that some of us were thinking precisely of that long before the appearance of The Corrupting Sea1. In a recent attempt to model the Roman economy (or more correctly, economies; Storey 2004), I argued for the need to move beyond the sterility of the formalist-substantivist or modernist-primitivist debates. I espoused a form of accommodation of modern models of political economy to the ancient situation. I came out in favor of Wallerstein’s 1   As an on-the-record proponent of world-systems analysis (Storey 2004), I am clearly privileging Immanuel Wallerstein, as the inspiration and architect of the model I am espousing, especially in my shameless mining of his recent mini-summa on world-systems (Wallerstein 2004). I am also just as clearly glossing over the vast literature on world-systems. What strikes me most about that literature when sampled, however, is how much of it criticizes Wallerstein for not going far enough, in pushing world-systems back in time before 1450 (Denemark et al. 2000; Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997). Frank (1998) best exemplifies this trend. As we shall see infra, the issue is whether the human tendency towards accumulation, or how it has been actualized in society, has changed in any significant way, whether recently, or in the distant past. Wallerstein (1992) argues for a significant change, Frank and Gills (1992, 1993) and Frank (1998) believe that there is no significant difference.

world-systems and world-economy as a possible model for the ancient Roman economy (a conclusion which had been building in me for some time), understanding that such an entity was somewhat different from the modern manifestations of world-economies. I would note here that world-systems, as Wallerstein advocates it, breaks down disciplinary boundaries and applies a unitary approach and thus has the potential to free us forever from slipping back into formalist/substantivist dichotomies. The reception to world-systems as a possible model for the ancient Mediterranean world that has appeared in the literature has been largely hostile (Shipley 1993; Davis 1998, 2001). It is quite different for the ancient world in general, inasmuch as many prehistorians are favorable and have tried to apply world-systems in the pre-modern world context (Blanton, Kowalewski and Feinman 1992; ChaseDunn 1992; Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997, 2000; Collins 1992; Feinman and Peregrine 1996; Hall and Chase-Dunn 1993; Moseley 1992)2, although there is a large contingent of anthropological archaeologists who are very critical of world-systems (e.g. Dietler 1995; Stein 1999 with references). Given that Richard Hingley (2005) has just published a work arguing the global nature of the Roman world and Bruce Hitchner (2007)3 is about to publish a study recommending analysis of the Roman economy as an early example of globalization4, when invited to participate 2   I would also like to note the timely appearance of Hornborg and Crumley (2007), the contents of which is extremely valuable and relevant, but has appeared too recently for me to incorporate its insights sufficiently into this analysis. 3   See also Tufts Journal 2005: http://tuftsjournal.tufts. edu/archive/ january/features/then_and_now.shtml) and http://www.tufts.edu/ communications/stories/020904GlobalizationRomans.htm. 4   A quick web search reveals that this analysis is times given that the Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference [TRAC] 2006 explored the issue of Roman globalization in one session titled: ‘Making ends

Glenn R. Storey

in this interesting volume, I decided to compare these major models for the study of the economy of the ancient Roman Empire. So, let us consider what globalization means in the modern context and then let us review some of the arguments going into an emerging Roman globalglobalization model.

That will do as a very basic primer of the concept of globalization. It works well because it ties successfully into Hingley’s (2005) argument that the culture of Rome was a global one, which can be talked about in terms similar to the modern globalization debate (Hingley 2005, 1). And, Hingley’s achievement in his recent book is to demonstrate convincingly that Rome was indeed an example of an early global culture, thus perhaps strengthening the case for the priority of cultural globalization:

Globalization Theory Waters (1995) offered an early review of the concept of globalization at a time when it was still possible to observe that the term was found in only 34 titles in the Library of Congress catalogue as of 1994, and had not occurred in a published title there prior to 1987 (Waters 1995, 2). Of course, there has been a monumental explosion in literature on globalization in the last ten years so that it is virtually impossible to keep track of it. In any event, Waters proffered a concise definition of globalization as: ‘A social process in which the constraints of geography on social and cultural arrangements recede and in which people become increasingly aware that they are receding’ (Waters 1995, 3). He noted that ‘modernization’ was a ‘predecessor and related concept’ and that globalization was a result of the expansion of European culture especially via capitalist development. Furthermore, Weberian ‘rationalization’ (or depersonalization of social relations through the refinement of technology and the application of specialized knowledge) was the globalizing ‘solvent’ (Waters 1995, 3-5). Waters theorized that globalization occurs in three main arenas of social life: the economic, political, and cultural, insisting that each of these is ‘structurally independent,’ although he asserts that the degree of cultural globalization is greater than in the other two arenas (Waters 1995, 7-10)5.

‘The argument adopted here is that, having rejected outmoded models of Roman imperialism that drew upon the culture of the nineteenth and earlier twentieth century, we should, instead, look to contemporary theory, as expressed by works on globalization, to develop rather more decentralized and dynamic images of the Roman world. Roman culture, in these terms could be adopted in a flexible manner to symbolize variable motivations’ (Hingley 2005, 109).6 To demonstrate Roman globalization, the common Roman currency and the widening use of money may be a marker of the growth of the state finance (cf. Hopkins 2002 [1995/1996], Hitchner 2005; most of the discussion below is taken from personal notes from Hitchner’s oral presentation [2004], which are mostly repeated or reiterated in 2005, 210-211). As the pound sterling was the common global currency of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (McMichael 2000), and the dollar is such in the twentieth and twenty-first, so had the sesterce that he thought Greek colonization was a result of Greek long-distance trading in the Western Mediterranean, rather than largely a phenomenon that originated with population pressure at home. Cook (1946, especially 80-87) argued contra, while Whitley (2001, 124-127) provided a recent summary showing that the terms of the debate have not changed significantly in the intervening years. While the question is clearly a false dichotomy, in that trade and colonization fed each other symbiotically, it remains true that there was no Greek ‘flag’ or even cultural koine that preceded trading carried on by individuals who came from the place that later was called Greece. They went to distant lands to attain the benefits and wealth of carrying on long-distance exchange, and although they may have enjoyed political favor from the powers that were current at the time in some cases, they did not require the political mechanisms of the state to carry on their activities. I prefer a model that gives some priority to economic factors, so I disagree with Waters that significant levels of exchange required political mechanisms to move beyond the local nexus. I would argue that the three forms of globalization identified are not in any way structurally independent but inextricably structurally interdependent. Coke bottles, McDonald’s or Roman terra sigillata are markers of economic, political and cultural ‘globalizing’. The political element of Roman pottery may be lacking or very hard to discern, but all three arenas are clearly present with Coke and McDonald’s. Seeing these entities as interdependent seems to me to be the essence of Wallerstein’s call for the breaking down of disciplinary barriers. 6   It is interesting reading Hingley (2005) in comparison to Horden and Purcell (2000). The former advocates the latter’s ‘connectivity’ and focuses on it as a key feature of the Roman world. Although Horden and Purcell feature connectivity as key, ‘fragmentation is the essential foundation’ in the words of one reviewer (Shaw 2001, 426) and that appears to be the feature the authors are most interested in. This is at times carried to the point that all hegemonic entities almost disappear. This result would be of course congenial to globalization theorists, as we shall see, but does have the potential of obscurantism, almost to the point of explaining away the Roman Empire. There are distinct advantages to a proper emphasis on fragmentation, but it should complement, not replace, the hegemonic.

meet or early globalization: Economies of power, culture and identity in the Roman world.’ The paper that most explicitly addressed the question of globalization, ‘Have you got what it takes to be a Roman’ by P. Perkins, suggests in the Abstract to the paper, ‘The burgeoning literature on globalization – of both culture and economy – frequently and simplistically cites the Roman Empire as an early example of globalization. Some more prudent commentators qualify it as ‘known world globalization’. But what do we as Romanists have to say about it?’ Abstracts posted at http://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/track06/sessions/ kolb.html, accessed February 22, 2007. There is also an interesting short piece from the 2004 SAAWG Journal (the South African Association of Women Graduates), by J. Bell, Globalization over the Past 2000 Years: Humanizing Globalization – Empowering Women, commences with the observation that ‘Globalization is by no means a new phenomenon. The Roman Empire, the first example of globalization, encompassed the whole known world 2000 years ago.’ Text at http://www.ifuw.org/ southafrica/index.htm, accessed February 22, 2007. So, the idea of Rome as an example of globalization is rapidly becoming recognized. But, as we will see by when we reach note 25, the notion may be already somewhat passé. 5   I do not find this priority of cultural globalization completely tenable. Waters (1995, 10) argues that ‘the ability of purely material exchanges to move beyond a local nexus hit its limit towards the end of the nineteenth century at which point they were transformed into political exchanges...’ I do not think trade, especially long-distance trade, is at all constrained by lack of political (or cultural) structure. Humans have traded since time immemorial, without the ability to communicate very intensively (note the phenomenon of ‘silent trade’ – Price 1980; Curtin 1984, 12-13; Haviland et al 2004, 470-471). Furthermore, regarding Greek colonization, for example, Blakeway (1933) defined the question as whether ‘trade followed the flag’ (1933, 171) or whether it was that ‘the flag followed trade’ (1933, 202), arguing for the latter, meaning

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small-scale cabotage, which multiplied thousands of times over, probably surpassed in scale the extent of official or semi-official transport. Cabotage closed the same gaps in the ancient Mediterranean world. Hitchner discusses how steamship transport in the nineteenth century aided this mobility, but he rightly points out there is no need for spectacular technical advances to make for a situation of emergent globalization (Hitchner 2005, 213-216).

(a very rough equivalent of a dollar) become the standard international currency of the ancient Roman world. There was a monetary fiscal policy (Andreau 1999) and a single currency that redefined the tax structure and laid the foundations of a global economy. It was the largest economy of the ancient western world, with unparalleled urban development, a standing army, and fewer people working in the subsistence agricultural sector than at any time before or since until the nineteenth century.

Possibly, there was per capita growth as well as growth in government revenues (cf. Hopkins 1980; 2002[1995/1996]; Hitchner 2005, 212-213). If so, it may have helped create an economy of scale, and unleash a consumer society that is hinted at in various places in Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, and delineated by Woolf (1998). There were large- and small-scale enterprises, and there was market development. Given that the environmental realities of the Roman Empire were similar to those in current United Europe, Hitchner implies that the economic realities of globalization could have been analogous. I echo that suggestion, but note that this evidence is equally compatible with a Wallersteinian world-economy.

Hitchner points out that most of the features of globalization were present in the Roman Empire (precisely as I have argued that they were for world-systems, Storey 2004). Hitchner notes that the Empire contained the equivalent of 36 modern countries in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa that were part of one political entity that had a central government that was ‘remote and benevolent’ in Hitchner’s words (2004). If I might utilize this aspect of his argument for my own purposes to support worldsystems, I would emphasize that this feature is very important, in that it allows us perhaps to relax Wallerstein’s own stricture that the Roman Empire was not a worldeconomy because it was one political entity rather than interconnected independent nation-state economies. I would argue that these separate regions behaved at times almost as separate nations and thus this feature is no bar to there being a Roman world-economy. Wallerstein recently noted that the concepts of his construct and those of Karl Polanyi could be melded, in expressing forms of economic organization as follows: Wallerstein’s ‘mini-systems’ (the units prior to world-systems) employ Polanyi’s reciprocity; his world-Empires employ redistribution; and his worldeconomies employ market-exchanges (Wallerstein 2004, 17). Wallerstein himself would probably agree that the three forms of economic organization do not fit perfectly into this scheme, and so the fact that the Roman Empire employed market-exchange on a grand scale would tend to suggest that it could count as a world-economy.

With progressive extensions of citizenship, culminating in Caracalla’s full grant in AD 212, Hitchner suggests that a ‘hybrid cultural identity’ developed, which can be described as ‘polyphonic identities in a shared matrix of aspiration and beliefs’ (2004) – clearly a form of cultural globalization. In contrast however, he notes that Roman military policy generated hatred, and therefore there is still plenty of scope for exploring the archaeology of resistance (early on explored by Bénabou 1976; Kurchin 1995; Webster 2001). Hitchner suggests that the open economic environment of the Roman Empire engendered more crime. Wallerstein has recently emphasized the role of identity in the functioning of world-systems (2004, 24-25, 36-39, 67-68), as well as the various forms of resistance that have arisen to challenge the world order of the world-system, beginning with the French Revolution and continuing up to the alleged present-day crisis in the modern world-system (2004, 60-90).

Hitchner notes that there was considerable local freedom in these separate regions of the Roman Empire, but that above all, there was a ‘new security order’ (2004) that guaranteed peace for most citizens. That peace allowed the Roman administration to begin to invest less in the army and more in infrastructure. Rome’s investment in infrastructure allowed the rapid movement of people, which is crucial to Horden and Purcell’s view (2000), positing a whole diaspora of opportunistic peoples exploiting the long coastline of the Mediterranean in short trips of exchange – the cabotage that purportedly moved a large concentration of resources around the Mediterranean in small steps. This movement of peoples was as unrestricted then as it was to be in the nineteenth century. It resulted in a change of labor distribution for that century, which may have analogously occurred under the Roman Empire. In the nineteenth century, railways closed the gaps between cities and their hinterlands. By analogy, the large-scale transport of bulk commodities encouraged and supported by the Roman administration, chiefly as a result of the annona provisioning for the city of Rome (Rickman 1980 is still standard on that issue), may have supplemented the

Lastly, there is the question of religion. Hitchner argues that religion and politics are entwined in global societies. Religion and religious practice provided a sense of community to the global Roman world, especially at first with the unifying character of the imperial cult, and later with the rise of Christianity resulting in the same. To Hitchner, Islam and Christianity both served as forces of globalization. It is just that in the twentieth century, capitalism replaced religion as the ideological basis for a unified global system. But these too are features that fit into a world-systems perspective perfectly comfortably: ‘In the final epoch of the Roman Empire, Christianity had become the state religion. This was normal, in the sense that most world-Empires had official ‘churches,’ that is, a set of religious functionaries who propagated a worldview which supported the imperial establishment and which constrained disintegrative forces. 95

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A notable example is Confucianism, but it is scarcely the only one. Among other things, these religions constrained capitalist thrusts, in the form of preaching against avarice (to be sure, more the avarice of private persons than the avarice of emperors)....One could argue that the [Christian] Church’s organizational strength visà-vis the multiple political entities was in fact its fatal flaw. The fact that it was ultimately not subordinate to lay political authority – as in some sense had always been the case with religions hitherto and elsewhere – fatally undercut its ability to serve the political authorities as their constraining force on proto-capitalist elements’ (Wallerstein 1992, 606-607).

a better approach to the analysis of ancient state and economy than either world-systems or ‘Romanization’. He offers a pre-capitalist globalization model as an alternative for the early economy, recommending its addition to the ‘historical toolbox’ (Hitchner 2004). There is much in Hitchner’s arguments that seems timely and directly on target. In his attempt to demonstrate economic growth in the high Roman Empire, he correctly notes that the Empire possessed seven important features: 1) advantageous physical environment; 2) a stable political, legal, and institutional climate; 3) investment in agriculture; 4) manufacturing outside of the household; 5) trade; 6) capital accumulation; and 7) technological progress (2005, 208). In demonstrating 4) above, he aptly notes (2005, 217): ‘It is less important in my view whether the legal, social, and productive organization of manufacturing was underdeveloped and less than febrile by modern industrial standards. What counts is responsiveness to demand’. He is also right that the sheer volume of manufactured goods on all sites in the Empire attests to the scale of industrial production (ibid.). These reflections, coupled with Hopkins’ update of his taxes and trade model (1980; 2002[1995/1996], which also argues well for modest growth, are the characteristics of the Roman Empire that I would cite also as evidence for the presence of a Wallersteinian world-economy.

The religious element in world-systems does tend to be an integrative instrument, which clearly fits easily into the globalization theorists’ scheme as a form of cultural globalization. For an early example of cultural and religious factors serving as an important integrating mechanism for a world-system, see Blanton and Feinman (1984) for the pan-Mesoamerican cultural elements that unified that cultural area. Woolf (2003) sees religion as a force that is much less unifying and defining of a cultural area (in this case, the Mediterranean). However, with the details of religious behavior within a region, there is likely to be little rhyme or reason due to the historically contingent nature of expressions of meta-cognitive aspects of religious behavior and thought. It is not so troubling to be unable to point to religious features that are uniquely characteristic of a world-system region; it is more informative to note how the Christian religion evolved after the Roman Empire, eventually breaking down the anti-capitalist societal taboos and making possible, as per Weber’s theory expressed in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1958), accommodation. Rather than seeing capitalism as a rival ideological basis for globalization, it is necessary to consider how they have worked in tandem to reverse the situation that Wallerstein has noted: previous religions helped state institutions keep the endless accumulation principle in check, but with the transition from feudalism to capitalism in the first centuries of the second millennium, Christianity made its peace with capitalism and became one of commerce’s strongest bulwarks. Globalization per se has little to do with that historical process.

Now why globalization would be preferable as a model for the Roman economy may lie in the way that globalization theorists think things work: ‘What is of interest here is not so much the nature of globalization theory, but the many things that it appears to reject. In fact, it sometimes seems as if globalization theorists spend almost as much time critiquing alternative perspectives and focuses as they do developing the theory itself’ (Ritzer 1998, 81). The perspectives and foci rejected are: 1) focus on nation-state; 2) focus on the West or the US; 3) concern with the impact of the west or the US; 4) concern with homogenization; 5) concern with modernity; 6) interest in modernization theory (Ritzer 1998, 81-82). Ritzer (1998, 81-94), point by point, demonstrates why none of these items can be rejected by globalization theorists, because the implied opposite of each of these is still very much in play in various versions of globalization. For example, the rejection of 4) is understandably and clearly to be belied by a book discussing a ‘McDonaldization thesis’ (Ritzer 1993, 1998), given that empty discarded McDonalds’ cartons are a feature of virtually every major city in the world. And, if as noted above by Waters (1995, 3; cf. Roberts 1992) that modernization and globalization are closely related concepts (as we shall see, ‘Romanization’ is a form of modernization), it is not going to be easy to argue why modernization is to be rejected and globalization embraced. In the ensuing discussion, it will be revealed that several of these other principles supposedly rejected by globalization theorists will be revealed to be less than completely credible rejections. So, because of these

Hitchner emphasizes that a number of globalizing factors seem to argue against the monolithic notion of Wallerstein that capitalism is the only economic mode that has produced a world-system (or globalization in his preferred formulation). Hitchner explicity rejects the notion that growth is a monopoly of capitalism. Even the most ardent world-system enthusiasts among prehistoric archaeologists agree that in some senses, Wallerstein is practically irrelevant in the various formulations of worldsystems applied to the ancient world, specifically in this relaxation of the need for the dominant economic mode to be capitalism (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997, 2003; Hall and Chase-Dunn 1993; Collins 1992; Peregrine and Feinman 1992). And thus, Hitchner argues that globalization provides 96

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problematic rejections, and because world-systems is a robust theory with a longer intellectual pedigree, I remain less than convinced by arguments that globalization is a superior model to world-systems. The rest of this chapter will explore the reasons why.

Or, as Hornborn (2007, 1) puts it: ‘In other words, the market prices set by the world system orchestrate an unequal exchange of material resources between different regions of the Earth system’. Hitchner fully appreciates this, as he rightly points out in his discussion of the development of the nonagricultural sector of the Roman economy that ‘[o] f particular interest is the growth of local manufacturing designed to replicate high-demand imports from Italy or other core-production areas...’ (2005, 217, italics mine). So, the world-systems core-periphery model is really a shorthand way to summarize the relations of factors of production. However, I would argue that the core/periphery concept can also, as generally interpreted, quite handily encapsulate the dynamics of an entire cultural system, as recently demonstrated by Junker (2006). In a review of the question of urbanization for pre-colonial Southeast Asian maritime polities, she demonstrated that Southeast Asian maritime polities look even more similar to the situation of the modern world than even the ancient Mediterranean, with their extremely fluid and high-volume sea-borne trade of bulk commodities7. Horden and Purcell’s (2000) view of constant short-distance exchange around the Mediterranean basin (their cabotage) is probably correct and certainly on a reasonably comparable scale to the later situation in Southeast Asia. The great similarities between these two cases show that a high volume of sea-borne exchange need not necessarily conform to Horden and Purcell’s view of a world of connections that is so highly fragmented that the effects of hierarchy are diminished, and thus supports the idea of the ‘democratic’ free-for-all that globalization implies8.

Critiques of world-systems Hitchner claims that world-systems have the ‘cumbersome’ core-periphery concept (Hitchner 2004). What is meant by ‘cumbersome?’ Core-periphery as a shorthand for the situation of interaction between polities that control more resources than others, and use that control for purposes of domination is hardly a ‘cumbersome’ notion. Wallerstein (2004, 11-12, 17) acknowledges his debt to Third World scholars whom he credits with generating the core/ periphery concept. He notes the contribution of Raúl Prebisch especially, whose work added the rather simple and obvious observation that international trade was not between equals (‘unequal exchange’); the countries that were stronger economically (the core) traded on favorable surplus-value terms with the weaker countries (the periphery). This is explicitly demonstrated by Eisenmenger and Giljum (2007) from very recent data, analyzed in a new fashion that associates economic and ecological factors. Wallerstein’s statements on core/periphery make very clear what the concept means: ‘A capitalist world-economy was said to be marked by an axial division of labor between core-like production processes and peripheral production processes, which resulted in unequal exchange favoring those involved in core-like production processes. Since such processes tended to group together in particular countries, one could use a shorthand language by talking of core and peripheral zones (or even core and peripheral states), as long as one remembered that it was the production processes and not the states that were core-like and peripheral. In world-systems analysis, core-periphery is a relational concept, not a pair of terms that are reified...’ (Wallerstein 2004, 17, italics original).

7   It is notable that many scholars, including those who critique the core/ periphery concept, seem easily to employ it. Apart from this example, Hingley (2005, 120) speaks of renewing focus upon Roman imperialism by looking at the ‘exploitation of societies on the margins of imperial control...(italics mine). Robertson (1992, 70) speaks of sociologists ‘interpreting Reformation-like movements as attempts from relatively peripheral areas in the world-system to challenge sacred assumptions in the prevailing world order...’ (italics mine). These quotes and Junker’s (2006) employment of the concept show that core and periphery are natural assumptions when we look at the distribution of cultures across a landscape, region or world. Trying to get rid of the concept can lead to a totally unrealistic view of undifferentiated egalitarian systems, counting equally in the hyper-relativistic world of post-modernity. On the other hand, as I pointed out previously (2004), there is plenty of truth that core and periphery can be largely ‘in the eye of the beholder.’ One person’s core can certainly be another person’s periphery, and vice-versa. If we are dealing with very large world-systems, what we might call ‘macroworld-systems’ (a natural extension of Wallerstein’s ‘mini-systems’), such as in the modern era, the European world-system and the East Asiatic world-system (Frank 1998), and for the ancient world, the Roman world-system and the Han China world-system, then very much can core and periphery be in the eye of the beholder. But within the macrosystems, geographic considerations, coupled with political histories of particular eras, can tell us reasonably clearly which are cores and which are peripheries in a world-system – i.e., it is possible to determine which regions are dominant and which are subordinate. It is not just in the eye of the beholder. 8   In most contexts, Horden and Purcell tend to focus on the highly localized, connected while fragmenting, nature of phenomena. To take a relevant example here, let us examine Roman roads. Horden and Purcell discuss local systems sprinkled here and there, and then in a bibliographic essay (2000, 562-563), but not the Roman road system as a whole. Hingley (2005, 78-79), by contrast, discusses the Roman road network as a highly effective tool for both physically and symbolically integrating different regions of the Empire, in language highly suggestive of the Horden and

And ‘What we mean by core-periphery is the degree of profitability of the production process. Since profitability is directly related to the degree of monopolization, what we essentially mean by core-like production processes is those that are controlled by quasi-monopolies. Peripheral processes are then those that are truly competitive. When exchange occurs, competitive products are in a weak position and quasi-monopolized products are in a strong position. As a result, there is a constant flow of surplus-value from the producers of peripheral products to the producers of core-like products. This has been called unequal exchange’ (Wallerstein 2004, 28). 97

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Stein (1999, 10-43) is very critical of world-systems, especially in terms of the core/periphery distinction, or, rather, in rejecting the idea that the core is completely dominant and the periphery is completely passive, claiming that such a situation has never been true; not for the modern world-system, and not for the Near East at the dawn of urbanism. The problem here and with many other similar critiques is that the core-periphery distinction has been made into a straw man that works overly mechanistically; i.e., every core, without exception and without fail, exploits the automaton, passive periphery in every possible way, and without letting up. The model should not be taken as that robotic. All that it really means is that cores – as a central tendency – function generally as exploitative of their peripheries. Of course there are exceptions and countertrends and failures on the part of the agents of the core to carry through their designs correctly, which, with rare exceptions, are, at least in appearance, directed to extract as much as possible from the periphery.

The significance of the core/periphery concept manifests itself further in how location may be the key to the hegemonies in world-systems that have been enjoyed in the past, notably Britain. Frank (2001, 2002) has shown how Britain stood at the apex of triangles of interaction (India, China, Britain, or the Atlantic triangular trade) to achieve dominance. This appeal to geographic location is a powerful way to explain hegemony, one that is unencumbered by any notion of superiority of culture or civilization – it is part of Frank’s general assault on the alleged Eurocentrism of the economic historical tradition (Frank 1998). Frank’s reply is ‘location, location, location’ (Frank 2001). It matters a great deal whether a particular polity is in a position geographically to dominate any historically contingent convergence of circumstances favoring economic monopolization. Thus, a viable global theory must deal squarely with issues of core/ periphery, whether as generally understood or as the technical descriptor of factors of production as clarified by Wallerstein. After all, the concept was developed by peripherals, who knew all too well what it felt like to be pushed to the margins.

That this tendency characterizes most core/periphery interactions in most imperial contexts seems hard to deny. It is possible that in pre-imperial situations, say for example, in accordance with Renfrew and Cherry’s peer-polity interaction model (PPI – Renfrew and Cherry 1986), core/periphery interactions may be less one-sided. However, in cases where the PPI context seems present -- Mesopotamia, Minoan Greece, Classical Greece, and the Maya -- it does appear that the PPI framework breaks down into a hierarchical order rather quickly and one polity becomes dominant – Akkad, Knossos, Athens, and Tikal, respectively. Also, PPI might well be at work within the core of a world-system, as well as on its periphery. Possibly, globalization can be considered a kind of ‘metaPPI,’ with intense interactions going on between relatively equal players in a system. However, the notion that globalization would be a form of PPI that originates in a context where there are dominant players to begin with seems very foreign to the kind of PPI that arose in a number of cultures in the ancient world – a context in which there was no dominant player9.

Another important component of core/periphery is the concept of quasi-monopolies, which, according to Wallerstein (2004, 17-18), are inescapable from the logic of capitalism. Perfectly free trade is only a rhetorical flourish, for a perfectly free market would mean that potential buyers could bargain down sellers to the absolute minimum, destroying production and profit. So capitalism needs to create monopolies to succeed. And, as perfectly free trade and a perfectly free market are impossible, so is a perfect monopoly, which would destroy consumers’ ability to pay the cost of the products and therefore destroy the monopoly. And so, quasi-monopolies, supported by a state that has the power to enforce a quasi-monopoly, are required (Wallerstein 2004, 25-26). Herein may lie the key to adapting the world-economy model to the ancient Mediterranean: the fact that the Braudelian ‘sphere of free markets’ is not the same as ‘the sphere of monopolies’ (Wallerstein 2004, 18). It is enough that the Roman Empire was not a command economy (sensu Carrasco 1983), and that the free market principle was in play, mediated by independent (of government) economic agents to drive the world-system and world-economy of the day. It is enough that economic agents in antiquity were interested in accumulation and used methods that later came into full play as the ‘endless accumulation’ of capitalism developed.

Purcell connectivity. Elementary Roman history texts frequently show maps of the Roman road network (for example Tingay and Badcock 1989, 63) which shows how the spider-like network converges only in Italy on Rome. Of course, ‘all roads lead to Rome’ but local roads do not do so directly, although they are sufficiently tied into the major road network that does converge on Rome to make Hingley’s analysis convincing. Roman roads might be good examples of connectivity and fragmentation, but a definite core and periphery function can be discerned in them, especially when looked at on a macro-scale. Thus, although Horden and Purcell’s hypothesis of connectivity and fragmentation seems broadly supported, it does depend on at what level one is observing, whether macroscopically at the Empire as a whole, or on a small micro-region in one province of the Empire. As Shaw (2001, 423) observes for their view of the sea, ‘just how and why it is that the sea both isolates and links is never explained.’ For the roads, they do not seem to isolate, only link, and given that they were built as military ennablers, I would argue that they are as fully a tool of hegemony as anything else. 9   Stein seems to allow world-systems in certain cases: world-systems is ‘applicable to a limited number of historical cases...The world-systems model is more or less accurate as a characterization of the political economies of what Wallerstein calls ‘world-Empires,’ i.e., territorial (and possibly hegemonic) Empires and their provinces’ (1999: 42-43). Rome of course was a world-Empire. Dietler, in his highly critical comment on

world-systems models applied to archaic Southern France (1995: 94-95), similarly states ‘...I would not wish to deny categorically [world-systems models’] potential heuristic utility in certain limited cases...’ Dietler’s article equates the alleged mechanistic core/periphery processes of world-systems with ‘Hellenization,’ the idea that the Iron Age Western Halstatt peoples of Europe uncritically accepted Greek material culture. ‘Hellenization’ and ‘Romanization’ are obviously related concepts (see infra). Dietler’s analysis suggests rightly that ‘Hellenization’ is an unhelpful approach. His equating ‘Hellenization’ and world-systems, however, seems a far less acceptable step, so the resulting consequent that world-systems is therefore also an unhelpful approach seems debatable to me.

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Drive towards accumulation seems to have been present in the past, so, it is appropriate here to explore the question of capitalism as a prerequisite for a world-systems model for the ancient Roman Empire. However, the same question might be asked of globalization itself. Does it not also require capitalism as a prerequisite? For example: ‘Modern globalization is neo-liberal and not based on equity and justice: the majority of peasants do not find their place in the expansion of dominant capitalist globalization (Ghosh 2006, 9 my italics). Certainly, it would be easy to assume that globalization is a phenomenon that is characterized by capitalist economics, given that it did not exist much as a term before 1987. But as it will be argued below, worldsystems, though a consciously constructed theory of the capitalist era, does not require capitalism as a prerequisite, and neither does globalization.

still largely kin-based relations constituting the structure of even complex cultures and Empires, such as the High Roman Empire or Han China, still dominated the interfaces among the social, political and economic10. Also key to this process is that devotion to accumulation resided perfectly well in the personalities of individuals in the ancient world, but their behavior demonstrates that the principle was not structural. I previously noted (Storey 2004, 120-121) the fictional character of Trimalchio from Petronius’ Satyricon as the exemplar of the ex-slave Roman entrepreneur nouveau-riche. Whether or not such a character as extreme as this existed (and the betting is that for Petronius to make it humorous, someone very like him must have been visible in real life), he does illustrate an undercurrent of Roman economic reality in that this entrepreneur makes a huge fortune through highrisk maritime investments and then uses his wealth, not for further endless accumulation, but to buy land and ape his hereditary social betters with a respectable show of wealth through a fine estate, suitably fitted out with works of art. So whether or not Roman entrepreneurs, even as individuals, followed the principle of endless, as opposed to simple, accumulation, their expression of their newly acquired wealth took on the proper societallysanctioned form of conspicuous consumption rather than endless accumulation. They simply would not have considered ‘commerce’ as a bedrock principle of Roman life constituting an end in and of itself11.

Frank (1998, 330-332) dismissed the term capitalism as virtually meaningless, but not many scholars would be willing to follow him on that score. Rather, the resolution to the debates regarding the differences between antiquity and modernity in terms of capitalism lies in how the term is defined. Frank (1998) understands the concept to mean simple accumulation, and so defined there could be little argument that the concept has been in play since 5000 BC. In essence, accumulation in and of itself is a given since the Neolithic Revolution (in Childe’s 1950 terms, both the beginning of agriculture and the adoption of settled life in cities), the production of surplus produce, and its storage capability. Farmers adopted accumulation as a guiding principle at the dawn of farming, and traders took it up in tandem with the processes we discern in the archaeological record of the dawn of civilization in Mesopotamia.

Currently, we are in a phase characterized by starryeyed neo-liberal and neo-conservative approval about the economy that has held recent Western politics in thrall (Wilson 2002). There is continual fetishizing of capitalism, when there should be more psycho-sociological investigation (with reasonable moral/ethical reflection) on the functioning of persons and firms who are devoted to this principle of endless accumulation. Hunt (1987) argues that corporations (or ‘firms’ as Wallerstein calls them – 2004, 23-31), as institutions that embody the endless

‘Capitalism is not the mere existence of persons or firms producing for sale on the market with the intention of obtaining a profit. Such persons or firms have existed for thousands of years all across the world. Nor is the existence of persons working for wages sufficient as a definition. Wage-labor has also been known for thousands of years. We are in a capitalist system only when the system gives priority to the endless accumulation of capital’ (Wallerstein 2004, 23-24, italics mine).

  Another helpful way of looking at this is offered by Robertson (1992, 71-75). Coming from a sociological perspective, he characterizes this transformation in terms of the Weltanschauung of the ‘Great Transformation’ of the nineteenth century, when Tonnies’ (1957[1887) Gemeinschaft (community) gave way to Gesellschaft (corporation). The break Robertson assumes by this image, although identified as occurring much later than Wallerstein’s institutionalized accumulation, is definitely of the same species. 11   An anecdote here may prove helpfully illustrative. In the movie ‘Amadeus,’ the young Antonio Salieri, as the son of an Italian merchant, is in church watching his father pray, noting that he was praying ‘for the protection of commerce.’ A Roman merchant might pray for the protection of his ships from storms, but no Roman negotiator (businessman) would likely pray ‘for the protection of commerce.’ Commerce as an abstraction would have been foreign to them. Romans happily anthropomorphized abstractions (the merchant might have prayed to the deity Salvus for the ships) but not to a deity Commercium or Mercatura. The difference here is significant: the eighteenth century Italian merchant’s outlook shows that the principle of accumulation has become structural. The Roman case shows that it is largely epiphenomenal. Of course that is an oversimplification, given the embeddedness of the social, political and economic within each other, but the outlook of the individuals in the two cases is distinct and constitutes the difference between the accumulation tendency in antiquity and Wallerstein’s ceaseless accumulation structure of modernity. 10

According to Wallerstein (1992, 566-580 especially), what distinguishes modern capitalism is its obsession with ceaseless or endless accumulation, and the institutionalizing of that principle in the structure of society, so that the free market becomes a political mechanism. Of course devotion to accumulation has existed at all times and all places since 5000 BC or before, and of course there has been a free market for as long. The difference is that, sometime either at the beginning or the middle of the second millennium AD, the principle of ‘ceaseless growth, the ceaseless accumulation of capital’ became the Weltanschauung of large elements of the population of the West (Wallerstein 1992, 568). It becomes structural to society, especially where the relations between society, politics, and economics interfaced. Before that, the patrimonial and 99

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accumulation principle, are recent phenomena. This is somewhat controversial. However, there does seem to be a virtual absence of commentary on the long-term impact on human existence of the continual operation of this particular institution12.

Another common criticism of world-systems is that it is difficult to delimit what is a ‘world.’ Wallerstein (2004, 16-17): ‘Note the hyphen in world-system and its two subcategories, world-economies and worldEmpires. Putting in the hyphen was intended to underline that we are not talking about systems, economies, Empires of the (whole) world, but about systems, economies, Empires that are a world (but quite possibly, and indeed usually, not encompassing the entire globe). This is a key initial concept to grasp. It says that in ‘worldsystems’ we are dealing with a spatial/temporal zone which cuts across many political and cultural units, one that represents an integrated zone of activity and institutions which obey certain systemic rules’.

  On a personal, though relevant, note, I would like to acknowledge the work of my father, Reed K. Storey (Berkeley PhD in economics 1958), who was long-time senior technical adviser to the Chairman of the Board of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and a historian of accounting. (He and I had several lively debates on the substantivist-formalist question). Before his untimely death in 1999, he was working on a history of bodies incorporating individuals so as to become juridically defined money-making institutions – clearly the firms and corporations of our discussion. His initial assumption was that such entities were of recent origin. However, his historical investigations were leading him to realize that these entities, or entities of similar species, are older than he thought. He never had the opportunity to complete this research, but I think he was on the right track. 12

Regarding critical assessment of the firms-as-endless-accumulators question, some work has been done, but I think that the question needs much more discussion. I made a very modest inquiry by asking a colleague in the College of Business, Kenneth Brown (personal communication, 2004), if he knew any literature dealing with the implications of the assumption that firms are committed solely to accumulation. He led me to one article on CEOs who credited their successes and shared their rewards for those successes with their employees, further arguing that entrepreneurs are really social agents rather than individual ‘heroes’ (Byers, Kist and Sutton 1997). He also suggested the Journal of Business Venturing, which I duly perused and found little of relevance. I was fortunate to come across Russ-Eft (2004), a paper with many references that suggest that scholars have explored whether corporations are morally-responsible entities, with several suggesting strongly that they are, although others maintain that only persons could be held accountable. This debate will be worth following in the future.

World-systems do not necessarily encompass the whole world but are units of study larger than juridically defined political units, that is, larger than nation-states, although many of the prehistoric world-systems postulated by Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997, 2000) may be found in regions both smaller and larger than modern nation-states. There is, of course, a major division among world-systems proponents as to whether Wallerstein’s description fits more times and places than just the European modern worldsystem in place since 1450 (according to Wallerstein). The critiques within the ranks of practitioners are of two types: first there is the division between extreme continuationists such as Gills and Frank (1992; cf. Frank and Gills 1993) and extreme transformationists such as Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997, 2000, 86 for the terminology). The continuationists argue that capitalism (as a simple strategy of accumulation) appeared in Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago and has defined world system function -- no hyphen; it is the entire world -- ever since; the transformationists argue that world-systems, as a unit of analysis, need not be confined to hierarchical states with core/periphery relations. Transformationists think that there are ‘egalitarian worldsystems of equal exchange among social entities’ that can be intersocietal networks in which the ‘interactions (e.g., trade, warfare, intermarriage, information) are important for the reproduction of the internal structures of the composite units and importantly affect changes that occur in these locations (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997, 28). Thus, very small world-systems (Wallerstein’s ‘minisystems’) are units legitimately subject to world-system analysis. The second division is between ‘lumpers’ and ‘splitters’ with continuationists usually being lumpers and transformationists being splitters (Chase-Dunn and Hall 2000, 86). It is the transformationist-splitter school that, for example, asserts the possibility of 40 world-systems in the Precolumbian Midwest of the United States alone (Hall 2004).

Brown led me to a second article (Thomas and Mueller 1998) attempting a cross-cultural analysis of entrepreneurs, concluding that we do not have enough data outside the U.S., but current views on entrepreneurs are probably ethnocentric. This is almost certainly the case. Wong (1998) studied Chinese immigrants coming into the United States and found that Chinese ethnicity does impact on the character of Chinese entrepreneurship. Chinese values such as familism, reciprocity, ganqing (sentimentality), yiqi (personal loyalty), as well as the Chinese way of human interaction, emphasizing harmonious social relations, renquin (sympathy or human feeling), human collectivity and concern for the aged (Wong 1998: 82, 74, 107) are regarded with favor as they impact on Chinese business practices. According to Metzger (2005: 19, 385, 589, 689), Gemeinschaft as an ideal still supersedes Gesellschaft in the Chinese imagination, at least when employed in arguments with Westerners. This suggestion aligns with Wallerstein’s characterization of why Western devotion to endless accumulation is a relatively recent phenomenon, and that the Chinese way, although not incompatible with modern Western business outlook (Wong 1998, 65, 79-81) is different and a culturally mediated alternative to the institutionalized Western business ethic of endless accumulation. For example, some San Francisco Chinatown business owners, responding to a question about whether they should expand their businesses or not, said ‘We just want to make a living; we should be happy with what we have’ (Wong 1998: 84). One wonders how many Western businessmen would take such a view; it is certainly not a sentiment heard commonly expressed in business circles. It turns out that the issue of endless accumulation as a strategy was touched on usefully by Weber, quoted in Wallerstein (1992, 561): ‘...one wonders what is the ‘sense’ of their endless chase, why [businessmen] are never satisfied with what they have, and thus inevitably seem to act in senseless ways in terms of any purely worldly approach to life..[this] brings outs what is so irrational in this lifestyle from the point of view of personal happiness, that a man exists for his business, and not the other way around’ (Weber 1947, I: 54).

system’ has not been counted. Flipping Polanyi on his head, we have a structure, which, instead of having the economy embedded in society, has embedded society in the economy. As Wallerstein so insightfully observes: ‘All other civilizations have sensibly avoided this inversion.’

Wallerstein (all quotes from 1992, 616) observes that the gains from this structured system have accrued to a small minority, and the overall cost to humanity resulting from the West’s ‘inventing’ of this ‘curious

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What makes the task of advocating world-systems for the Roman Empire relatively easier is that the Roman Empire demonstrates clear parallels with the modern worldsystem. Hence, for our present purposes, I lean slightly more towards the continuationists-lumpers in arguing that the Roman economy might be a precursor to Wallerstein’s modern world-economy. However, there is a paradox here because I generally prefer Wallerstein’s specific formulations to the critiques of Frank (especially 1998), although both are full of stimulating ideas about how to think about world-systems. I follow Wallerstein because he in essence maintains that profit-seeking accumulation in the ancient world (as a totality) was non-structural. The structure of ancient economies is built upon several factors (Wallerstein 1992, 588-589): primacy of agricultural production; artisanal activity; limited global surplus; support of specialists not involved in agricultural production by rents, which are ‘a politically-enforced transfer of surplus to the upper stratum’; and some networks of trade. The ‘entrepreneurial spirit’ (Wallerstein 1992, 613) is present, but it is harnessed to serve the exigencies of the basically tributary mode of production that characterized ancient Empires. Only when those displaying the entrepreneurial spirit were allowed to challenge the rent-receiving power base did a new structure come into being.

world over13. So, Frank is right that structure matters, but in my opinion, it is Wallerstein’s vision of the structure that matters. The Roman world-economy So, to make clear what I am proposing (cf. my model set out in Storey 2004, 126): the Roman Empire was the hegemonic power in an ancient Mediterranean worldsystem, which functioned as an ancient world-economy, ‘a large geographic zone within which there is a division of labor and hence significant internal exchange of basic or essential goods as well as flows of capital and labor’ (Wallerstein 2004, 23). It had the requisite: 1) single division of labor; 2) a multiplicity of state structures in the proxy form (as argued previously) of separate provinces tied into both the overall imperial economy as well as their own local economies; and 3) multiple cultures unified in a single geoculture of Greco-Roman culture (which constituted a ‘Great Tradition’ – largely what Hingley 2005 argues, although he does not use that term, suggested from Reischauer and Fairbank 1958). Hingley’s characterization describes aptly an ancient world-economy: ‘the Empire was an enormous conglomeration of interdependent markets. While there was no Empire-wide market for all goods, local markets were linked together across the Mediterranean, while areas to the north and west also had a degree of connectivity’ (2005, 106).

This interpretation of the process turns Frank’s emphasis of structure on its head. He reports how ‘My anthropologist friend Sid Mintz and I have been debating without end since the mid-1950s. He has said, ‘Culture matters’; and I have always retorted, ‘Structure matters’’ (Frank 1998, xvi). But I contend that Frank’s accumulation in the pre-modern world was not structural but epiphenomenal. The cultures of Greece and Rome were still much more deeply kin- and patrimonially-structured than we sometimes would like to admit. (It is the focus of the French approach, after all, that has existed since Fustel de Coulanges 1956[1884]). And that structure took a long time to break down, especially inasmuch as the structure was underpinned by Christianity, whose power over the structure really only failed much later.

One difference between ancient and modern in this regard is that between ‘use value’ and ‘exchange value’ (Meikle 2002[1995], cf. Wilson 2002). Here, we reach the fundamental impasse facing the prospective author of any commentary on the ancient economy: the need to bow to the inevitable and mention the debate on Finley and its consequent formalist-substantivist/modernistprimitivist double dichotomy. Morris and Manning (2005) acknowledge that the need to deal with the Finleyan paradigm and its debate follows any attempt to analyze the ancient Mediterranean economy, although one must note Shaw’s (2001) formidable defense of Finley on the grounds that he has been totally misinterpreted, and he never said many things commonly though erroneously attributed to him, an argument that I accept as almost certainly true. Finley has been reduced to a straw man of late. Anthropologists immediately see the common sense of the embeddedness of the economy inextricably melded with society and politics, which is the essence of substantivism. However, we are less than sympathetic when the formalists (Meikle 2002[1995] is a good example) lecture us for having allegedly failed to note that some formal concepts are obvious and eternal truths. Meikle insists that the Greeks really only employed lending and borrowing for its use value and not for its exchange value. He then delivers what seems a definitive demonstration of that:

As Wallerstein sets it out (1992, 601-607), four separate breakdowns led to a shift of structure: the breakdown of 1) the seigneury, or the feudal nobility (loss of rents partly due to the Black Death); 2) the failure of emerging nation states to resolve the issues between the amateur governing seigneury and the emerging professional bureaucracies; 3) the failure of the Church to enforce long-existing codes controlling motivations towards profit and accumulation which would have saved the states; and 4) the failure of the Chinese world-system in the world-wide economic downturn of 1250-1450 and the rise of the Ming Dynasty, which was cut off from western contacts mediated by the Mongols. Hence, a new structure arose, one which gave free rein to the entrepreneurial spirit and that resulted in the triumph of the principle of ceaseless, endless accumulation which is embodied in financial entities that possess extraordinary influence in nation-state governments the

  There is perhaps no better way to demonstrate how structural has become the ceaseless accumulation of capital than by noting that of the 100 largest economic entities in the world today, 51 are multinational corporations while only 49 are nation-states (Sernau 2006, 40-41, Table 2.1).

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strategies of maximization (formalism), and that a principle of accumulation (primitivism), has evolved into a structure of ceaseless accumulation (modernism), all working at the same time, we can begin to consider the relative merits of world-systems or globalization as macro-models for the economies of the Roman Empire.

‘The Greeks were hoarders because there was no possibility of the productive investment of money in production, and consequently there was virtually no lending for that purpose. Millett puts the numbers of instances of lending for such a purpose, for which there is evidence, and on the most liberal definition of that purpose, at eight’ (Meikle 2002[1995], 242-243). If in fact the Greeks did not appreciate the exchange value of lending and borrowing at all, we would expect there to be not a single discernible case. Eight is not a large number, but neither is our evidence for such things very numerous, due to the biased nature of later preservation of Greek texts. The extant cases support the view that although the appreciation of this kind of employment of capital may have remained underdeveloped, the fact that it can be found at all suggests that there was a mix of use and exchange values in operation, however imbalanced.

Comparing Roman globalization and Roman worldsystems In short, I am not sanguine about the superiority of globalization to world-systems for reasons I have already set out, but, chiefly, because I think that globalization is a concept that is completely subsumed by world-systems analysis. Wallerstein had the following to say about globalization: ‘The proponents of world-system analysis... have been talking about globalization since long before the word was invented – not, however, as something new but something that has been basic to the modern world-system ever since it began in the sixteenth century’ (Wallerstein 2004, x). Frank (1998, 340) agrees: ‘The currently fashionable ‘globalization’ thesis has it that the 1990s mark a new departure in this worldwide process...Yet... globalism (even more than globalization) was a fact of life since at least [AD] 1500 for the whole world...’ What goes on in a world-system, by definition, feels like a ‘global’ phenomenon, especially if it is carried on in a ‘world’ (or macro-world-system) as large as that of the Roman Empire, or Han China.

There should be no need to repeat that dichotomies are not helpful in the debate as all or nothing propositions. There are formalist, modernist, substantivist, and primitivist behaviors going on all at the same time. The most sensible position on this has been articulated by Joshua Sosin (2004 and personal communication, 2003). He examines what individuals do and asks what is the nature of what they have done. Not surprisingly, sometimes they do formalist types of things, and sometimes they do substantivist types of things. For example, consider the behavior of Attalos II, who gave Delphi 21,000 Alexander drachmas in 159/158 BCE for education of Delphic youth and a new festival to be called the Attaleia, via endowments. Sosin notes that ‘When I tackle a thorny economic text, I pretend there is no model [either substantivist or formalist] and start only with possible motive. Then I plug in the formal and substantive structures where relevant’ (personal communication, 2003). The Delphic embassies that convinced Attalos to make his gifts started with the desire to attain a royal euergetic gesture, both embassies and king were motivated by respect for the god (Apollo) and the betterment of the city. This is the ‘substantive register’; then the rich men of Delphi figured out a way to use the money for financial advantage (‘formal register’) but they pitched what they did as benefiting the demos (‘substantive register’) but worked out details in the ‘formal register.’ ‘So I get around the binary by treating these modes of behavior as if they were two languages of a perfectly bilingual person; the person moves effortlessly between the modes of expression depending on very specific situations and motive’ (Sosin, personal communication, 2003; cf. 2004, 203-205). I can think of no more sensible way to look at the evidence we have on ancient economic behavior. We see perfectly ‘primitive’ actions as well as ones that would make the most ardent modernist swell with pride. A worldsystems analysis, given its unifying directive, can easily be made to conform to the context of all registers operating simultaneously and freely interchanging.

Regarding the history of this question, Wallerstein (2004, 86-87) noted: ‘The center abandoned the theme of developmentalism (as a mode of overcoming global polarization) and replaced it with the theme of globalization, which called essentially for the opening of all frontiers to the free flow of goods and capital (but not of labor).’ The irony of this exclusion of free flow of labor should not be lost on us, reflecting on the possibility, identified by Frank (2002, 278-282) that a period of heightened globalization in the nineteenth century was largely the result of the mass migration of labor. As Frank comments (2002, 282) ‘Once openness to the global mobility of labor is closed off or even curtailed as it is today...openness to trade and to capital mobility no longer offer much of any source or generation of convergence [the unity allegedly being created by globalization].’ In the current climate, capital accumulation has become highly speculative, rather than based on commodity production. Frank comments: ‘the enormous flows of speculative financial capital in the late-twentieth century had to be and have been highly de-stabilizing and di-vergent (Frank 2002, 282.). To both Frank and Wallerstein (despite their many disagreements), globalization seems largely a rhetorical response of the center and right to the crisis of the modern world-system, the ‘polarization’ between the core and peripheral production zones, and the inequalities consequent thereto (even within the core), coupled with an emerging response on the part of the peripheral peoples. So, globalization, as noted at the outset, is a child of modernist theory and thus can also be thought of as a successor to development theory. But we Romanists have already been

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There is much about Germania Inferior that smacks of underdevelopment (Willems 1988) – which can often provide a veneer of ‘modernization’ (= ‘Romanization’) with little economic improvement for the vast majority of the population in reality. North-western Iberia, with its rare villas and sparse Roman urban centers outnumbered by native castros, defended hill-top settlements, (similar also to Nijmegen in proving a fertile source for Roman auxiliary military manpower) likewise appears underdeveloped (Hingley 2005, 102-105).

down the ‘developmental’ path, and have ultimately have found it wanting. Here is how. Dependency theory, which, in its use of a theory of stages that all the separate units (‘national societies’) would develop in the same fundamental way, smacks of the old discredited unilineal cultural evolution applied at the dawn of anthropology in the 1880s (Willey and Sabloff 1993, 3-4, 86-92). Wallerstein correctly characterized it as a ‘sleight of hand’ in that ‘the ‘most developed’ state could offer itself as a model for the ‘less developed’ states, urging the latter to engage in a sort of mimicry, and promising a higher standard of living and a more liberal government structure (‘political development’) at the end of the rainbow’ (2004, 10). The above description fits perfectly the idea of ‘Romanization’ as traditionally understood (Millett 1990; Hingley 2000, 2005 both with copious references, Mattingly 1997; Webster and Cooper 1996; Webster 1999, also a summary). Frank (1991 summarizing numerous of his publications) has cleverly dubbed this approach both ‘the development of underdevelopment,’ and ‘the underdevelopment of development.’

Via Hingley’s (2005, 14-48) thorough tracing of the history of the concept of ‘Romanization,’ in the end, it appears that both the twentieth century schools of modernization and dependency theory (Sernau 2006, 22-29) have their counterparts in the concept of ‘Romanization.’ Put simply, ‘Romanization,’ as traditionally understood from Mommsen and Haverfield up to the 1960s, was the application of modernization thinking to the Roman Empire, while post-1960s grappling with ‘Romanization’ looks more like a dependency theory approach to the ancient world. No surprise, then, that current re-thinking of ‘Romanization’ would lead us to a global view, or the ‘globalization’ of the Roman Empire.

It is not easy to trace the underdevelopment of Roman provinces via the process of ‘Romanization’ in a fashion that is perfectly analogous to tracing that process in the modern world, but underdevelopment can be discerned in some cases. However, as in the modern world, development theory practices have produced a better situation in one country as opposed to another; for the Roman world, some provinces seem to have done better under ‘Romanization’ than others. Hopkins (1980, 2002[1995-1996]) and Hitchner (2002) are at pains to demonstrate modest growth overall in the Roman Empire as a totality. Mattingly (1997) documents the ‘oil boom’ of Roman North Africa as an example of provincial economic success, while Alcock (1993, 1997) documents Greece under the Roman Empire as a province that is not an economic success. Filean (2006) notes how the local economy of the Roman presence in the Netherlands centered on the city of Nijmegen really does not take the region past its native Iron Age context, noting that Woolf (1998), in his review of trends in the region, deliberately left Germania Inferior out of the equation precisely because its economy does not appear similar to that of Southern Gaul, for example, and the rest of the Roman Mediterranean. Because Dutch peasants have a few vessels of Roman terra sigillata to display in their homes and then bury in their graves should not necessarily be taken as a sign of improved standard of living14.

Rather than the possible obfuscation of modernist or dependence approaches, the world-systems approach is completely upfront about the degree of exploitation that is the result of the proper functioning of its unit of analysis. This brute fact has been acknowledged even by those who glorify the Roman Empire, even those who probably think ‘Romanization’ was an unadulterated benefit to the people conquered by the Romans and thus a ‘good thing’. This has been eloquently illustrated by none other than Ronald Embleton, the British cartoonist-artist who painted a host of reconstructions of the Roman army of Hadrian’s Wall. These are illustrations that are well known in the United Kingdom -- one would even hazard to say they are beloved by British enthusiasts intensely proud of their Roman past. ‘Roman Wall Educational Reconstructions in Colour No. 38, Romans burning a village’ (original from the late 1970s) shows a Roman army unit burning native British homes and bluntly observes: ‘The Roman army was a ruthless occupation force. Any signs of revolt among the local population was [sic] dealt with ruthlessly’. There is absolutely no shirking of responsibility in this viewpoint15. investigators likely have made it. The difference is that they may have made it derisively, as if from a Roman perspective, and as if to say: ‘Ha, look at those stupid barbarians who don’t even know what to do with a piece of proper Roman dinner ware.’ On the other hand, a more recent ‘post-Romanization’ way to put it is to suggest that this was creative adaptation, to make the pot a symbolic object worthy of veneration within the house and for burial with its owner after death. However, Dutch peasants later did the same thing with pieces of Delftware (H. an Enckevort, personal communication, 2000), although they were not burying them with people. It seems that the Delftware is a definite attempt to proclaim status – the ability to afford a vessel. Is the samian pot ownership case necessarily for the same reason? 15   Embleton was a cartoonist who teamed up with the NewcastleUpon-Tyne publisher Frank Graham to draw reconstructions of Roman army life on Hadrian’s Wall in England. Their association began in 1972, and in the late 1970s, Graham published numerous booklets and guides

  ‘...a samian [terra sigillata] pot may have been acquired because of its symbolic value as a distinctive object rather than because of its specific ‘Roman’ character or its potential use in Roman ways of eating and drinking’ (Hingley 2005, 111); and further ‘...new forms of pottery were adopted because they were more durable and relatively of high quality; if so, their use may represent convenience rather than the adoption of some form of standardized Roman identity’ (2005, 114, italics mine). None of this demonstrates that the pot in question necessarily represents that the Dutch peasants were better-off economically under the Roman Empire. Furthermore, does the realization that a samian pot is being used for symbolic purposes and because it is a distinctive object require a new paradigm, such as connectivity or globalization? Surely, even under a ‘Romanization’ approach, that judgment is possible, and individual

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Morris thus rightly observes (2003, 37): ‘The globalization debate revolves around a single morally charged issue: Is connectedness a Good Thing or a Bad Thing?’ Hopkins (1980; 2002[1995-1996], Hitchner (2002), Lo Cascio (2000) and Lo Cascio and Rathbone (2000) all, at least in economic matters, tend to give the Romans the ‘benefit of the doubt’ in terms of their having created an Empire worthy of admiration, rather than one worthy of the contempt that can so easily accrue to the observer viewing the normal, business-as-usual destructions on an enormous scale wrought by all Empires. Their views of the Roman economies and their agents, with talk of ‘growth’ and amenities available to improve the quality of life, tend to be ‘upbeat’ and optimistic.

realized is subject to systematically generated opportunities and constraints...’ The most comprehensive view favoring agency in the Roman Empire is the model of Woolf ‘Becoming Roman’ (1998), which involves ‘complementary accounts of imperial connectivity and ideas of fragmented identity’ (Hingley 2005, 118), explicating how the Roman elements (especially aspects of material culture) are accepted outright, negotiated, adjusted, transformed or neglected by the conquered peoples of northwest Europe. As appealing as details of this construct sometimes appear, ‘it may well be true that many people in the Western Empire did not have much control over their own destinies outside their own households and immediate communities,’ as Hingly (2005, 114) puts it.

World-systems analysis tends to make one a convinced pessimist in these matters. Observing the structure of state level societies and Empires, one sees the inherent social stratification and hierarchy that is demonstrated, and one denies at one’s peril that the most determinant processes surrounding the course of human life seem to have their basis in material aspects. As Morris observes, to overemphasize the culturalogical runs the risk of losing touch with the ‘hard surfaces of life’ (Morris 2000, 17, quoting Geertz 1973, 30)16. That is not to say that cognitive elements of culture are not important, nor that individuals do not matter. But in terms of actual agency, I do think that we can think and wish and hope for different results that, unfortunately, the powers of social stratification constantly deny us and force us to do and act otherwise – no matter what our intentions might be. Frank (1998, 41) puts it similarly:

As with the debate on ‘Romanization’ (summarized best by Hingley 2005) it should now be acceptable to assert that not all Roman ‘stuff’ is freely and happily accepted by all, and that freedom of rejection should include forms of freedom to reject economic domination17. It is quite obvious that many people of other nations feel that ‘globalization’ is something that is ‘done to them’ rather than ‘done by them.’ A globalization model of the Roman Empire may serve simply to blur the distinction between the winners and losers created by world-economies operating in a ‘winner-take-all’ economy (Frank and Cook 1995) dominated by firms devoted to endless accumulation – a war of all against all. Happy anecdotes that characterize, for example, the popular globalization commentary of Thomas Friedman (2000, 2005) are just that – tales about a few winners while the vast majority of the rest of humanity might become losers. Colloredo-Mansfeld (2002) deals with winners and losers in discussing Ecuadoran artisans who have found a way to sell their crafts in a globalized world market – with some being clearly winners while the rest languish far behind. Chibnik (2003, xv, 235-247) discusses the ups and downs of the Oaxacan wood carving craft industry, illustrating how globalization is doubleedged in its impact, bringing his craftsmen two decades of prosperity and promise that was followed by decline and difficulty in coping with a collapsing market demand for their wood carvings.

‘...many rail against some economic and/or other structural ‘determinism’ that allegedly negates any and all voluntarist free-will political ‘agency.’...no systematic observer I know has ever alleged that the objectively studied ‘system’ leaves no room for individual, community, cultural, political, or other ‘bottom up’ (indeed also ‘top down’) subjective action and reactions. Yet good – or even bad – intentions are often not realized; and which intentions are and are not

For the ancient world, we should see the same kind of ferocious pro and con debate that rages about modern globalization:

to Hadrian’s Wall and the northeast of England. Embleton produced 80 pictures of Roman life and more than 100 black and white drawings which sold more than 50,000 copies. Many of the reconstructions depict life in Housestead Fort on the Wall, and have sold more than a million copies as postcards (especially popular is the drawing of Roman soldiers relieving themselves in the Fort’s latrine). As discussed in http://www. britishcomicart.netfirms.com/embleton/embleton_bio_1.html): ‘It is acknowledged that Ron Embelton’s illustrations are among the most authentic reconstructions of Roman life ever produced.’ And yet, this artist, who so sympathetically glorified the British Roman past, could dispassionately state the reality of the Roman army on the ground. 16   I realize that this paragraph might tempt one to quote Monty Python and the Holy Grail: ‘Help, help, I’m being repressed! Come and see the violence inherent in the system!’ Sober reflection on the history and evolution of complex society illustrates how it is really no joke at all. Morris’ comments are directed against the excessively culturalogical, highly symbolic treatments of economics represented by, for example, Kurke (1999). It is fine to muse on the symbolism of coins, until you lack sufficient numbers of them to pay for food to assuage your hunger. Basic human needs in the economic sphere can indeed be ‘hard surfaces.’

‘No one would dream of writing an account of modern global connectedness that treated it as a given rather than as a process, or that focused on either the explosion of wealth created by free trade or the disasters that open markets brought   Hingley even goes so far as to suggest discontinuing the use of the term ‘Romanization’: ‘Put simply, it is time that we abandoned this term and the intellectual baggage that it carries with it’ (2005, 2). I agree with this; that is why every occurrence of the term in this paper is in quotation marks. World-systems analysis already encompasses all the possible ramifications of the use of the term ‘Romanization’ and the multiple layers of discourse and discussion that have been raging around the term recently.

17

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to many countries to the exclusion of the other. I cannot see why ancient Mediterranean history should be any different’ (Morris 2003, 50).

In a similar vein, consider the scene cited by Friedman of the U.S. Treasury Secretary claiming to the Malaysian Prime Minister: ‘The most basic truth about globalization is this: No one is in charge – not George Soros, not ‘Great Powers’ and not I. I didn’t start globalization. I can’t stop it and neither can you. You keep looking for someone to complain to...there’s no one on the other end of the phone!’ (2000, 112-113; part of this is also cited by Morris 2003, 39). The reader will have noticed that this is rejection number 3) cited by Ritzer (1998, 82), that neither the West nor the US is responsible for the impacts of globalization19. And so how convenient and disingenuous in the extreme it is to claim that the globalizers huddled around computer screens in New York, Tokyo, and the financial centers of every major region of the world – Friedman’s ‘electronic herd’ (2000, 13 and passim) have no one in charge -- as if they were not heavily influenced by institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Bank (McMichael 2000, 680-682), all of which are in turn heavily influenced by U.S. policymakers (because some such individuals are advisers or managers of these institutions)20.

Morris (2003) has already noticed, in the seed of the globalization debate for the ancient Mediterranean world, a dearth of this pro-con debate, and too little focus on winners and losers. In his article, he presents a convincing case for seeing the native occupants of Sicily as losers in the face of Greek colonization of the seventh century BC. For the Roman Empire, Hingley observes ‘A substantial proportion of the population remained in relative poverty, or at least relatively un-Roman, while other well connected people exploited the opportunities to change their way of life by drawing upon the new material culture that was introduced as a result of the expansion of Rome’ (2005, 116). That view rightly acknowledges that there were losers in the Roman world. It is highly significant that Hingley mentions ‘well-connected people’ because being in that position certainly is a requisite for success also in the modern, globalized world economic system (or just being lucky – being at the right place at the right time). Instead of this proper inclusion of the story of the unconnected losers, general acceptance of a globalization model for the ancient world might ignore the ‘con’ side of the debate, in the rush to jump on the neoliberal globalization bandwagon. The one-sided Panglossian utopianism of the Friedmans of the world yields statements of colossal callousness such as ‘I believe globalization did us all a favor by melting down the economies of Thailand, Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, and Brazil in the 1990s, because it laid bare a lot of rotten practices and institutions in countries that had prematurely globalized’ (Friedman 2000, 452-453).

It might be argued that these American advocates of globalization might adopt a more cosmopolitan, worldwide, world-wise outlook, and so they are not necessarily to be thought of as advocating a localized, American For example, Shiva (2005) from an Indian perspective (linked to the International Forum on Globalization website: http://www.navdanya. org/articles/polarised-globalisation.htm) comments on Friedman’s Flat earth hypothesis, highlighting the significance of being well-connected: ‘Friedman has reduced the world to the friends he visits, the CEO’s he knows, and the golf courses he plays at...What Friedman is presenting as a new ‘flatness’ is in fact a new caste system, a new Brahminism, locked in hierarchies of exclusion. In Friedman’s caste system, the ‘Shudras’, are all whose livelihoods are being robbed to expand the markets and increase the profits of global corporations. They are shut out by invisible social and economic walls created by globalisation while it dismantles walls for protection of people’s livelihoods and jobs...Outsourcing and off-shoring is like the ‘putting out’ work in the industrial revolution. These are old tools for maintaining exploitative hierarchies – not new flat earth linkages between equals, equal in creativity and equal in rights.’ Similar kinds of commentary from similar perspectives can be found in Ghosh and Guven (2006). 19   Cf. the comments of Smith 1990, 177: ‘Today’s emerging global culture is tied to no place or period. It is context-less, a true melange of disparate components drawn from everywhere and nowhere, borne upon the modern chariots of global telecommunication systems’. Ritzer comments (1998, 84-85): ‘...while there is much truth in this, it remains the case that there is a disproportionate amount of goods, bodies of information, and other cultural products emanating from the United States and the West: a great deal more than is flowing into them... [For example] The fast-food restaurants are bringing to the rest of the world not only Big Macs and french fries, but more importantly, the American style of eating on the run...the world-wide spread of fast-food restaurants and credit cards is primarily an Americanization of the world’ (my italics). It thus smacks of considerable wishful thinking to assert that the enormous economic institutions of the US and West do not have enormous advantage in the fast-paced economic footwork required for success in the modern context of globalization. 20   For example, Paul Wolfowitz, architect of the Defense Department’s Iraq Foreign Policy in the first Bush II administration, went to the World Bank during the second Bush II administration. See also Benjamin Friedman (2002) reviewing Stiglitz (2002), who dramatically documented all the deficiencies of the heavily free-market ideologized policies of the IMF while downplaying his own role in the World Bank, whose role has, frankly, not been that dissimilar.

That is fine, of course, unless one’s personal livelihood happens to have depended on one of those economies; those respective failures hurt countless numbers of individuals. Also, this statement is followed-up with the repeated rhetorical flourish that ‘exposing’ the corruption and venality in those countries ‘was no crisis in my book. All these systems would have crashed sooner or later’ (Friedman 2000, 453). Is it not ironic that these places should be rightly punished for their corruption with the meltdown of their economies, when the U.S. economy goes virtually scot-free after the Savings and Loans crisis of the 1980s and Enron, 20 years later? If the U.S. economy does go belly-up due to the debt burden with China (anytime in the next 50 years) does that count as crashing ‘sooner or later’ and so should not be regarded as a ‘crisis’? Does anyone really have the wherewithal to pronounce a blessing on economic meltdown as the proper punishment for venality or corruption?18   Once, again, on a personal note: before NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Area Agreement), my Mexican relatives expressed considerable concern when reflecting on the possible effect such a treaty would have on their national economy, which they fully appreciated as approximately 4% the size of that of the United States, and what the tremendous imbalance in the size of those economies would mean for Mexico. The plight of Mexican farmers devastated by NAFTA suggests their fears were fully justified (de Janvry, Sadoulet and Davis 1995; Lustig 2001). Numerous comments from a different perspective on the US view of globalization can be found from non-US citizens. 18

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agenda. Not so. Rosenau et al (2006, 159-163), surveying American elites regarded as ‘cutting edgers’ in the process of globalization, found, contrary to expectation, that these elites did not develop cosmopolitan loyalties that transcended local affiliations and loyalties. Although their data and results are ambiguous in many ways, they found that those American elites who promote globalization advocate mostly conventional American political views and favor the WTO, IMF and World Bank heavily over such entities as Amnesty International or Greenpeace (Rosenau et al 2006, 90-105). In the same way, we would not expect Roman elites in the provinces to be necessarily sympathizing with non-Roman outlooks.

but a disadvantage to others’ (Wallerstein 2004, 49). And once we have reached that state of things, we have achieved the chaos of the modern globalized world where: ‘if you are just a little too slow or too costly – in a world where the walls around your business have been removed and competition can now come from anywhere – you will be left as roadkill before you know what hit you.’ It sounds like the war of all against all – ‘turbocharged’ to use one of Friedman’s favorite adjectives – and the ultimate weapon, the focus of creativity, the highest achievement of this new stage of civilization is apparently...ever newer operations-flow software, to optimize your business process. Except for...Third World NGOs, no one in the flat world seems to be doing anything of loftier significance than getting WalMart’s suppliers to make deliveries just a few minutes nearer to ship time or inventing a new radio-frequency identification microchip to track its inventory (Scialabba 2005, 39-40)21.

Globalization and the fall of the Roman Empire In discussing weaker and stronger states, Wallerstein (2004, 53) notes that, when a state lacks the power to produce wealth through economically productive activities, and thus the state machinery becomes the prime locus for wealth accumulation through corruption, larceny and bribery, it is a weak state. The government is weakened even to the point of losing control of transfers of power, which then become ‘rambunctious’ (even in electoral systems, witness the US 2000 and 2004 presidential elections), which in turn leads to expansion of the political role of the military. This description rather aptly fits the situation of the Roman Empire, especially in terms of the period during which the Roman government begins to show signs of decline, all the way through to the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West. This process, of the organs of government becoming the primary locus of wealth accumulation, is what I would call the ‘privatization threshold’ and is the chief mechanism identified by Ramsey MacMullen (1988, 122-197) in his analysis of the corruption and decline of the Roman Empire. I am prepared to argue that this process is one of the keys to explaining the decline and fall of the Empire, the reality of which has recently been urged by Ward-Perkins (2005).

And from there, it may be a relatively short path to a good recipe for the ‘Decline and Fall’ of a system; but only time will tell that. We can continue this brief excursus on the end of the Roman Empire, and how surprisingly relevant the issue of globalization seems as an indicator of possible problems in the system, rather than as the harbinger of benefit that it is so often touted to be. Wallerstein (2004, 86-87) twice describes the current situation characterized by globalization using the term ‘chaos’. We have already quoted Frank (2002, 282 above) in his description of globalization as destabilizing and divergent. McMichael asserts that the period of globalization embodies the ‘destabilizing consequences of this [current] speculative era of financialization’ (2000, 681). The tie-in to the chaos of globalization and the ‘privatization threshold’ occurs in the following manner:

Furthermore, in Wallerstein’s setting out of the three costs of production (2004, 79), remuneration of employees, purchase of inputs for the production process, and payment of taxes to support infrastructure and statesponsored benefits to the population, it is the question of infrastructure that comes most to the fore in the debate about privatization. Firms do not generally have to pay the costs of infrastructure (such as roads for the transport of commodities) when they are provided by the state. But as the state apparatus weakens, the pressure on firms to internalize costs grows. And, as Wallerstein points out (2004, 82), ‘to the degree the infrastructure is privatized, the bill is paid by the individual firms (even if other firms are making profits out of operating the infrastructure, and even if individual persons are paying increased costs for their own consumption)’. With this situation, we recognize that the result is again, winners and losers, in a ‘winnertake-all economy’ (Frank and Cook 1995). That result also is brought into play with the quasi-monopolies: ‘every decision to make possible a quasi-monopoly of any kind, whatever the mechanism, represents an advantage to some

‘market

rule

is

instituted

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the

  The quote that leads off this paragraph seems to be from Thomas Friedman; Scialabba uses it here but it is not from Friedman’s 2005 The World is Flat. It is either from the 2000 The Lexus and the Olive Tree, or it is from one of his New York Times pieces, and I have been unable to locate it. The language is Friedman’s, inasmuch as the term ‘roadkill’ is used in virtually the same way in his New York Times Editorial of March 19, 1995 ‘Yesterday’s Man’ which is repeated, apparently verbatim in The Lexus and the Olive Tree (pp. 271-275, with ‘roadkill’ – twice -- on p. 272), and it seems to be a favorite quote to use from him (I found it cited on a Canadian website http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/ newsroom/speeches/2000/jan/baker000128-e.html, Speaking Notes For William V. Baker, Assistant Commissioner, Verification, Enforcement and Compliance Research, Canadian Customs and Revenue Agency, Continuing the Partnership, January 28, 2000, Montreal). Scialabba’s assessment should be supplemented by consideration of Friedman’s ‘Flatburgers and Fries’ (2005, 40-42). Globalization has brought us the wonder of ordering McDonald’s by calling a center in Colorado to arrange for pick-up in another state in which you have just experienced a ‘Mac-attack.’ This cuts the errors in orders from 4% to 2% and saves a similarly small percentage of money. As Kent Flannery noted in another context relevant to promulgating laws in archaeology: ‘Leapin’-Lizards, Mr. Science!’ (1973, 51). 21

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collaboration of multilateral power and domestic political and economic elites who profit from state privatization schemes and load rescheduling. In effect, this unrestrained money power – unrestrained because money is now more a political relation than a value relation – privileges multilateral financial institutions...’ (McMichael 2000, 682; cf. Wilson 2002).

If globalization is autocatalytic, and there was ancient Roman globalization, we know that the process ended and something else followed. Most Roman scholars would probably join me in agreeing that what followed in that case was something worse, and the Empire ceased to be. Conclusion: world-systems and ‘-izations’ Perhaps the best way to sum up this discussion is to assert that world-systems analysis encompasses the various ‘-ization’ models we are dealing with; think of how the ‘modernization’ debate for developing countries has served as a guide to incorporating themselves into the modern world-system (and ‘Romanization’ for the provinces of the Empire, as discussed previously). A recent important thesis regarding the globalization debate has been Ritzer’s ‘McDonaldization’ model (1993, 1998):

Finally, O’Hara (2006, 33) noted: ‘On balance, neoliberal globalization has created low performance, uneven development, unproductive state spending, financial instability, pollution, and low levels of trust,’ providing data for all of these deficienies. So, I am more than happy to agree that at some point during the high Roman Empire, globalization becomes a feature of the economic landscape, precisely because it represents destabilization. I have argued (Storey 2000) that Trajan’s decision to invade Dacia, at the beginning of the second century AD, and at a time when the Roman imperial budget possessed a healthy surplus, started Rome along a path of gradual economic decline. If this, the ‘Golden Age of the Antonines’ was the period of globalization par excellence for the Roman Empire, then I do posit a connection between this beginning chaos and the long road of Decline and Fall. However, I do not think that this picture is what Roman globalization advocates would want us to conclude from the application of a globalization model to the Roman Empire.

‘To put it simply, that thesis is that the fast-food restaurant, especially the pioneering and still dominant chain of McDonald’s restaurants, is the contemporary paradigm of the rationalization process. McDonaldization involves an increase in efficiency, predictability, calculability and control through the substitution of non-human for human technology. While undoubtedly bringing with it many positive developments, McDonalization also involves a wide range of irrationalities, especially dehumanization and homogenization. It is these irrationalities of rationality (and associated problems) which represent the true heart of the McDonaldization thesis’. (Ritzer 1998, vii).

This can be taken a step further, however. In his recent major meditation on cultural collapse, Diamond (2005, 186) notes the possible role of autocatalytic processes in cultural evolution, whereby some processes behave like the product of a chemical reaction that is itself a catalyst that causes the speed of the reaction to go from nothing to simply faster and faster – a classic chain reaction. He then compares the Viking expansion, the Polynesian expansion, and the Portuguese/Spanish expansion to such a process. In all these cases, the first incursions into new territories caused a chain reaction of colonization as individuals sought and made their fortunes in the new territories thereby encouraging more and more to follow and find their own opportunities. The process of ‘expansion began to fizzle out when all the areas readily accessible to their ships had already been raided or colonized’ (Diamond 2005, 187).

If, as noted at the outset, that Weberian rationalization is the ‘solvent’ of the globalization process and that rationalization implies a depersonalization of social relations (Brubaker 1984, 2 quoted in Waters 1995, 5), we are clearly dealing with an issue that has both winners and losers. Ritzer’s term ‘irrationality of rationalities’ (1998, vii) calls to mind Waters’ (1995, 3) description of a fully globalized world as one tending ‘towards high levels of differentiation, multicentricity and chaos’. And with that, we perceive the connections between Wallerstein and Frank’s characterization of globalization as ‘chaos’ discussed above, and the implications traced to issues of the Decline and Fall of a system. But note how virtually every term that ends in an ‘-ization’ in this paragraph can be subsumed under world-system analysis; especially if we mark how ‘rationalization’ may validly be regarded as a related concept to Wallerstein’s endless or ceaseless accumulation.

I suspect that globalization could well be an autocatalytic process of this type. Economic expansion into new economic sectors of the world is not a process that can go on infinitely22. It will likely ‘fizzle out’ at some point (this is being asserted already, see infra), probably when the political element will re-assert itself and we should end up with either something better or something worse.

For encompassing all the various threads of analysis that we have only briefly touched on here, it would seem that world-systems is the model that best possesses the dynamism, the full and sufficient appreciation of the size of the unit, and of the various interactions within the unit that distinguishes world-systems as a body of theory, to most successfully provide the most robust analysis. Regarding the entire issue of properly defining a unit of analysis such as the Mediterranean, which has sparked so much debate

  This is especially obvious reading Friedman (2005). For example, he discusses how US personal income tax preparation has been farmed out to India. How will it stay there if some other developing country can undercut India’s low costs? Could a vicious cycle of constant inter-nation competitive labor cost reductions make the entire system collapse and the unfortunate Americans be reduced to – how shameful to countenance – preparing their own taxes once again? 22

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of late (Horden and Purcell 2000, Purcell 2003, Woolf 2003, Shaw 2001), Morris provides an apt comment on the whole process of defining a proper unit of study (2003, 45):

(or at least tolerated) by those hegemonies allows that ‘the regionally differentiated global world system...provides a context in which Western interests offer others across the globe the opportunity to develop and exploit their own innate abilities and the natural resources of the areas they inhabit’ (Hingley 2005, 119-120). My reaction is that such a statement is, in its way, just as patronizing of the ‘other’ as any of the older characterizations of the happy acceptance of ‘Romanization.’ My view is that Roman globalization could thus become the very ‘Romanization’ that it purports to hate. It has happened to world-systems itself:

‘Finally, we could question the boundaries. A ‘Mediterranean’ that includes Sumer and the Danube is a strange one indeed, and yet these places play vital roles in the story I have sketched. Is such a larger world necessary to understand the processes? If is it, ‘the Mediterranean’ may not be the best scale to adopt...’

‘Despite its early attack against Eurocentrism, [world-systems] is accused of being Eurocentric by not accepting the irreducible autonomy of different cultural identities. In short, it neglects the centrality of ‘culture.’... In their insistence on total history and unidisciplinarity, worldsystems analysts refuse to substitute a so-called cultural base for an economic base. Rather, as we have said, they seek to abolish the lines between economic, political, and sociocultural modes of analysis...What...critiques have in common is the sense that world-systems analysis lacks a central actor in its recounting of history. For nomothetic positivism, the actor is the individual, homo rationalis. For orthodox Marxism, the actor is the industrial proletariat. For the state-autonomists, it is political man. For cultural particularists, each of us (different from all the others) is an actor engaged in autonomous discourse with everyone else...The[se four] act freely, but their freedom is constrained by their biographies and the social prisons of which they are a part. Analyzing their prisons liberates them to the maximum degree that they can be liberated. To the extent that we each analyze our social prisons, we liberate ourselves from their constraints to the extent that we can be liberated’ (Wallerstein 2004, 21-22).

This is where; I think, the notion of world-systems can appropriately be invoked. It is the best scale to adopt. I have argued (Storey 2004, 125-126) that, from the Bronze Age on, the Mediterranean world experiences an ebb and flow of world-systems foci, which I characterized as a kind of ‘precession’ of world-systems, with the focus drifting both east and west over time. This overarching system (clearly of the same nature as the larger, more inclusive world-system invoked by Frank 1998), originating in the nuclear civilizations of the Near East and then ceding to the secondary civilizations of Greece and Italy, does constitute a unity with economic manifestations that have recently been recognized as surprisingly uniform (Morris and Manning 2005). Perhaps thinking of it as the ‘Greater Mediterranean Interactivity Sphere’ – a classic Wallersteinian world-system (with hyphen) -demonstrates how Morris’s ‘Mediterraneanization’ is the ancient world-system of the western Old World. Whether or not the Roman Empire should properly be termed a world-economy in Wallerstein’s sense may be debatable, but what is beyond debate is that the degree of economic integration for the Roman Empire was highly-developed for the ancient world and occurred at a level that was not reproduced again until the eighteenth century. It was a ‘global’ phenomenon, and the emphasizing of that connectivity, whether expressed in terms of world-systems or globalization, is the most compelling way of modeling Roman macro-economics.

Many threads of our exploration in this chapter are here tied together, especially what I would call the final declaration of independence from the substantivist-formalist prison, that any and all forms of political economic analysis proceed from the assumption of embeddedness – i.e., world-systems is total, incorporating economics, politics and society (no need to distinguish cultural, economic or social globalizations from one another). This call for total history was meant to break down the disciplinary boundaries that accepted the compartmentalization of disciplines allowing both the artificial separation of politics, economics and society, as well as masking the reality of the capitalist world-system. I think Wallerstein meant that unmasking the reality of the capitalist worldsystem is a way of exposing its Eurocentricity.

Thus, I believe that seeing Roman macro economies in terms of this ‘Mediterraneanization’ is the best way to go forward. When all is said and done, however, I wonder if globalization is just a way ‘to put spin’ on the inconvenient hegemonic characteristics of world-Empires. That would help make the guilt go away, and, as Hingley has well noted, ‘post-imperial/colonial guilt’ has been an issue in recent Roman studies (2005, 46, 64-65): ‘‘nativist’ perspectives in Roman archaeology elide feelings of imperial guilt’ (2005, 161). What has happened is the following: worldsystems, with its core/periphery assumption, has been taken to be Euro-centric and therefore to be rejected in favor of perspectives that promote polyethnicity, multiculturality, and connectivity, and globalization is alleged to be one of those perspectives. But as Hingley points out, the new connectivity and new views of Empire (2005, 117-120) do suggest that the effects of ancient Roman and recent European hegemony have generally been taken as positive. And, the globalization unleashed

Furthermore, returning to the charge that world-systems improperly denies agency to actors: world-systems provides a realistic estimate of actor efficacy in highly 108

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Monopoly has survived the test of time and flourished. World-systems has withstood a barrage of criticism and remains a vibrant academic construct (Hornborg and Crumley 2007) – if nothing else, the term is freely used even by its critics, with little or no apology. Globalization, for all its hype, may go the way of Rich Uncle because to a committed Monopoly enthusiast, it is old hat, and for the same reason. Nay, in the eyes of some, we are already in a ‘post-globalization’ phase, and the attempt to find a ‘new, cutting edge’ model of the Roman economy already makes Roman ‘globalization’ a victim of the increasing pace of the ins and outs of academic fashion and has become outré at its very inception. At very least, this turn to talk of ‘postglobalization’ tends to suggest that the original concept has not proved particularly robust25. As Rich Uncle was a spinoff of Monopoly, so too do connectivity and globalization appear to be spin-offs of the Braudel-Wallersteinian world view. Accordingly, much of the world-systems critique seems misplaced or misdirected, aimed as it has been, at the Marxist utopianism associated with the theory. However, at least in the originator’s most recent manifestation (Wallerstein 2004, 86-90), that consideration is largely irrelevant. At most, Wallerstein claims that the modern world-system, the imperfect world-system based on the flawed principle of endless accumulation that harms so many myriads of the world’s inhabitants, could give way to something better. To paraphrase Patrick Henry, ‘if this is [utopianism], make the most of it.’

limiting contexts. We are surrounded by a host of social prisons that are easy to escape in the abstract but far harder to buck in reality. Resistance and ways of asserting identities in resistance to the dominant power are all well and good, but when the resistance becomes too overt, does not an army come and punish? If your economy globalizes prematurely and melts down, do you not have to go hat in hand to the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank, whose policies might have helped exacerbate the meltdown in the first place? So, above all, world-systems analysis is most willing to lay responsibility (or better, the blame) precisely where it belongs, and that is why I worry about globalization; too many of its adherents are happy to slough off its effects and results, and it would be no progress to see that happen with any model of the ancient Roman economies. Taste and macro-models World-systems, the new connectivity, globalization; academia at times reminds one of children’s tastes in games. Some children are happy to play the same game over and over to explore the myriad possibilities of elaborations that good games provide. Other children will proclaim themselves bored by the usual game and demand another (one that will be similar and based on roughly the same principles as the other). Our academic games function not so much on skill alone (although there is plenty of that demonstrated), as on chance, the alea principle of dice. The new game might well be different in terms of foci, phases, and progression of activity. Globalization and its spawn, the ‘new connectivity,’ strike me as something very much in this vein. Braudel and Wallerstein invented the game most of us play in our constructions of the metanarratives of the ancient Mediterranean world. But many are bored and will turn to the new game, although it seems in some respects very similar23.

For all our collective soul-searching in trying to develop a mode of analysis that does not privilege the NorthAmerican/European academic superstructure, I think that a better approach is simply to acknowledge that we are all reasonably equally ‘dirty’; we are all part of Western   See Leigh 2005: ‘Not unexpectedly, we are now, some would argue, in a post-globalization era as the one potential world of globalization increasingly fragments into civilizational superpowers.’ http:// globalization.icaap.org/content/v5.1/leigh.html. Globalization (2005), accessed February 22, 2007. Karimov (2006) is a master’s thesis in political science, Lunds University, titled: ‘The European Union: Towards a ‘Posthegemonic, Post-Westphalian, and Post-Globalization World Order.’ Droege (2000) defines postglobalization: ‘Th[is] expression [is] coined here to characterize globalization as a fossil-fuel induced phenomenon and to denote the post-fossil era as ‘postglobalized’. [It] describes a era in which globalization will be differentiated into local flows of basic food, regional resources and certain manufactured goods, and a time when primary services and information flows will be global, but basic levels of economic dependency and sufficiency will be defined locally and regionally. As policy of local self-determination and quality of life improvement, postglobalism is already rising in various communities. This is exemplified by the Slow City initiatives of Orvieto, Italy’. The week that I have finished the second draft of this chapter, the following relevant comment appeared in the Nation, James K. Galbraith, ‘What Kind of Economy? (March 5, 2007, Volume 284, Number 9), p. 18. The 1997 Asian crisis and the 1998 Russian crisis marked – it is now clear – the last days of an illusion: that unfettered global credit markets can govern themselves. Russia has since retreated into itself, Asia is developing a sophisticated substitute for the Asian Monetary Fund we denied them a decade ago and most of Latin America has rejected neoliberal globalization at the polls, while new structures of mutual assistance for development are gradually being built. The chaos of a financial system run by bankers alone is therefore gradually yielding to new systems of control.’ 25

Parker Brothers, after introducing Monopoly in 1933-1934, marketed several other financial tycoon games that are similar to one another, because they are mostly spin-offs of Monopoly, and which even use the same icon of the jolly little old man in the top hat, whose name was Rich Uncle Pennybags. In 1946, he got his own game, Rich Uncle, a fun game that my mother still has in her house in Connecticut and which I introduced recently to my own children. That game ceased to be marketed in the 1950s, as the other spin-offs had failed to make it24. So only   Shaw’s (2001) review of Horden and Purcell (2000) is replete with notes that point out how Braudel had anticipated many features and details of the new connectivity, but, in the end, Shaw concludes that Horden and Purcell have definitely outdone Braudel and lauds ‘their magnificent edifice’ (Shaw 2001, 453). Their achievement is indeed monumental. However, the success of their model of ancient connectivity should not be taken as guarantee that modern connectivity in the form of globalization can equally successfully be re-applied to the ancient world. I fear that modern globalization misses the crucial nuance of Horden and Purcell’s connectivity and fragmentation, focusing on the former and forgetting the latter. 24   See ‘Monopoly Monopolizes the World, from Baltic Ave. to Boardwalk’ at http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/print?id=421078, and especially ‘Rich Uncle Pennybags’ at http://toonpedia.com/pennybag. htm h, which give brief histories of Monopoly. 23

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domination. Shaw points out how the unsavory sides of the modern economy, the arms and drug trades, for example, are left out of modern economic analysis, as their ancient equivalents are also ignored: ‘The point is not just to shock the moralizing, but to get the moralizing out of historical and economic analyses, and to show how pervasively resistant modern moralizing has been to reality’ (Shaw 2001, 447). I think we need to be careful about moralizing, which is Shaw’s point, but I do not think that we really can avoid it.

honestly counteract the tendency always to think the best, we can take small steps forward that privilege them less and bring into greater focus, the ‘others’ that the Romans encountered. We can do that with world-systems, applied critically, as well as with any alternative mode. Finally, I must own that this chapter has argued on an elevated theoretical level. It remains true that a full demonstration of world-systems, based on highly detailed reviews of sites and artifacts, as called for by Woolf (1990) – let alone a full demonstration of a Roman worldeconomy -- has yet to be achieved. Woolf seems to be the scholar who has done the most to try to actualize worldsystems for the Roman Empire (as noted by Shaw 2003, 93, 117). In his attempt to sort out what went on in the Roman colonization of Gaul, Woolf set out many of the features that would help demonstrate the Roman Empire as a world-system and world-economy (Woolf 1998), especially in terms of his insightful analysis of consumption patterns. However, over the course of his work, Woolf has clearly decided that world-systems, due largely to the coreperiphery dichotomy (which he terms ‘centre-periphery’ – 1998, 27-28), will not do. The task for the future will be to carry out the same type of analysis, showing how core/ periphery can wed world-systems and the recent strands of world-systems-like analyses, including connectivity, into a robust construct.

On the whole, we have privileged our own approaches ethnocentrically. Classics is tainted by the ‘Hellenic Ideal,’ which created a dominant academic field of study based on the myth that Europeans are the descendants of the Greeks and Romans (Morris 1994, 2000), and anthropology is tainted by its colonial origins whereby we shared the field with the likes of colonial administrators and Christian missionaries. Truly independent modes of analysis will not develop until non-Europeans bring us their alternative modes, which come to equalize or even begin to displace – in effect to colonize! -- our current modes of thinking. There is a long way to go on this. Even among Europeans, there are unfortunate exclusions. As Simon Keay points out, in European Roman archaeology, British Roman archaeologists work in Spain, but no Spanish Roman archaeologist works in Britain. Or, if agency models are more congenial, it should be borne in mind that they can still leave us focusing on the dominant powers. Millett’s (1990) book on ‘Romanization’ suggested that British elites responded to Roman material culture on their own terms, as part of their own structure of elite competition. As one reviewer noted (Freeman 1993), those British elites were still reacting, Romans were still the active agents, and so the problems with ‘Romanization’ remained. Similarly, Dietler argued that the elites of the western Hallstatt were consuming Greek and Roman products in terms of their own political economies (Dietler 1995, 97). However, when those peoples started consuming Roman wine, it should not be forgotten that one of their bartering commodities was human slaves, even to the point that one slave was traded for one amphora of wine, which disgusted even the Romans, though they took the payment (Tchernia 1983).

I think we have a Roman world-system and a Roman (noncapitalist) world-economy. But, in the end, whether one goes with a world-systems approach or jumps on the new bandwagon of a globalization model may be more a matter of taste than might be ideal; there will be those who will find palatable the stark and bitter world-systems model of a twenty-first century Marxist who pulls no punches (Wallerstein), but others (probably greater in number) will prefer the sweeter-tasting optimistic neo-liberalist models of Roman globalization that may be evolving. I have made it clear that I prefer basic vanilla worldsystems ice cream (made with superior Brazilian vanilla extract of ‘core-periphery’) to this new flavor of exotic, ‘feel-good’ ice cream concoction of connectivity, which I think is just made from vanilla, dressed up with yesterday’s stale (modernization, dependency and ‘Romanization’) sprinkles.

No, we cannot banish moralizing from our discussions, and we will all, at one time or another, be vulnerable to nasty brutish inconvenient facts about ancient economic behavior. In defense of world-systems, I reiterate the point that core/periphery as utilized by Wallerstein is a concept developed by Brazilian scholars. Whatever mode of analysis we adopt, our charge is to counteract the Eurocentric tendencies that inhere in most of our studies, and as Shaw suggests, face up to the unsavory that was clearly part of the ancient economy (as well as the modern). The challenge is that, because we like the Romans, we devote our lives to the study of them. We cannot help but put positive spin on them constantly. As long as we try and

Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge that a great deal of my thinking on the ancient economy has been inspired by the work of Keith Hopkins (whose death in 2004 is a great loss), as well as by Ian Morris and especially Kevin Greene, who was kind enough to read through this manuscript and comment. Paul B. Harvey, Jr., my mentor, has read through drafts of this chapter and afforded me, as ever, his valuable advice. None of these individuals necessarily agrees or totally approves of much of what I have to say and of course are in no way responsible for this chapter’s shortcomings.

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Agrarian systems in Roman Spain: archaeological approaches1 Víctor Revilla

University of Barcelona

Archaeology and rural economy In a relatively recent synthesis aimed at exploring some of archaeology’s possibilities in defining the nature and functioning of the Roman economy, the author began the chapter on agriculture with a warning: ‘Agriculture is perhaps the most complicated aspect of the Roman economy to study’ (Greene 1987, 67). This advice is necessary to understand the difficulties of studying the rural economy in ancient Rome, whether regarded in its entirety or at different geographic and cultural levels. These difficulties depend on the nature of the material activities that take place in the rural area (whose identification is not always easy), as much as on the quality of the archaeological documentation. Simultaneously, it is necessary to keep in mind that the Roman world constitutes an imperial political construction at the same time as a historical process that encompasses very diverse societies and cultural situations, which generates very complex cultural circumstances (Leveau 1998, 25). These aspects should be noted. First, agriculture, stockbreeding and, in general, all classes of strategies and resources related to the use of the environment signify a global value that, within preindustrial societies, goes beyond the strictly economic arena and makes it difficult to condense them into specialized and segregated functions of other domains of human life. In the case of the cities’ cultural system of the Greco-Roman world, these activities comprise a structural component that is inseparable from the social and political processes, since they represent the foundations of social hierarchies and judicial statutes. We must also take into account the importance of the continuity of the material culture. Because of this continuity, these activities are always evaluated on the basis of ethical and social categories: either as a patrimony that confers prestige, stability and power to a family, or as an exhibition of wealth and a sign of social status. In the same manner, these activities are not simply considered professions or affairs aimed to insure feasibility or sustenance. Latin writers, especially the agronomic ones, demonstrate their understanding of this situation by establishing a relationship among property, social status and political participation (Veyne 1979). The The author would like to thank Travis Shearer for translating the text into English.

1

awareness that altering this relationship would affect the existing social hierarchies and related procedures explains the importance given to the productive sphere by the writers and public figures of Roman aristocracy, as well as the kinds of ‘solutions’ or strategies contemplated in contexts of social and economic crisis. Therefore, agriculture or other activities cannot be analyzed directly and exclusively as the result of economic strategies that are disconnected from the social order. This principle must be applied, to begin with, to the study of the behaviour of large and medium rural landowners, for whom a specialized literature was elaborated, just as focused on gains as on the relations between social position and the use of wealth. But it also serves to explain the strategies used by peasants or minor landowners. In other words, a region’s exploitation systems and the specific configuration of landscape and settlement patterns are to be analyzed, in the first place, as the result of the presence, correlations and specific evolution of a series of activities and productive strategies; but it is also essential to contemplate the interaction between these factors and the social structure and ideological systems. Second, rural areas are heterogeneous spheres in which very different activities, strategies and methods of production, property and management coexist. This diversity is a result of the global significance, already pointed out, that the exploitation of a territory has for a pre-industrial economy, as much as for the historic evolution of each society. This evolution generates a co-existence or overlapping of systems that originated in different socio-cultural situations and that follow specific paces of evolution. These systems share complex and dynamic relations, through which some of them reinforce their hegemony, rebuilding the institutions and strategies of the remaining systems for selfbenefit. This phenomenon implies deep transformations as to the functioning and meaning of the subordinated system’s structures, at the same time as it conditions some of the possibilities of the dominant system. As an example, one may consider the relations established between what has been called the villa-system in Italy during the end of the Republic, which involves a rational organization of complementary activities and investments, able to generate a surplus of products to market and supply city centres and local markets, and a small and basically self-sufficient peasant unit. These relations cannot simply be defined as

Víctor Revilla

contrary, and their historical evolution cannot be reduced to the chronicle of one of the systems’ decadence (‘system’ being the small property) as the result of the inexorable expansion of the other (the villa-system).

formations? This matter must necessarily be dealt with when proposing the objectives of an entire investigation, as it may determine the final results, whether it deals with the study of a specific phenomenon (the development of viniculture or olive growing during a period of time, for example) or the global analysis of a territory. The notion of territory also suggests another problem, since it may be tackled from various perspectives (Leveau 1993; Leveau 2000, 566): as the influential area of a city (which also involves an evaluation of the administrative, social and ideological impact of any urban agglomeration); as a region whose natural limits are more or less defined; as a province (which forces one to suggest the Roman state’s needs and capacity to organize wide-scale methods of exploitation for its spaces and communities, directly or through a fiscal apparatus). In any case, the definition of spaces and borders (which must be understood, in the first place, as cultural phenomena) responds to specific combinations of geographical factors, material processes and socio-political situations that must be analyzed on a global and diverse level.

Such proposals can have important consequences regarding the reconstruction of historical processes (the decadence of the humble countryman, with its socio-political effects, and the global evolution of Italian agriculture between 200 BC and AD 200; or the matter of the existence of large estates in Italy and Hispania, for example), since they involve unsuitable generalizations based on the wrongful assimilation of phenomena that evolve at very different scales (the situation is very complex, as shown, in Italy, in the studies of Evans 1980; the problem reappears when studying the Late Antiquity’s peasantry: Marcone 1997; for the large estate in Hispania: Blázquez 1979; Gorges 1979, 98; Sillières 1993, 244). But this debate does not belong here. It is enough to point out the fact that small property and the use of various forms of work and management may complete the needs of the villa-system, serving as a source for a reserve labour force or contributing to raw material and other resources (Foxhall 1980, 105; Evans 1980, 20ff., 136). Furthermore, the relationships between the villa and the small property must have been dynamic, as the large Roman landowners showed interest in all kinds of activities, which they organized in very diverse manners (from wine production – the best example of a product related to the progress of urban life – to the pastio villatica or the seasonally mobile cattle). The diversity of strategies was to determine the need for labour or the integration of complementary activities aimed to fulfil these needs. The proper reconstruction of the economic structures of a territory requires, therefore, the identification of the existing systems as well as that of the relations that may have been established among them, in specific situations determined by a broader social and cultural context. In the same way, to speak about agriculture, stockbreeding or craftwork simply as autonomous production systems constitutes a reductionism that impedes analysis of the functioning of the rural economic structures. These activities share complex and dynamic relations, as a result of their orientation and the forms of exploitation and management that determine the use (complementary, subordinated, etc.) given to working methods taken from other situations. There are numerous examples: the manufacturing of ceramic instrumentum assigned to agriculture (the amphorae), the use of seasonal labour (from agriculture to craftwork and vice versa) or the raw materials (mineral, vegetable and animal) used in craftwork or for direct sale. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct an analysis at various levels in order to define the particular articulation of activities and methods of exploitation within a territory.

It is obvious that simply cataloguing and unifying the productive processes located outside the city limits and qualifying them as ‘rural’ implies a sterile simplification: numerous activities (agriculture, stockbreeding, mining, craftwork) necessarily have to take place in a rural environment, due to their purpose (directly obtaining resources, in the form of food, raw materials or fuel) or due to the conditions imposed by very own execution (size, proximity to natural communication means, avoiding nuisances). Nevertheless, the functioning of some of them shows a productive volume and technical quality that are often interpreted (erroneously) as industrial processes. Many of these activities are also linked to long-distance exchange routes and their market is basically urban. An example, in this sense, is the production of terra sigillata in the South and centre of the Gaul territories in the Early Empire, whose high technical level does not involve, nevertheless, an industrial-scale organization. The location alone, hence, does not constitute an adequate criterion for defining the nature, organization or orientation of an activity within the context of a region’s economy. Nor can that which is rural be considered a homogeneous economic sphere, separated from the city (Erdkamp 2001, 342-343, 351). The methods for exploiting a territory actually respond to particular combinations of exploitation processes, social strategies and political factors, through which the city and its elite satisfy their needs (under the form of taxes, rents or purchases on the market). These combinations vary within each historical period as a result of more general processes, which link a territory to a broader cultural and political field. All of this determines, at the same time, the perception and image that urban dwellers have of a rural space.

At the same time, it is necessary to define the value of concept of ‘rural economy’: does it simply include all of the activities and exploitation processes concentrated in a territory? Is it an economic field with specific characteristics, linked to a particular series of structures or socio-cultural

It is just as dangerous to deem the existence of a rural society as a fully defined and autonomous cultural formation, without specifying the historical conditions of its formation, as this belief could involve an arbitrary unification of diverse socio-cultural situations. To ignore 118

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such conditions leads to creating a simplified view of the rural world: a lifestyle originated in the Neolithic era, based on a series of presumed natural conditions (as to material and social procedures), which would appear to transcend the successive overlapping civilisations inalterably; this form of life would be defined exclusively by restrictive or negative factors, such as productive and cultural autarchy or resistance to change. Endorsing this perspective would impede deliberation regarding the relations between economy, social order, ideological structures and historical changes. In the same way, caution is essential when comparing traditional Mediterranean agriculture and ancient economies as an interpretative and explanatory mechanism (Halstead 1987; Horden, Purcell 2000, 270; Evans 1980, 135).

allow the creation and maintenance of certain means, such as presses or kilns used in the manufacturing of amphorae, or make them unnecessary. It is particularly difficult to define the methods in which small peasants may organize their work throughout annual cycles (a combination of agriculture, craftsmanship, and occasional work in the fields or in the city: cf. De Ligt 1990). In the same sense, seasonal migration of cattle or pastio villatica have left material, and especially literary, evidence in republican Italy, much beyond that shown by the use of cattle in a peasant unit (as a complement to peasants’ diets, in the case of poultry-yard livestock, or as a source of labour, when referring to draught animals). In the same way, certain practices related to subsistence or the functioning of a peasant economy in general is hardly documented (Frayn 1979; Evans 1980, 135). These gaps in the documentation complicate the analysis of the functioning and extension of certain lifestyles. It is no coincidence, in this context, that agronomical literature, despite its title, centres on aspects related to the wealth, material assets and ideological needs of the aristocracy, as on the materials used and organizational forms that are specified in the system of the villa. This literature only refers marginally to other situations and elements in that they can complement the needs of the villa’s system or they illustrate details of the discourse on this topic (Martin 1971; White 1973). The references to rural life that appear dispersed amongst all Latin literature are even easier to interpret due to their role as an ‘ideal image,’ which served the purpose of expressing ethical and socio-political values.

The last consideration to keep in mind is regarding the available documentation. The value attributed to its nature, volume and significance is not balanced. This unevenness (which is a result of the diversity, mentioned above, of the activities and related lifestyles concentrated within the rural environment) implies problems, as much by default (the invisibility of certain situations in a traditional archaeological analysis) as by excess (the material size of some infrastructures, which may lead to an overrating of their importance). As an example, the archaeological evidence associated with an important landowner’s residence and economic interests, which materializes through the architectural programs and productive infrastructures of a villa, is very different from that produced by the functioning of a peasant habitat or that which results from the implementation of a specialized agricultural or crafts activity, which can be organized, at the same time, in many different ways as to the use and quantity of labour, the volume of production and the pace of work.

It is necessary, therefore, to eradicate the idea of the alleged absolute objectivity of the information provided by archaeology, an idea that sustains its importance (in an unconscious and, therefore, more dangerous manner) in recent studies about the economy of some Hispanic provinces or regions. Without a doubt, archaeology provides precise information regarding the geography and chronology of agricultural or manufactured productions, the technological level (which refers to the productive processes) or situations that have not been documented in other ways, but this evidence cannot be accepted in a noncritical manner as the direct expression of management or work procedure. The materialization of economy constitutes the reflection, in the first place, of a social order and the related property’s structures and strategies. This is the way documentary evidence should be analyzed.

Some agricultural productions clearly show the problems mentioned. Wine or oil, liquids obtained by means of a transformation process that ensures their conservation and may increase their price (as in the case of wine), demand a complex network of activities to ensure their distribution (as an example, Italic wine: Tchernia 1986; Manacorda 1985 and 1989; Carandini 1989). This network materializes as easily detectable – archaeologically processing, storage and packing infrastructures, through which it is easy to define some of the relations among agriculture, craftsmanship and commerce that took place in some regions of the empire (Leveau 1998, 18).

The problem with the nature of documentation and its use in the reconstruction of economic structures also has a cultural aspect, with obvious implications for the study of the evolution of the western provinces of the Roman Empire. Although the paradigm that conceded this evolution as a process of historical progress - and evaluated it according to the degree of implementation of the forms of Roman culture – has been overcome, it is still possible to find regional or thematic studies that, in practice, reduce the Romanization process of a territory to the colonial foundations and the implementation of villae, ignoring other factors. In these terms, the debate about the historical evolution of a region’s settlements

On the contrary, the production, distribution and massive consumption of cereals, present in an infinity of written references as a basic element in the ancient diet, have left a scarce material trace. These differences in documentation also refer to varied socioeconomic strategies and methods of organizing work. The peasants also produce and introduce some goods into the market, but the conditions associated with their production and distribution (a limited surplus that can occasionally be sold in a nearby market in order to satisfy a specific need for currency and household assets or is handed over, as rent, to an important landowner) do not 119

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is limited to establishing the moment of implementation (the further back the moment of implementation is, the earlier the stage of Romanization) and the subsequent widespread expansion of the villae (Prevosti 1981, 553; Prevosti 1995-1996, 136ff.; other approaches: Olesti 1997; the state of the matter of the rural settlement towards the end of the Republic in Chapa, Moret 2004). Those villae are the Roman form of occupation and exploitation of a territory is indisputable, but the socio-economic strategies and activities that may be organized from within them are diverse, and they generate specialized uses, differentiated from and complementary to the spaces and natural resources. This determines, at the same time, the settlement hierarchy (Revilla 2004b). The cultural, social and juridical interpretation of this evidence is very complex.

references to the structure of property do not go much beyond mentioning the obvious presence of great or small landowners, combining archaeological evidence provided by large villae and technology with the epigraphy of instrumentum. This kind of procedure only allows an approximate evaluation of the entity of the many activities, defined in a purely qualitative manner, as more or less important (no one has been able to establish a reference as to at which level this evaluation has taken place). The scarce syntheses that deal with regional or local domains, in which the economy is treated in a limited way, proceed in a similar fashion and their proposals are practically identical (Keay 1990). Most also avoid the problem of defining territories in their diverse senses and levels: as an environment delimited by an administrative border, as a region (constituted by the conjunction of specific natural conditions and a historical development), as in an area or group of areas, organized and controlled by a city. This matter is especially important when attempting to study the economy of a city. It is enough to remember the fact that a Roman city could own land and other assets in other provinces. Specifying the forms of integration between cities and territories, nevertheless, is fundamental for understanding the configuration and evolution of the economic structures of an urban community, as well as the relations between economy and political-administrative and social factors, and finally, the economic function of a classic city (each city kept specific relations with a rural space, depending on its needs and configuration, and those relations could be defined by various judicial methods; citing the extreme example of Rome’s hinterlands should be enough: Morley 1996; Erdkamp 2001, 340ff., builds his model by redefining the relations between cities and territories). It is not odd, in this context, for the relationship between the economy and provincial societies to have been defined in such a sketchy manner (for Baetica: Chic 1994 and 1995; in Catalonia: Miró 1988, 248ff.) or for the analysis of very specific cases or situations to have been chosen over synthesis (the presence of freedmen in an economy constitutes a good example: Tchernia 1980; Remesal 1989). It is not easy to specify the origins and composition of the Hispanic elite’s wealth either, beyond some obvious ascertainments (Curchin 1983).

Rural economy in Roman Spain In recent decades, the knowledge of the rural world in the Iberian Peninsula has experienced obvious progress, especially regarding settlement and the habitat structure, the elaboration and distribution of agricultural or manufactured products, technology and landscapes (Gorges 1992; Étienne, Mayet 1993; Keay 2003). This progress, which is the result of the development of field archaeology and the perfecting of document analysis techniques, has allowed us to rebuild some basic features concerning agricultural structures and to try to re-read the information offered by literary sources, at least, as far as certain productive activities and regions (the Mediterranean coastline of Hispania Citerior, the valley of Guadalquivir, coastlines of Baetica and Lusitania) are concerned. In reality, the scene is less positive than what the extensive nature of the available bibliography may suggest. In the synthesis dedicated to the history of Hispania, for example, the study of rural economy is reduced to an inventory of activities that are described independently. In this group of activities there is a kind of agriculture that stands out and is simply defined as Mediterranean, due to its ecology (without considering the large regional differences within the Peninsula and the later changes in the landscape), products (wine, oil, cereal) and forms of exploitation (distinguishing extensive practices, in the case of cereal, as opposed to the intensive ones for viniculture and oil; on occasion, also qualified as systems with a speculative and capitalist basis). The inventory concentrates particularly on wine and oil, products especially visible because of their socio-cultural connotations and the combination of agriculture, crafts and exchange circuits involved in their consumption; other products are cited in an almost anecdotal way, without evaluating what their cultivation, treatment and exportation may have meant for a local economy (this is the case of wicker). All of these works make careless use of literary citations, which are scarce and used out of context, as they also do of archaeology regarding the reconstruction of the evolution of agriculture in Hispania (Blázquez 1978 and 1982; Montenegro, Blázquez 1982; Curchin 1996). In general, the descriptions of productive methods are reduced to simple evaluations, founded on the dimensions and complexity of the technology, while

The few studies focused specifically on agriculture or specific activities, such as viticulture or olive growing do not prove to be any better (Sillières 1993, offers a balanced synthesis of Mediterranean Hispania; Marcone 1997 offers a forcedly generalist view). The last two have generated a considerable amount of bibliography in the past few years (for the vineyard of Citerior: Pascual 1977; Miró 1988; Col·loqui I, 1987; Col.·loqui II, 1998; Revilla 1995 and 2004a; for the oil of Guadalquivir: Remesal 1977, 1989, 1997 and 1999; Chic 1994 and 1995; an overview of the region: Saez 1987; Bernal, Lagóstena 2004; these studies are based on the archaeological evidence gathered by M. Ponsich 1974-1991). The main contribution of these studies lays in the perception of the relations between agricultural production and other activities that can be considered complementary to the productive process and that, therefore, 120

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no more than an inventory of practices and infrastructures that is interpreted through two excluding models: selfsufficiency and market-oriented production. In this context, the analysis centres on – and is conditioned by – the presence or absence of certain kinds of material evidence: presses, kilns, forging, amphorae. This allows, in the best of cases, to enumerate the activities present in a habitat or in the group of settlements located on a territory, but it constitutes a limited basis for the reconstruction of the productive structures and management. In fact, these studies insist on an unconscious approach to the search of material coincidences (in technology, architecture and lifestyles) related to the habitat, and therefore give the impression that the rural world is more homogeneous that it really was.

are organized in the same rural environment: either in the field of fundus or as an independently managed activity. The most obvious example is the production of amphorae, which is connected to the progress of viticulture and olive growing along the Mediterranean coastline and the valley of Guadalquivir. In the same way, these studies have also defined the existing relations between the genesis of these kinds of processes and the demand of certain groups (the population of Rome and other large cities, the army and the administration) that represent the development of a complex distribution and exchange network, ensured by fiscal and market mechanisms (see for example Remesal 1997 and 1999; Carreras, Funari 1998). In this context, the economic interests of Rome’s and its provinces’ elites constitute a key factor.

The regular use of archaeological documentation, essential for knowledge of rural environments in Roman provinces, presents as many advantages as it does problems. Amongst the problems, the nature of the available documentation is an important concern. Although it is very abundant, its quality is irregular, since most of the collected data come from preventive or archaeological excavations of an urgent nature. These efforts regarding these actions are centred on places or activities that stand out due to their nature (infrastructures, for example). All of this provides vast amounts of data regarding the ‘productive architecture’, but it has a distorting effect, since it only shows the economic activities that, by chance or thanks to their strength, are the best preserved. In addition, due to the conditions under which these archaeological practices take place, there are few chances of adequately collecting and analyzing other kinds of documentary evidence unless such evidence is linked to the architecture of the excavated settlement (information related to vegetation or cultivable land, for example).

Currently, there is a clear perception that the global analysis of the diverse economic activities and their relations, productive structures, kinds of demand and forms of distribution constitute the indispensable starting point for a more precise knowledge of the evolution of a territory and its integration in the whole of the empire. This analysis must also be contextualized. Nonetheless, most of the cited bibliography tends to reduce the entire economic evolution of some regions of Hispania to the expansion and hegemony of a rational and intensive agriculture, related to large-scale overseas commerce. This combination allows some variations (as to the products – wine or oil -, the size of the properties or the role attributed to the state’s needs), but it is always defined on the basis of the characteristic traits of a modern and dynamic economic system: specialization, investments, rational organisation of labour, commercial direction and functioning of market mechanisms. These systems appear as the motor that would propel a region’s entire material and social life and determine its development and future crisis. In these reconstructions, which minimize the complexity of a region or province’s economic structures and the relations that are established among its various activities, there is implicitly a colonial-type development model that reduces dynamic historical processes, with multiple internal nuances, to the creation or ‘invention’ of a society, based on the application of conscious political and economic strategies, colonization and introduction of new technologies. The case of viticulture in Catalonia is a good example (Miró 1988, 248ff. and 282ff.; these hypotheses are applied to the explanation regarding the evolution of the region’s settlement, which is made to depend exclusively on the local vineyards’ commercial expansion and crisis: Prevosti 1981, 555ff.; Prevosti 1995-1996, 137).

An even worse problem is that archaeological interpretation is still subordinated to models almost exclusively build from Latin agronomic literature, more specifically, on simplistic readings of the texts; one must remember that this documentation belongs to a very specific historical, social and cultural context (Italy towards the end of the Republic and the Early Empire) and rarely provides direct information regarding the reality of the provinces. Consequently, we find the paradox that agronomical literature appears to have a greater interpretational value in the regions of the Roman world about which it does not provide information. In this context, all sorts of data fit in, extracted from other literary sources, which are combined amongst themselves or with archaeological data, in a methodologically incorrect way, given that the precise nature, intentions and chronology of such sources are not even evaluated. The example of the oil from Baetica illustrates the irregularities in the documentation and the danger of inferring certain conclusions: the production and distribution of this product between the first and the fourth century AD is a phenomenon with vast economic, social and political consequences, documented through archaeology and epigraphy; paradoxically, is hardly

The theoretical and methodological problems are also obvious in the excavation monographs and the specific studies on rural settlement, especially those dedicated to the villae. This is an especially important field, since most publications that deal with the rural world in Hispania are centred on the habitat (for example: Prevosti 1981; Casas et al. 1995). In all of these it is possible to find a section dedicated to economic activities, but this generally means 121

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mentioned in literature (literary documents for pre-Roman and Roman Spain: Mangas, Myro 2003).

production, work and resources, which are correlated to a rigorous hierarchy of the settlement and rural environment (Revilla 2004b, 192, 196). The historical implications of these propositions are obvious; all that needs to be pointed out is that they have been used to try to reconstruct the evolution of urban life in some regions and have served the purpose of distinguishing socio-economic situations and processes of historical evolution (small property along the Mediterranean coastline versus the large estate that appeared to determine the history of the centre and south of the Iberian peninsula: Gorges 1979, 98; Prevosti 1981, 537-538 and 561; Miró 1988, 252ff.).

The impact of the subordination of archaeology to literature can be discerned at two different levels: on one hand, regarding the reconstruction of economic processes and the definition of the social and economic system to which they belong; on the other hand, as to the hypotheses regarding the historical evolution of the provincial economies. Concerning the first issue, most studies interpret the activities and technology present in the rural world on the basis of a single productive model: the medium/largesized exploitation units, specialized or semi-specialized on vineyards or olive trees, which concentrate all productive infrastructures in one central spot (which, at the same time, is the owner’s home), with a totally commercial outlook and rely on slave labour (see, however, Curchin 1986). Put in this manner, this reconstruction excessively simplifies the archaeological diversity as much as it does with the situations described by agronomists. Parallel to this, and this is even more precarious, there have been some attempts to define the structure of property, and even the social order of a territory, based on calculations that are based on the possible sizes of the estates. Using this as a base, hypotheses have been raised regarding the control of minor and medium-sized property ownership (supposedly originated from an Italic colonization) along the Catalan coastline between the end of the Republican era and the beginning of the imperial one, and it has been said that the expansion of viticulture during the same period also responded to this same kind of property (Prevosti 1981, 534ff; Gurt, Ferrando 1987; Miró 1988, 230ff., who admits the presence of important property-holders; cf. Revilla 1995; Tremoleda 2000 and 2005).

In relation to the hegemony of this form of commercial agriculture, various studies implicitly accept the relevance of market mechanisms as the main cause of the socioeconomic development of the Hispanic peninsulas and their integration into an imperial economic structure (the empire’s degree of integration and the causes which intervene happen to be a central issue in the debate about the nature of the Roman economy: Andreau 1995; De Blois, Pleket, Rich 2002, xiii-xiv; an original perspective in Bang 2002). Doubtlessly, the basics of the market play an important, but also limited, role, and their position and relations must be detailed, towards the end on the republic and during the Early Empire, in relation to other factors that may also condition the practices adopted by productive and consumption-related processes: social factors (patronage and dependencies, family relations), political factors (in at least two ways: the material possibilities related to the exercise of a specific post for a Roman aristocrat, on one hand; the taxation system, on the other) and ideological factors (the spreading of trends linked to the elite). Only in this context can the economy of a territory, region or province be defined – placing it in a broader context (without making an a priori assumption of a complete integration of these territories just because they were part of the Empire’s political and cultural framework) and knowing the real scale of the changes associated to their Romanization.

These estimations are incorrect because of the fact that they arbitrarily relate the size and the productive capacity of an estate or identify all rural sites, many times not yet revealed (dug up), as the centre of an estate. But they are even more perilous because they are based on an erroneous definition of the organisation of Roman property and a hypothetical equivalence between the size of an estate and the importance of its owner. The fact that an estate can be exploited by a lessee and that its owner can own various scattered estates is enough to prove the inaccuracy of this approach, based on a simplistic reading of agricultural experts and other literary sources and on a limited understanding of the Roman elites’ values and attitudes. A villa is the centre of management and activity, but it is also a place of residence that responds to certain important symbolic demands. For this reason, a building’s characteristics cannot be directly associated to the wealth and status of its owner whilst ignoring other factors. What archaeology really shows is the existence of a wide variety of kinds of settlements: from tuguriums, owning a small pressing device linked to the villa, to large buildings with complex architecture (but no pars urbana) that amass technology and a large storing capacity and are also correlated to nearby artisan workshops (an example: Sánchez et al. 1997). This kind of evidence suggests different ways of organizing agricultural

Concerning the second matter (the elaboration of a hypothesis regarding the evolution of a provincial economy), many scientific studies are still built on an inaccurate epistemological and methodological basis: arranging the set of literary references that allude (or seem to allude) to a same product or a productive phenomenon – which can be placed within a more or less precise geographical context – in a chronological sequence. This procedure is discernable in many descriptions that are suggested as syntheses of the ‘economic history’ of a region, a province or a specific economic phenomenon. In all of them, there is a more or less extensive use of archaeological information, but this does not invalidate the serious problems that are derived from this practice, since archaeology is not used for much more than confirming the validity of hypotheses that had previously been based on literary sources. The problems respond, in the first place, to the characteristics of the literary documentation used. Then supposedly economic data is taken from very assorted genres, whose intention, above all, is aesthetic. 122

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only economic activity on the Tarraconensis coastline. It is also worth remembering that the lack of documentation can sometimes be due to causality or insufficient scientific rigor.

Thus, there are no worries regarding their geographical precision, whether temporal or quantitative. On the other hand, one cannot denote a Roman author’s intention when he includes certain allusions in his works: it can be a matter of anachronisms or intentionally assembled topics.

The study of the Hispanic provinces’ economic and social development, on the basis of coincidences with an ideal archetype (the villae system and the social and juridical order, as defined by agronomists) implies, in fact, a reductionist understanding of the Romanization process in the Iberian Peninsula: conceiving Romanization as an objective acknowledged by the Roman state, which responds to the conscious application of a series of plans and which is ensured by certain procedures. This approach is no longer accepted by historians, but can still be implicitly found in the reconstructions of the settlement and economies of some territories or in certain thematic syntheses. This is clearly an evolutionistic approach, as it explains a very complex historical process (the socioeconomic transformation of the peninsula) as the result of the regular expansion and the hegemony (at least, in some Hispanic regions) of a uniform, rational and dynamic system, sustained by an intense use of technology and labour force (revision of Romanization as a problem in Roldán, Wulff 2001, 358ff.).

The chronological and informative value of such information, therefore, is limited, unless it is certain that it corresponds to a phenomenon that truly existed when the text was being written. This leads to another problem. While civic ideologies reject all autonomy regarding economy as a human activity, material manifestations appear in ancient literature as phenomena related to the consumption, exhibition and possession of wealth. The phenomena are a sign of status and they take place in ritualized situations for which they take on a social meaning. In other words, the references to certain Spanish products (wine, oil, cereal, wicker, garum) refer to the knowledge of social values and behaviours that determine the consumption of this product. There is even less of a chance of their allowing an understanding of the economic structures of a territory and its evolution. As a result, this kind of information cannot be combined with archaeological documentation without a clear perception of its function within a scheme of social and moral values.

New perspectives

Another risk, especially in a provincial context, is that of using ex silentio argumentation. In the case of oil from Baetica, for example, it has been suggested that the end of the epigraphic documentation provided by Monte Testaccio, towards the end of the third century AD, meant the end of the exportation of this product to Rome and its substitution by African oil. From there, it was easy to deduce a crisis, which at the same time would be related to the problems in the Hispanic provinces during the third century. However, archaeology shows that that oil produced in the Baetica was still exported during the fourth and fifth centuries to the entire western part of the Mediterranean (Remesal 1997; for amphorae: Keay 1984). The absence of documentation in one region, hence, is not necessarily a sign of crisis, but a change of distribution itinerary and consumption nuclei, which is partially related to a change within the empire’s administrative and economic structures. In the case of the wine from Tarraco, the apparent disappearance of certain archaeological evidence also led to the suggestion of a general crisis in viticulture in the province towards the end of the first century AD (Miró 1988, 203ff.; a crisis that would apparently affect the global structures of economy and population: Prevosti 1981, 538, 557). Nonetheless, a more rigorous interpretation of archaeological evidence has shown that the implementation of this vineyard and winebased economy had a different intensity and evolutionary rhythm in the regions associated with wine production, as a result of specific socioeconomic conditions: urbanizing processes, settlement and rural property structures, linkage to the exchange routes. Because of this, it seems more appropriate to speak of a distinct evolution regarding these provincial vineyards (Revilla 1995, 135ff.; Revilla 2004a, 161ff. and 170). In this same context, it also seems necessary to re-evaluate the importance of viticulture, which is not the

In order to overcome these problems it is necessary to rethink the methodology in use and change the conceptual definition of economic processes and phenomena, which must resort to the use of explanatory forms. Only on the basis of these changes will it be possible to elaborate a proper definition of the agricultural systems and their relations with other activities developed in rural environments, integrating the hypotheses obtained in a global reconstruction of the economy of Hispanic provinces. In the first place, it is necessary to modify the analysis and interpretation procedures regarding traditional archaeological information. An inventory of a site’s technology based on the descriptions provided by agronomic texts only allows for the emphasis of coincidences between a territory and other areas of the Roman World and contributes to creating a homogenous and static image of an agricultural economy, independent of the epoch and the geography. This is especially uncertain if one intends to analyze a specific provincial situation. Although technology allows us to identify the types of activities that take place in a region, it cannot reveal, by itself, the strategies, work processes and juridicial forms related to the development or knowledge of how the products are distributed. For this purpose, it is necessary to put all material evidence into its spatial and organizational context (architecture and infrastructures, tools, production residues, ceramics and other household objects) and interpret it according to the different possibilities or strategies that a global reading of the written documentation may suggest, strategies that can be combined or modified with time: the production of surpluses for the market, autarchy, complementary work. In this sense, the variously-produced pressing mechanisms 123

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that can be found in many rural Hispanic establishments serve as an example. It is unquestionable that their maintenance implies a special effort related to the desire to obtain a product (wine or oil) and to modify its quality, at the same time as the technological performance was improved (Brun 1986, 60 and 193). Nevertheless, in many publications it is assumed that the presence of presses must always be understood as an expression of an agricultural economy that commercializes its production and therefore ‘invests’ in technology. In this context, the interpretation of the functioning of these installations is based on the implicit acknowledgement of the idea of an integrated, dynamic and expansive economy, which is the result of the application of modern market mechanisms. The sale at urban markets, made clear by the widespread distribution of wine or Hispanic amphorae, would seem to support this idea. It is unquestionable that there was an interest in the improvement of production rates and that this raise is related to sales: agronomists’ worries show a desire to improve performance, and this is why the villa includes a rigorously organized instrumentum (Mattingly 1993, also speaks of an increase in productivity as a result of certain organizational methods and infrastructures; cf. Saller 2002). But this is a partial vision. To avoid this kind of approach all that is needed is to take a look at the diversity of pressing mechanisms: they can be found in a villa (isolated or in groups), in a small farm, in a large shop specialized in the production of wine or in a small tugurium, linked to a villa.

try to define the strategies developed by rural landowners. This kind of analysis will allow us to suggest interpretative models at the level of a territory or a region, as well as the establishment of comparisons. These archetypes or models can be very complex, as the rural environment concentrates numerous artisan activities, whose relations with agriculture and land ownership are quite varied (for the amphora production in Guadalquivir: M. Ponsich 1974-1991; Bernal, Lagóstena 2004; for the Mediterranean coastline: Miró 1988, 12ff; Gisbert 1998; terra sigillata in Mayet 1984; other manufactures: Pérez et al. 1998; for important landowners in Hispanic viticulture or olive growing: Revilla 2004a, 151; Remesal 1989; Tremoleda 2000 and 2005; important landowners’ interests in artisan activities: Haley 1988). Even so, it is necessary to go beyond the study of architecture, productive installations, tools and other artefacts that have been privileged by traditional archaeological analysis. The construction, sizes and organization of these elements reflect, in the first place, the ruling social and economic strategies in rural environments, with villae as residence and management centres (Purcell 1995; Leveau 1998, 22). Centring the study on the material sphere, which is very important, may limit the historical interpretation to mechanical comparisons between Archaeology and written sources, which would allow only for the observation of aspects linked to self-representation and the social order that the rural elites wanted to transmit, an order that also organizes the landscape and the occupation of a territory. In contrast, rural sites must be analyzed as something more than an assemblage of buildings. They must be understood as more complex entities and integrated in the rural environment to which they belong, alongside other elements: work areas, coops or poultry-yards, cultivation plots, terrain conditioning works (terraces, watering and draining systems), aqueducts, paths, and property limits (Sillières 1993; these features are included in recent congresses: Gorges, Rodríguez Martín 1999; Ariño 2003).

Presses are also known to have existed in small rural sites of the Late Empire (farms or villages) and correspond to other forms work and manners of distributing surpluses (an example in the Catalonian coastline: Barrasetas 2003). In many cases, the functioning of this kind of installation can be explained as the expression of a strategy aimed at selling part of the production, but it is obvious that the functioning of an isolated press cannot be interpreted in the same way as that of a factory that owns several presses, calcatoria, lacus and warehouses with dolia. Therefore, to define the meaning of a technology, it is essential to specify the strategies related to its use and the characteristics of the settlement in which it is incorporated.

Similarly, archaeology must analyze all material manifestations generated by the application of strategies and production methods: vegetation, animal and vegetable species brought in, and agricultural lands (Leveau 2000, 567; Leveau 2003). The relationship between human processes and natural processes (erosion, sedimentation) must also be considered. These relationships are the result of – and at the same time, they influence – the activities that are developed and which can also be related to other factors: production and organizational strategies, and legal forms of appropriation and use of the land or resources. In other words, it is a matter of proposing a broad understanding of the material manifestations related to the exploitation of a territory. Expanding the field of study and integrating new evidence will allow us to define the characteristics and functioning of a production system better. In the same way, the overall impact of this production system on a provincial economy or its effect on the configuration of specific local or regional situations, in combination with other systems, will be evaluated with much more precision,

Rural workshops dedicated to the elaboration of amphorae are an even better example of the problems regarding the evaluation of technology. These workshops can be modest or have a large number of kilns. But this is a relatively simple kind of structure, and what really defines its dimension and the workshop’s productive orientation is the global organization of the technology and the characteristics and evolution of the collection of productions, which can integrate common ware / table ware and construction material. Only on this basis is it possible to deal with another matter: the relations between ceramic crafting and agriculture (Manacorda 1985 and 1989; for Hispania Citerior: Revilla 1995, 135ff. and 2004a). At this level, and with the contribution of agronomic literature, it is possible to propose hypotheses regarding the functioning of these units within the fundus, as a wealth producing estate, and 124

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as it will be possible to identify different rhythms within the development of certain phenomenoa.

necessary to have complex explanatory standards at one’s disposal in order to formulate adequate working hypotheses. These standards must be based on the ascertainment that an ancient economy is not an independent field from society, political structures and the related value system. Consequently, it makes no sense to speak of agriculture, stockbreeding, commerce or rural craftsmanship simply as specialized activities or economic division. This division is only justified in a capitalistic system. These activities are organized and related amongst themselves, forming systems that are in continuous evolution, as the result of the diversity of strategies and ways of organizing work and management, which, furthermore, refer us to a broader socioeconomic context. It is also crucial to define the meaning of certain concepts and categories that have been used: market, commerce, investments, performances, productivity (used accordingly with their social equivalents: bourgeoisie, middle classes), which is a problem that has precisely been pointed out in the criticism aimed at ‘modernist’ historians of Roman economics (the existence of partial markets and mechanisms of supply and demand does not mean that the Roman economy, considered as a whole, should be considered to be regulated just by the ‘market principle’; vid. the contributions collected in Scheidel, von Reden 2002). The standards and criteria must also consider the possibilities to be found by comparing them with other pre-industrial societies’ agricultural systems, understanding that the comparison does not provide an explanation but must illustrate the diversity of possible interpretations.

Making this kind of suggestion may seem obvious. It has been decades since this kind of perspective has been consecrated in nearby countries, but this is not the case of Spain. By way of exception, the studies dedicated to the evolution of the vegetation in certain territories in Catalonia are to be mentioned (Palet, Riera 1994, 1997 and 2000; Palet 1997). These studies integrate this factor in a broader context, which includes other resources (land, climate, hydrology), productive activities (agriculture, stockbreeding, exploiting forest resources), technology and productive systems in order to reconstruct the formation and global evolution of a landscape and explain it, ultimately, as the result of a specific (historical) combination of socioeconomic and natural factors. The results of these studies break with the traditional idea, determined by an ‘ideology of progress’, of an intensive and commercial agriculture, generalized in the region at the start of the empire as the result of a conscious and programmed colonial action (these reconstructions are linked to the idea of a detachment between a protohistorical economy and a dynamic Roman economy: Leveau 1998, 25; Revilla 2004b, 177ff.). At the same time, these studies explain the diversity of activities, uses of land, technology and habitat shown by archaeology, which would make a micro-regional analysis much easier. They also offer a better evaluation of the impact of certain techniques and activities that barely left an archaeological trace (this is the case of the landscape changes, related to the possible spreading of the seasonal migration of cattle between the fifth and tenth centuries towards the centre of the Catalonian coastline).

Finally, it is essential to try to define the analysis’s spatial frames: local, regional and provincial. This definition requires, once more, an evaluation of the combination of social, political and ideological factors that lead to the defining of a particular space, with its specific characteristics (geographical, administrative, cultural). Knowing the evolution of a specific productive system within this space, and its relation with others, will allow, in the first place, for a better characterization of local societies within a region; in the second place, since it facilitates comparisons of diverse situations, it will allow for the suggestion of more complex and clarified explanations of the internal evolution of a Roman province (the need for a meticulous regional analysis and the problems raised by certain excessively general explanations have been pointed out by Patterson 1987, 116; Leveau 1998, 25; Leveau 2003, 91-92, stresses heterogeneity as an attribute of the socioeconomic situation of provinces). This change of perspective ultimately allows historians to place economy in the context of the historical evolution of each province and understand its functioning in the whole of the imperial Roman structure. In turn, this will allow for the construction of better knowledge of the system of economic and political interdependences constituted by the empire (Crawford 1986).

In the past few years, the addition of this kind of material evidence has led to the development of new technologies and laboratory procedures. These new technologies and procedures are especially important for the analysis of artisan technology, the evolution of species of animals and plants, the elaboration processes of agricultural products or the changes in vegetation. Hence, an archaeology focused on the rural world must be multi-disciplinary. However, the application of these new techniques must not be limited to identifying manufactured products or describing the complexities of their making; it must serve the purpose, above all, of defining the social and economic strategies that determine the classes of work that were used. In this context archaeological experimentation is especially useful, as it provides the possibility of suggesting hypothesis to explain the organization of an activity and its impact on the configuration of the neighbouring landscape. However, the perfecting of traditional document analysis procedures and the introduction of laboratory disciplines related to the study of new evidence is insufficient. It is

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New methods for the study of the social landscape from the Laietania wine production region of Northeastern Spain Oriol Olesti

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Cèsar Carreras

Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

Introduction Any historical community establishes relationships with its environment, bringing about a particular historical landscape. Such a landscape may be called social, since it is the result of a society action in relation to the environment. Studying such historical landscapes can generate knowledge about features of a particular society. Such research may even offer more documentation than a strict archaeological or literary analysis because those social features mean nothing without a suitable territorial projection, lacking a necessary context. Analyses of land ownership as well as production forms cannot ignore the territorial variable, which may explain the location of estates near communication routes or in fertile lands. Following this line, a group of researchers of Northeastern Spain, present-day Catalonia, have been interested in the Roman landscape in recent years. Such interest covers either physical (e.g., evolution of ancient landscape), economic (e.g., production systems, communications) and social aspects (i.e., estates, dependent relationships). We therefore combine diverse documentation from Roman, medieval and present times as well as methodologies borrowed from specialized fields such as epigraphy, toponymy, archaeometry or underwater archaeology. All are needed to study the social landscape of a central region of Catalonia, known in Roman times as Laietania. We started to undertake micro studies so as to reduce such complexity. We believed these micro studies might become general models for economic and social organization. The more particular are the studies we undertake, the more the resulting image of the Laietanian territory becomes richer and more complex. The following pages summarize the results of such studies. Land ownership It is fundamental in the study of any ancient society to know the mechanisms and forms of property and land exploitation, the basic means of production around which other production forms took place. This idea applies especially in the Roman world. In Roman society, land was not only the main source of power, but also a symbol

of wealth and status, a refuge for fortunes and the prestige of particular families. Land was therefore a widely desired object for its relationship to social promotion. Attempting to study forms of land ownerships in the Roman period through archaeological evidence is often considered a fanciful or inaccessible pursuit. Land survey studies and diachronic analyses of settlement patterns on the basis of spatial archaeology have allowed general approaches to the study of forms of land ownership. Such studies, however, cannot provide in any case particular information on the property structure in a specific area. Studies on amphora and ceramic epigraphy may yield more specific information but without the necessary territorial projection. In this sense, places-names, historic phonetics, and landscape morphology preserved in early medieval documentation have been sources hardly taken into account by scholars. Place-names derived from endings such –anum or –ana, parts of names of Roman praedia or fundi, are especially signs of the existence of ancient Roman estates. It is important to remain conscious of the problems raised by the use of place-names, especially those identified in medieval or modern documentation. Place-names are difficult to date, etymologies are prone to error, and there are sometimes minor changes in location. The voluminous documentation of the 9-10th centuries nonetheless provides us a good approach to landscape morphology of this period. Furthermore, this documentation helps us understand the phonetic evolution of place-names from an early stage. Of course, a chronological jump from the early Middle Ages to the Roman period should be critically justified. The same problems have appeared in the area of Central Italy, in the Umbria, where the survival of medieval placenames such as Gragnano or Agliano has been clearly described thanks to epigraphy and archaeology of the estates of the Granii and Allii (Braconi 2003, 41-44). Despite some doubts among researchers, information regarding placenames has been considered very useful when combined with surveys and archaeological research. In all those cases, perhaps the key problem arises in the relationship between the late establishment of the medieval

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sources and the original location from the first and second centuries AD. It is evident that any fundus or praedium of the colonial period may have been transmitted to other hands over the time. However, in the Roman tradition, the names of the fundi were preserved. The name of the first owner was kept at the fiscal level as well as the property register in order not to lose control over the limits of the estate.

which were useful indicators for defining and describing the feudal space. Such survival may have more difficult for small estates, which had a less important role as articulators on the medieval landscape. A recent study has shown the possibilities of the method described above when applied to the ager Barcinonensis, the territory near present-day Barcelona (Olesti 2005). There are a few place-names that have retained names related to personal names and the ending –anum, -ana. These place-names generally identify a locus, or terminus or territorium, in the early medieval period. Many examples have been documented of members of gentes from Barcino recorded in monumental or funerary epigraphy that can be related to names of fundi present in the colonial territory or nearby (Fig. 1. Central Catalan coast with place-names of medieval fundi). In fact, most gentes present in the epigraphy and the medieval toponymy should be included amongst the wealthiest gentes in the colony. This can be observed in their access to local magistracies, their evergetic actions and their promotion in some case to the equestrian and senatorial ordines.

The practice seemed quite clear for the land surveyors. When Higinius Gromaticus (L.7-8) gives an example of how to declare the fundi concessi in fiscal registrations (forma), he quotes the case of a fundus Seianus, given to L. Manilius (Eadem ratione terminabimus fundos exceptos sive concessos, et ‘in’ forma sicut boja publica inscriptionibus demonstrabimus. Concessos fundos similiter ostendemus, ut ‘fundus Seianus concessus Lluci Manilio Sei filie’). In other words, it keeps the name of the early owner. A similar case is offered by M. T. Varro, who quotes also a fundus Seianus that appears to be a referring case (Cap Rusticae, III, 2, 7-8). Other examples may be documented in the gromatic figures (Chouquer-Favory 1992, 50), in which there are remarkable examples of estates that keep their original names despite changes in ownership. Such is the case of ‘Dominius Faustiniani (La. 185) given by Publius Scipio’ and of Dominius Manilianus, whose estate was assigned to the colony Iulia Constantia. Furthermore, following the same approach, the Liber Coloniarum (La. 239) includes the case of Volturnum, in which its territory was assigned according to the villae names and their landlords (ager eius ‘in’ nominibus villarum et possessorum est adsignatus). This is an example of how names were preserved over time (Hinrichs 1989, 56).

Such would be the case of the gens Minicia, which seems to be connected to the medieval place-name Miziano (CSC 382, 1002), and has two senators among its members (IRC IV 30-32). Another case is the gens Gavia, who has a provincial flamen among its members (IRC IV 40) and appears to be identified by the place-name Gavano (CSC 80, 1011). Similar is the gens Cornelia, a family with 30 epigraphic mentions in Barcino, one corresponding to an important figure in the Augustan period, recorded in one of the first public monuments of the colony (IRC IV 152) and identified with the place called Corneliano (CSC 137, 980). Fourth, the gens Valeria stands out as one of the most important families in the colony (26 mentions) and with Augustan individuals, in other words, from the foundational period. Near the colony a locum ubi dicunt Valleriana (CSC 31, 949) was documented, with the placename Valrano (Onm.Cat, VII 434, 1052).

Probably, coincidence in names has brought about problems for the land surveyors, either at the time of assignment or once land was distributed, especially when a significant amount of time passed between a purchase and a sale. Sicculus Flaccus (Th. 126, 267) recorded this case when he mentioned a controversia de modo between two landlords who claimed the same plot with the same name.

Two examples were chosen to illustrate this point because of their exceptionality. The first refers to the gens Clerania, a family documented only in Barcino in the overall Western provinces by the only inscription of Clerania Beronice (IRC IV 184). Such epigraphic exceptionality is confirmed by the existence in the Barcelona neighborhood of a place called Clerano (ASPP 13, 1009), which appears in the medieval documents as a reference to a probable ancient settlement (cum columbario maceries petrarum vel parietes opere antiquo structas). The other case refers to the gens Titinia, a gens of clear italic origin, probably related to the colonial deductio, which left its mark on a myriad of places (Tiziano, St. Feliu de Llobregat, CSC 84, 965; Tizana, Maresme, CSC 751, 1093).

Finally, a paradigmatic case refers to the tables of Veleia, examples of landlords of large- and middle-sized landholdings who frequently owned diverse fundi or praedia. All of these landholdings retained their initial names (CIL XI 1147), probably the names of the original landlords, who kept using them despite the estates’ belonging to a single landlord, making easy identification and registration of original estates. In sum, it is believed that the names of fundi from the medieval documentation refer to the original landlords of Roman estates. The names survived in the medieval period due to continuity in agricultural exploitation of the estates, at least in the Late Roman period. In other words, this medium or large size will explain why the names survive in the morphological description in the early medieval period, at a time when the estate may have ceased to exist as such. Perhaps of the estate remained only its boundaries,

Other examples of gentes from Barcino appearing in the epigraphy and the territory are the gens Quintia (with the place-name Quintiano, ACB, 9, 1085), the gens Porcia (Porciano CSC 297, 994), gens Licinia (Liciano, CSC 233, 989) and gens Paullia (Pauliniano, CSC 516, 1031), discussed below. 132

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Fig. 1. Distribution of Pascual 1 amphora workshop in NE Spain

The case of M.Porcius

Other names of medieval fundi created from cognomina are known. The cognomina of this people is documented in the epigraphy of Barcino, such as the cognomen Octavius (IRC IV 149, 211), from which fundus Octaviano documented at St. Cugat (CSC 245, 990) may come from. Important early and late Roman structures are registered at St. Cugat. Additionally, there are the case of Primulus (IRC IV 138, 157, 176), whose name produced fundus Primiliano (in terminos de Primiliano) (CSC 314, 996), and that of Silvanus (IRC IV 66, 135, 144), which led to the place-name of Silvano (Banks 1984, 607), located near the Roman villa of Can Cortada.

Following a similar approach, it was thought that perhaps it would be convenient to study the relationship between these individuals and gentes and the wine production world. In other words, the hypothesis was that the wealth of some of these lineages present in the monumental epigraphy in the first and second centuries AD, came from important estates. Then, these lineages might be identified with the phenomenon of Laietanian wine, a source of wealth and integration of these territories with the Roman economy. It must be borne in mind that Laietania exported wines to other Western provinces in the first century AD. Examples include the German and British limes, as well as Rome itself (Miró 1988; Revilla 1995).

Also outstanding is the case of Nymphius, cognomen documented for a freedman and Augustan sevir, Q. Calpurnius Nymphius, which may be responsible for the medieval fundus Nimphianus (ACB, LAEC I, 286, 1091). The specificity of the cognomen of a freedman is amazing, as is the survival of the name of the fundus. The reference to a sevir shows the social promotion of the individual, who probably consolidated his position and his offspring’s by purchasing a local estate.

A first case study was of a character documented by the amphora stamp M.PORCI(us), well-recorded in the area of Baetulo, and a myriad of shipwrecks and sites around the Lion gulf (Mayet-Tobie 1982; Comas 1997; CarrerasOlesti 2002).

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The stamp appears on amphorae Pascual 1, produced probably in diverse workshops in the Laietania. There is no complete evidence of the production centre (examples at Badalona, Can Peixau, Gavà, Mataró, Premià de Dalt, Sant Andreu de Llavaneres). The concentration of 77 stamps in the urban excavations of Baetulo links the production centre to this city, and the discovery of those stamps at the workshop of Can Peixau (Badalona) seems to confirm that it was produced in this town. However, fabric studies have managed to confirm only the proximity of the amphora production centers M.PORCI(us) to Baetulo, suggesting that they may have been produced in diverse centers along with other stamps (such as the case of Can Peixau).

name effectively and to fix it with precision in the present territory of Vallès, near the river Besós, near the present town of Montcada i Reixac (for instance, Cartulary of St. Cugat 128, year 978. ‘in territorio de Porciano, in locum que vocant Odra’l; CSC 297, any 994, ‘in Vallense, in terminio de Porciano, iuxta flumen Riopullo’). This Porciano estate corresponds to a fertile land, where wine production was the main activity in the eleventh century. Eighty out of 134 identified cultivated fields belong to vineyards, while the neighboring territories were employed for the production of grains (Alcazar 1998, 84). The estate was crossed by a road heading towards Barcelona (via, via Calcada CSC 128, 397), and the explicit mention of Calciata leads us to suppose that it was an ancient road, probably of Roman origin (ad ipsa calciata vel in Porciano, CSC 384). Finally, the place Kanalilias is mentioned in two documents (CSC 377, 384). Nowadays, ‘Canaletes’ is a place where a Roman villa has been identified, the known villa of Can Canaletes. In fact, a Roman road was documented there, as a milestone from the late third century demonstrates (IRC I 179).

The chronology of the stamps M.PORCI in its two variants (M.PORC and M.PORCI) is settled, in general, in a date range that goes from 15 BC to AD 25. The problem of this stamp has so far been the identification of the person and his origin. Two decades ago, A. Tchernia (1986, 193) suggested that he may have a Romanized indigenous, due to the important role of gens Porcia in the control of the Citerior province during II century BC. More recently, M.J. Pena (1999) opined that the production could be related to an M.PORCIUS from Narbone, linked to the Caton family, who may have had some interests in this territory. Finally, Etienne and Mayet (2000), recovering an old hypothesis, proposed a Campanian origin for him. The only evidence for such identifications is the existence of individuals with the same nomen in destination ports, evidence that cannot be considered at all conclusive.

The villa is known only partially (Royo et al. 1965), only from surveyed materials. The earlier material comes from the Augustan period and covers an important area. The architectural structure of the Roman villa is under Santa Maria de les Feixes church. Nearby an amphora workshop was discovered. This workshop produced coarse wares and a local version of the amphora Gauloise 4, with a stamp MS (Pascual 1977). Those productions are dated in the second and third centuries AD, thus later than the productions of amphora Pascual 1 and the stamp M.PORCI. Nevertheless, it must be borne in mind that the site has not yet been excavated.

It was at this point that we considered it necessary to widen our research field to consider the larger context, making it possible to integrate epigraphic data and data derived from the study of the ancient landscape.

The Canaletes villa endured until the fifth century AD, meaning that the fundus survived until the Late Empire (genesis date for the medieval toponymy).

Regarding epigraphy, there seems to be some contradiction in the data. For instance, Tarraco documents 16 Porcii, 2 at Dertosa, and 1 at Aeso. If we focus on the Laietania region, 2 Porcii are found at Iluro, 1 at Canet and Rubí, and 9 at Barcino. However, surprisingly no Porcii are known in the monumental or funerary epigraphy of Baetulo. Of all those characters, only the case of Barcino corresponds to an Augustus dating (IRC IV 173, CIL II.4572), an inscription that also presents the praenomen Marcus. Taking into account that the foundation of Barcino occurred around 15 BC and that it was a colonial deductio, it may be possible to identify M.PORCIUS from the inscription as one of the first colonists of the new city. There is no way of being certain that he is the same individual as the wine producer, but it is quite significant that he had some freedmen and lived quite near Baetulo, where he may have had his businesses. However, this gens is not represented in the city of Baetulo.

Judging from the estate’s location, Porciano was in the middle of a crossroad, SW Besos River. It is therefore taken as hypothetically part of the Barcino territory, but it would have communicated directly with Baetulo through the Besos River. This situation may explain a contradictory phenomenon: the amphorae M.PORCIUS were exported from the port of Baetulo but the epigraphic evidence of this family is found in the territory of Barcino and not Baetulo. The estate enjoyed excellent communication with the colony by the road that crossed Can Canaletes, but the logical commercial exit was the port of Baetulo. If the social life of the family developed in its original territory, the colony, the family used the port Baetulo commercially, perhaps because at that time the colony’s port was still underdeveloped. The data suggest a final chronological consideration. If, as seems to be the case, Porciano is found in the territory of Barcino, the estate may have been founded in the process of colony deductio in the Augustan period. The name of the fundus stems from the first owner, a member of the Porcia family who received a plot of land at that time. Therefore, the date of origin of this estate of the Porcia family coincides with the amphora

The data from the territorial study are far more interesting. The initial hypothesis was that if the gens Porcia had an estate in this area, the estate would be called fundus Porcianum, which may have left traces in the medieval or later toponymy (Porcianum/Porcià). A study of cartularies from the Count Archive of Barcelona, St. Cugat, Polinyà and Sant Llorenç de Munt, allowed us to locate the place134

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There are a large number of amphora stamps that may be linked to the members of gens Licinia. First is the stamp on Pascual 1 LICIN(ius), present at the Cap Bear 3 shipwreck, 50-25 BC, whose cargo seems to have been uploaded in the area of Baetulo and Iluro (Carreras and Berni 2002, 365).

production of M.PORCIUS, a time when an M.PORCIUS lived in Barcino, and, finally, a common dating for the Can Canaletas site, with initial Augustan materials. Such coincidence of all these data in the Augustan period appears to be quite remarkable. Gens Licinia

A second amphora stamp, NLIC, coming from Baetulo, seems to correspond to a compound stamp, slave name + landlord. A third case would be TLIC, recorded on Dressel 2/4 amphora in La Chretienne H shipwreck (AD 15-20), which may be read as T(itus) Lic(inius) or again a compound stamp of a slave name + landlord. Additionally, the La Chretienne H shipwreck includes a stamp NL.L that appears to be related to the previous ones and reading a slave name + L(ucius) L(icinius).

A second outstanding case study was the gens Licinia (Berni et al. 2005). The main difference in relation to other cases analyzed in Barcino, such as Cleranius or Titinius, is the fact that Licinius is one of the most common gentilities in Hispania, and especially in the Tarraconensis. According to Abascal (1994), it is the sixth most common name documented in Hispania, with 305 inscriptions, 2.62 % of the total. One hundred and sixty-six out of these 305 testimonies include the praenomen, such as Aulus (1 ex., 0.6%), Caius (43 ex., 25.9%), Marcus (23 ex., 13.85%), Lucius (72 ex., 43.37%), Publius (10 ex., 6.02%); Titus (4 ex., 2.4%); Quintus (12 ex., 7.2%) and Sextus (1 ex., 0.6%). Almost half of the examples have Lucius as praenomen. In the Narbonensis, this name is also present with 143 mentions, but only 10 cases include the praenomen Lucius. One must bear in mind that wealthy families in the Republican period would transmit praenomen and nomen to the next generation. Furthermore, freedmen adopted the two first names at the time of manumission.

The examples of tria nomina are even more significant. The first case is the stamp LLC coming from Laietanian amphorae recovered at Empúries and Barcino in the second quarter of the first century AD, which are interpreted as L(ucius) L(icinius) C(?). A second example comes from Giraglia shipwreck, where 28 different stamps appeared on dolia and amphorae Dr. 2/4 coming from Baix Llobregat and Barcino. There, the stamp LLL is found, possibly reading L(ucius) L(icinius) L(?). From the figlina of St. Miquel de Martres producing amphorae Pascual 1 and Dr. 2/4 (Vallès Oriental, Laietania), the stamp LLQ turned up, possibly reading L(ucius) L(icinius) Q(?), as well as the stamp SLL, also documented at the figlina near Can Cabot and Baetulo. This last stamp could correspond to either a tria nomina S(extus) L(icinius) L(?) or a compound name S + L(ucius) L(icinius).

At the end of first century BC, the first members of this gens are documented as being in the Tarraconensis province. L.Licinusi LF Serg. Sura stands out, who is paid tribute at the Berà Arch in the Augustan period. He may also relate to homonymous duumvirs at Celsa. Moreover, a L.Licinius is recorded as one of the first magistrates of the colony at the end of Ist century BC (IRC IV 162). Therefore, this gens appears early to be linked to the first local elites in the Tarraconensis.

Other Laietanian stamps can also be included in this list. Among these are BL, CLAR, CLB, EL, L and PLO (Berni et al. 2005).

However, mentions of this gens are scarce during the first century AD, so individuals of the name did not reach any prominent positions until the second century AD, such as Q. Licinius Silvanus Granianus (IRC I 138), who became patron of Baetulo, and especially L. Licinius Sura, who was consul three times (Rodà 1970). The career of this individual began in the Domitian reign (as quatorvir viarum), and he became councilor in Trajanean times. He kept close ties to Barcino, perhaps his birth place, as 21 inscriptions of Barcino that mention his name together with his accensus L.Licinius Secundus (IRC IV 83-104) and a similar inscription from St. Andreu de Llavaneres (IRC I 23) indicate.

We refer to the stamp on dolia L. LIC(INIUS).CHRES, with a date range covering the first half of the first century AD. Four sites so far have documented this stamp: L.LIC. CHRES at the Can Feu and Castellarnau workshops (Vallès Occidental) as well as the villa of Sta. Margarida de Montbui (Anoia), while a variant [?] LICIN.CHRESIMI was discovered on a reused dolia at Barcino.

The existence of singular estates belonging to this gens is documented by one of Sura’s friends, Caius Licinius Mucino, landlord of a large estate in the Laietania, where he retired in winter (Marcial, I, 49, 19-20). If this gens enjoyed a special status in the Tarraconensis, and above all in the Laietania, it is feasible that, as happens with the Porcii, some were related with the wine production. Here again the study of amphora stamps may be of some significance (Berni et al. 2005). The results were quite satisfactory.

In the case of the example from Sta. Margarida, the stamp L.LIC.CHRES appears with another, FIDELIS FECIT, which seems to show that a slave called Fidelis was the container’s producer while Luci Licini was the owner of the contents, i.e., the wine. In the same villa, another stamp on dolium was documented, L.ANTONI. It should be pointed out that the villa of Sta. Margarida, unlike Can Feu or Castellarnau, did not produce amphorae. This fact may imply that the produced wine was carried by other means (such as cullei or cupae) to the exit ports.

However, it is not the only role of this gens regarding the phenomena related to wine production. The study of dolia stamps has provided a quite complex production panorama.

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In this place, there is a group of storage pits and walls from the Augustan period or the first half of the first century AD. At the end of the first century and early second century, most of the architectural structures from the luxurious villa were constructed, covering an extension of 2.4 Ha., with thermae and porch. In the middle of the second century AD, the villa underwent an important renovation in the pars urbana, with an accurate decorative programme, which implied a decoration of the baths with opus musivum, a pattern of shells in a row, or the presence of opus sectile (Uscatescu 2004, 65-66; 95-96). Within the porch, two rectangular laci were discovered with a hydraulic coat and molding at the angles, which appear to have been employed to maximize fermentation (Uscatescu 2004, 61). Summing up, it is a remarkable villa with a rural part that may have been used for agricultural production and likely for wine production. The villa also had a documented urban part with a decorative programme integrated with the representation and standard of living of the Roman imperial elite. One intriguing hypothesis is that this is the gens Licinia estate or even L.Licini Sura’s one.

Fig. 2. Three kilns of Pascual 1 and Dressel 2-4 amphorae from Can Feu

The Santa Caterina workshop In 2001, a first approach to the study of the amphora stamps found at Barcino was published (Berni and Carreras 2001), resulting from a systematic collection of all the materials found in the Museu d’Història de la Ciutat and the City Archaeological Service. This collection included all the stamps known by December 1999, a group of 60 stamps, 48 of which were produced in the Tarraconensis province. The aim of this initial work was simply to evaluate the importance of the colony of Barcino as a commercial centre for either the arrival of products from outside carried on amphorae as well as the export of local productions.

Finally, that the existence of an estate of this gens close to the territory of Barcino was identified by the early medieval place-name of Liciniano-Liciano, present Llicà (Vallès Oriental), is well known. The identification of Liciano as a gens Licinia estate, and perhaps with the powerful L.Licinius Sura, had already been put forward by M. Mayer (1996). From the study of the place-name known since AD 946, some interesting data arise. It is a huge estate, which required a subdivision into Liciano subteriore (946) and Liciano superiore (958), with good communication since the via Augusta crosses the estate, and it is near the crossroad (with a Republican road coming from Osona). No Roman settlements have yet been documented there, although some agricultural production sites were recorded in the neighborhood. The site of Can Boada Vell (Palau de Plegamans) stands out because a tegula with the stamp [TEG]ULA PAULI EX FUN(do) [---]PERIANO (IRC V 139) was found there. The identification of such a character as Paulus, tegulae producer, is not surprising. It should be borne in mind that the site is located in a medieval estate called Pauliniano, as appears in medieval cartularies. He could have been a freedman or individual linked to the hypothetical figure of Paulus, landlord of this estate or the close officina. An inscription from Barcino (IRC IV 98) mentions M. PAULLUS PAULLINUS as an amicus dedicating one of the 22 stands of L.Licinius Secundus. The close location of the probable fundus Paulinianus to the fundus Licinianus is suggestive. Another dedication comes from Quintia Severa (IRC IV 100), which may be related to the estate of Quintiano, near Barcino.

In this first work, 16 stamps were recognized as having been produced in the Barcelona Plain and its hinterlands, a territory known in ancient times as Laietania, an area of production of abundant wines not always of high quality, as the ancient sources reveal (Martial I.26.9-10; Pliny the Elder NH XIV.71). The amphorae produced on the Barcelona Plain probably contained wines from different villae of the Laietanian territory, from the Plain and other inland places (Palet 1997, 172-173). Not all the villae had their own amphora workshops: some of them ordered containers designated for carrying their wines to neighboring workshops, through the locatio-conductio mechanism (Cockle 1981; Rathbone 1993). If the first work on stamps from Barcino managed to collect only 16 stamps from local producers, the recent excavation of Santa Caterina (Barcelona) provided a group of 68 stamps, all of them from the same workshop. Therefore, the image of local production has changed completely; in some cases, new stamps have allowed us to recognize ancient broken stamps and determine families of stamps.

Finally, but on a more hypothetic level, the location of remains of an impressive early empire villa only 4 Km far from Liciano, below present-day Granollers (Uscatescu 2004), should be noted.

Santa Caterina’s production appears to cover a wide date range from the early years of the colony’s foundation: there are some stamps dated between 10 BC and 5 AD (Cap de Volt shipwreck) to AD 20, dated by the Chrétienne 136

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the temporal coincidence of so many stamps in the same workshop be explained?

C shipwreck (AD 15-20). Some stamps likely continued to be produced later than this date. A chronological coincidence seems to be reflected in some stamps, as well as a typological evolution and firing technique for amphorae production.

Interpreting Tarraconensis amphora stamps is not an easy task due to their great variety and heterogeneity (Revilla 2004). Sometimes they appear to read as tria nomina, at other times praenomen and nomen, associations of nomina, other cognomina, or only initials. Some scholars defend that each workshop should be studied individually. Stamps from Santa Caterina are therefore analyzed as individual cases within their epigraphic and geographic context, despite similarities among workshops that should be pointed out.

According to parallels of these stamps, it seems that a soft cream fabric was common in this workshop until around AD 10-15, when the first examples of red fabric turned up. This change in firing techniques likely coincided with a change in typology from Pascual 1 to Dressel 2-4. Hindrances in linking spikes to a typology such as Pascual 1 or Dressel 2-4 makes it difficult to demonstrate this point. However, other workshops such as Can Feu (Sant Quirze del Vallès) registered a similar phenomenon. Can Feu produced in an initial period from 10 BC to AD 15 Pascual 1 in soft cream fabric, but from AD 15 onward manufactured either Pascual 1 or Dressel 2-4 with red-brick fabric (Carbonell and Folch 1998). Transition from one firing technique to the other coincides with the production of some stamps that appear in both fabrics.

The presence of great varieties of workshop stamps is common to other figlinae in the Baix Llobregat such as Vila Vella (Sant Boi), with 18 variants (Revilla 1995, 190-192); Can Reverter (Sant Vicenç dels Horts), with 10 variants (Revilla 1995, 199-202) and Can Tintorer, with 23 variants (Revilla 1995, 203-208). Not only the Barcelona Plain records workshops with numerous typologies of stamps, but also sites from Vallès such as Can Feu (Revilla 1995, 213-216) with 11 variants or Torre Llauder (Revilla 1995, 249-257) with 36 stamps do. If it is possible that some stamps were not produced locally, this diversity of stamps in the same place requires an explanation.

With the goal of obtaining more contextual dating for the diverse stamps, we offer the following chronological table: 1st period: 10 BC – AD 10

All seem to suggest that amphora stamps referred to people related to wine production or amphora production from Tarraconensis. Some scholars defend the hypothesis that they identify a variety of people responsible for workshop production, for instance the figulus and his workers, some of them being slaves. This interpretation comes from the production of Samian ware (sigillata) in the Graufesenque workshop, in which the name of the manufacturer was an important element.

Productions in soft cream fabric: I – Cap de Volt shipwreck (10 BC – AD 5) T – Cap de Volt (10 BC – AD 5) and Els Ullastres shipwrecks (50 BC – AD 25) PIL THEOPHIL O PHILO Φ

The relationship between craftsmen and containers in the production of amphora is not so relevant, since contents were more important than containers. Therefore, it seems feasible that stamps identified wine producers, not container producers. Regarding the Santa Caterina workshop, most stamps are abbreviated cognomina, such as THEOPHIL, PHILO, LESB, LAETI, PRI, AVC, and EPAPR or are combinations of nomina and cognomina, such as PLOC. Most of these cognomina appear to represent Greek names, which are normally associated with slaves or freedmen. If such names represented freedmen, they could identify landlords or agents of landlords (institores) from the Barcelona Plain, whose estates were dedicated to wine production. Their wines were probably uploaded to commercial ships in the port of Barcino, after filling amphorae produced in urban centers such as Santa Caterina (Carreras, 1998).

2nd period of transition: 10 BC – AD 15 Productions in either soft-cream or red-brick fabrics, probably covering a wider date range: LESB LAETI PLOC 3rd period: AD 15 – AD 20 Productions exclusively in red-brick fabric: P – Planier I (AD 1-15) and Els Ullastres shipwrecks (50 BC – AD 25) A – Chrétienne C (AD 15-20) PRI - Chrétienne C (AD 15-20) AVC EPAPR As can be observed, the Santa Caterina workshop produced 15 stamp typologies that with the exception of only a couple of cases (i.e PHILO, PIL, PLOC) do not seem to be related to one another. This means that each stamp identified a different individual; therefore it cannot be the workshop’s owner, at least in all the cases, because this would mean that there was a change of property every two years (15 stamps in 30 years, 10 BC to AD 20). How can

The presence of stamps from anonymous characters such as freedmen acting as commercial agents likely justifies the fact that the elites of the Barcino colony, ordo decuriorum, do not normally appear. Only in a few cases do amphora stamps appear to identify senatorial and equestrian individuals such as Cn.Lentulus Augur (Tremoleda 2003), P.Usulenus Veientus (Tremoleda 1997), gens Mussidi 137

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Fig. 3. Theoretical structure of the social landscape (Barreda 1998), Cornelii (Berni, Carreras and Revilla 1998) and M.Porcius (Carreras and Olesti 2002). Similar conclusions were drawn from the study of stamps related to gens Licinia (Berni et al. 2005) and the study of the main fundi of Laietania that appear as place-names in the medieval cartularies (Olesti 2005).

fundus, On the contrary, it may have been more sensible to carry wine cullei or cupae to the colony in order to fill it in the amphora produced in the urban workshops. This will explain why some villae close to Barcino, such as Sant Pau del Camp or Can Cortada have fields of dolia, probably to store wine, but they do not have any amphora workshop to carry their products. Another case is that of the Joaquim Xirau settlement, in which a lacus was found and perhaps a wine press, but no amphora workshop, as well as Arxiu Administratiu. Perhaps the production of their own vineyard or other producers’ was pressed there and later stored in dolia, before being transferred to amphorae. This kind of organization with amphora workshops close to the main river and maritime lines was quite common in the province of Baetica (Remesal 1986), in which villae producing olive oil were far from the Guadalquivir riverside, while workshops were on the riverside.

Since 218 BC, the lex Claudia limited the involvement of the Senatorial class in trade to a ship with a carrying capacity of 300 amphorae (Livius, XXI, 63.4; Cirero, Verr.V.18). However, senators attempted to overcome the limitation by using their freedmen in commercial ventures (Raschke 1978; D’Arms 1981; Wallace-Hadrill 1991; García Brossa 1998). Furthermore, the lex Iunia Norbana (17 BC) and Papia Poppaea (AD 9) reinforced ties between freedmen and owners. According to this interpretation, Santa Caterina stamps represent the different people responsible for managing wine production estates in the territory of the colony of Barcino. In some cases, the same people were the fundi landlords and acted as representatives of the great landlords in the region, a kind of vilicus or institores (Lôs 1992; Aubert 1994). The proximity of the Barcino port, where wine could be embarked to the main Mediterranean ports, made it unnecessary to fill containers in the same estate or

If this was the interpretation of Santa Caterina’s workshop, people appearing on the stamps may have been people responsible from estates in the colony’s surroundings. Only one stamp produced at Santa Caterina, THEOPHILI, was also manufactured in other sites. The same stamp is documented in other workshops of the Baix Llobregat area, such as Vila Vella (Sant Boi), (López 1998) and Sant 138

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Fig. 4. Distribution of medieval name-places of possible Roman fundi 1998), it is believed that most Tarraconense amphorae were transported by wagons, pack animals or river boats to the main coastal towns (Barcino, Baetulo and Iluro). They were probably stored there in horrea until local or foreign traders bought them and loaded their ships with them.

Vicenç dels Horts. Therefore, it is unclear whether this stamp was found accidentally at Santa Caterina or perhaps the workshop produced extra amphorae that could not have been produced in other local workshops. Shipwrecks with Tarraconense cargoes

This hypothesis would lend some sense to the complex composition of Tarraconense shipwrecks, in which mixed cargoes from diverse but not distant villae appear. The coastal port was the central point for the whole region and the most suitable place to obtain the wide variety of products from the hinterland. Of course, a commercial ship may have sometimes called to more than one port or even anchored near a coastal villa in order to take on amphorae.

The study of stamps from Tarraconense shipwrecks by Corsi-Sciallano and Liou (1985) made it clear that any amphorae workshop such as Can Tintorer or Can Pedrerol should have had a coastal exit for its exports. In the case of Can Tintorer and Can Pedrerol, located along the Llobregat River, this exit may have the river mouth itself (Izquierdo 1987) or the closest harbour, the city of Barcino (Berni and Carreras 2001). It is still difficult to demonstrate that some amphorae and other agricultural products from inland areas were stored in horrea of ports such as Barcino, since no installations have yet been unearthed. Nevertheless, stamps found in the city (Berni and Carreras 2001) show that they came not only from local centers but also from workshops from the Llobregat riverside and the inland regions of Vallès Occidental.

In 2002, we reviewed the work of Corsi-Sciallano and Liou (1985), trying to understand the origin of the shipwrecks on the basis of the Tarraconense amphora stamps present in their cargoes (Carreras and Berni 2002). Thanks to an improvement in our knowledge in new workshops and production areas, we discovered a kind of logic in the composition of cargo. Most ships carried amphora from a very close area centered on one of the Laietanian ports.

Likewise, amphora stamps recovered in excavations at Baetulo show a pattern similar to that of stamps coming from villae located on the coastal strip, and also from inland regions such as Vallès Occidental and Llobregat riverside (Comas 1997). Similar evidence appears in Iluro, the third most important town in the Laietanian coast, although most are still under study. Without denying a possible direct trade among coastal villae or centers with good communication along riversides (Nieto and Raurich

It is possible to discuss relationships between coastal ports and inland regions when the production centre of an amphora stamp is identified. Today, the origins of only a limited percentage of Tarraconense amphorae stamps (around 30%) are known, despite the increasing number of kilns that have been unearthed or surveyed (Revilla 1995). There is always the risk that remains of those workshops 139

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amphorae arriving at Ostia were redistributed to other destinations (probably to Carthage).

may have completely disappeared, so analyses of stamps and amphorae fabrics can be an alternative way to unveil stamps origin.

Finally, a third typology of sea trade may be represented by the cistern ships that transported most Tarraconense wine in dolia, apart from a complement on Dressel 2-4 amphorae, some of them coming from Tarraconense and others from Campania. Corsi-Sciallano and Liou (1985, 169-171) recorded at least a few shipwrecks, among these La Garoupe, Ladispoli and Grand-Ribaud (Hernard, Carre, Rival and Dángreaux 1988), with this kind of cargo. It is believed that wine carried in dolia was low-quality table wine that was later transferred to other containers before being sold.

The variety of Tarraconense amphorae found in different shipwrecks also depends on ship size, as well as on the commercial routes employed. For instance, in the early period (second half of the first century BC) of Tarraconensis exports, represented by the Laietana 1 and Pascual 1 amphorae, most commercial ships were of small size like Los Ullastres or Cap de Volt (Nieto and Raurich 1998, 121-123). Wine amphorae were uploaded in production centers around Maresme, Empordà and BadalonaBarcelona region and transported to Narbone, which was the main port-of-trade for Tarraconense wine. Those ships were probably carrying mainly products originating in Gaul in the return trip to Hispania, as the Flavian Culip IV shipwreck was interpreted (Nieto et al. 1986).

Routes of these cistern ships linked the coastal ports of Tarraconense, probably including Barcino, with the southern coastal ports of Campania (i.e., Puteoli). Wine was the main product transported in those ships in both directions.

These early shipwrecks present heterogeneous cargoes that may be due to the making of few calls to different coastal villae or ports where limited number of amphorae were uploaded. Ships followed a coastal route towards Narbone, perhaps buying and selling products at every call. Most exports of Pascual 1 amphorae may have followed this pattern of preferential trade towards Narbonense along coastal routes. This trade lasted almost 50 years, bringing about a consolidated North-South commercial circuit (Berni 1998, 72-74). Furthermore, this type of sea trade was based on a decentralized production model.

Final comments We have attempted to show a new approach to the study of ancient landscapes, not only from sites distribution of spatial archaeology, but also from other type of sources. These sources are morphological data and toponymy from medieval cartularies, monumental epigraphy, epigraphy of instrumentum domesticum (i.e., amphorae and dolia) and distribution. All these data can be integrated in a unique document that has social landscape as its common reference point.

However, a second type of Tarraconense sea trade is recorded from the Augustan to the Flavian period. The new variant is characterized by mid-sized ships carrying chiefly Dressel 2-4 amphorae from concentrated areas (Barcelonès, Baix Llobregat, Maresme, Vallès Occidental and Vallès Oriental). It seems these mid-sized ships required a stable port for anchoring and uploading, so amphorae were probably stored in the main ports of Tarraconense (Barcino, Baetulo, Iluro…). It must be borne in mind that these ships were safer completely full than half empty. Therefore, completing the whole shipping cargo in only one port, even with ballast, was the most sensible choice of action (Nieto, 1988). The main destinations of these ships were the large ports (Ostia, Puteoli) and cities of the Central Mediterranean (Rome, Carthage, etc.) or military ports of southern Gaul. Gallic wine production appeared to control step-by-step the military markets in the Limes, getting out of the markets other wines such as Tarraconense.

More than intending to put forward a close interpretation model, our aim is to show a methodology that allows us to develop a hypothesis. The location in the same territory – in this case the Laietanian region – of probable fundi of welloff families, wine production places, amphora workshops, distribution of stamps, transport networks, and exit ports allows us to create a solid basis to generate new qualitative information on land ownership and ancient production. Studies on the distribution of villae and officinae are necessary, but without this qualitative variable they cannot go far beyond a descriptive level. Notwithstanding taking some risks, we believe that only with a holistic approach to ancient landscapes may headways be made in the study of ancient societies and production forms.

There were two main routes, one crossing near the Balearic Islands through the Bonifacio Straits toward Rome, and a second one following the Gallic coast toward Central Italy. Rome was probably the main market for Tarraconense wines in this period, but some of the Tarraconense

Acknowledgements We would like to acknowledge the archaeologists of Sta. Caterina, Jordi Aguelo and Josefa Huertas, who allowed us to use their unpublished material for the present paper.

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The annona militaris in the Tingitana: Observations on the organization and provisioning of Roman troops Lluís Pons Pujol*

CEIPAC/University of Barcelona, Paris IV-La Sorbonne

Introduction The praefectura annonae was the institution to which the Roman State commended the task of collecting and distributing food. Its function was twofold: on the one hand, the annona provided Rome, the capital, with a range of annonary supplies, while, on the other hand, the annona militaris1 provided the army, wherever it was stationed, with both provisions and equipment. From the time of its origins in the Augustan period2, its structure was the same in all the provinces of the Empire, and so we can make generalizations about how it operated (Remesal 1980; * Postdoctoral Scholarship (M.E.C., Spain), Paris IV-La Sorbonne. CEIPAC, Centro para el Estudio de la Interdependencia Provincial en la Antigüedad Clásica.- Departamento de Prehistoria, Historia Antigua y Arqueología, Universidad de Barcelona, C/ Montalegre, 6, E-08001 Barcelona. DGICYT-BHS2000-0731. Grup de Recerca de Qualitat, Generalitat de Catalunya 2001SGR00010. http://ceipac.ub.edu. - pons@ ceipac.ub.edu. I would like to express my gratitude to Prof. Yann Le Bohec (Université de Paris IV – La Sorbonne) and Prof. José Remesal Rodríguez (Universidad de Barcelona) for their kind suggestions. This article has been published in Spanish in Khanoussi, M.; Ruggeri, P.; Vismara, C. (a cura di), L’Africa Romana. Ai confini dell’Impero: contatti, scambi, conflitti. Atti del XV convengo di Studio, Tozeur, 11-15 dicembre 2002. Carocci. Roma, 2004, pp. 1663-1680.   The annona militaris did not exist as an independent institution but was a branch of the annona that was in charge of provisioning the army. The hypothesis of the independent existence of an annona militaris is attributable to Van Berchem 1934 [1937], 143-147, who situates it in the times of Severus. Previously, Lesquier (1918, 349-350), who considered it a tax in kind assigned to the army, had proposed AD 185 as the date of its origin. This view was followed by Cérati (1975, 103-151), for whom it was also a question of a tax assigned to the army, even after Dioclecian. In Remesal’s view, (1986, 81-89, 104 and idem, 2002, 82-83), the origin of the annona goes back to Augustan times. Kissel (1995, 123-124) situates it in AD 6-7. Mitthof (1996, 68-70, 79-81) gives AD 284 as the date. On the concept of annona in the Historia Augusta, which led several authors to erroneous conclusions (Chastagnol 1994, CLXV-CLXIX). 2   We follow Remesal’s hypothesis: Augustus created the praefectura annonae between AD 8 and 14 as a consequence, on the one hand, of the pressing necessity to control the Roman masses by means of the distribution of free food, a heritage of the late republican dictators of the first century BC, and, on the other hand, a result of the personal experience of having met the cost of obtaining supplies for his personal army during the Civil War. This author also holds that during the early Empire an independent annona militaris did not exist, since a single treasury, the fiscus, was in charge of collecting and paying the resources assigned to both Rome and the army. 1

1986; 1990; 1998a; 1998; 1998c Blázquez 1996; Blázquez et alii 1996; Höbenreich 1997; Berni 1998: 63-70). Because of a lack of epigraphic information, there is only one reference to the presentce of the annona militaris in the Tingitana. This reference is the I.A.M.lat.,307, which specifically mentions one of the actions in favour of the population of Sala, carried out by the prefect Marcus Sulpicius Felix. We hereby offer a general vision of military provisioning in the Tingitana. The annona militaris. Some North African examples 1. Ways of obtaining provisions. The organization of supplies for the Roman army took place at three different levels. First was self provisioning by means of the army’s own resources (such as the prata legionis, figlinae, fabricae) or whatever was available in the immediate surroundings of the location where the unit was posted. Secondly, supplies were obtained from other parts of the province. Thirdly, there were supplies from elsewhere in the Empire (Remesal 1986, 91-94). The most common methods used by the Roman state for the provisioning of annona supplies were taxation and direct purchasing by the procurators (Pavis d’Escurac 1976, 165-201; Le Bohec 1989, 536-537)3. Taxation was the most common method because it was both easy and convenient for the State4. North African cereals and oil that the State collected in this way would have been transported by the taxpayer to the nearest civil

  On the specific case of the procurator Ti. Claudius Cornelianus, cf. Christol (1990) who considers him to be responsible for paying the wages to the soldiers of the legio III Augusta; contra Le Bohec (1992; 2000, 222-223), in whose view he was in charge of delimiting the territories of the semi-nomads or of administrating the imperial farming estates and the prata legionis. 4   Cf. Erdkamp 1998, 84-111 on the Republic and Neesen 1980, 104-116 on the early Empire. Hopkins 2000, 256, from a primitivist view, holds that the State converted payments in kind into cash through their sale. Contra García Morcillo 2000-2001, who holds that the State made abundant payments and charges in kind but also that an argentarius could open accounts of this kind for private clients. 3

Lluís Pons Pujol

or military horrea5, probably in his own municipality or colony. Upon delivery of the product, the taxpayer was issued a receipt6. From this point on, the annona service paid for the transport of the products. They were then taken to other, more important horrea situated on the principle communication routes and near the mansiones of the cursus publicus7. Camps-Fabrer held the view that it was at this point where the veracity of the taxpayer’s contribution to the treasury was checked according to the official weights and measures system (Camps-Fabrer 1953, 70). However, we think that it was in the local horrea, nearer to the taxpayer and before the issuance of a receipt, that this took place. The products were then transported, according to the needs of the annona, either to the military units stationed in the interior of the North African territory or to the nearest port to be dispatched to Rome or anywhere else in the Empire where the army might require them.

for a price determined by the State, generally lower than market prices (Mitchell 1976; 1982; Remesal 1986, 87, 96-9)9. Once it took over the annonary product, the administrative structure of the annona was in charge of redistribution. In almost all cases, sea transport was used because of its low cost compared to transport by land. Private navicularii gradually received more and more benefits for carrying out this task (Di Salvo 1992; Erdkamp 1998, 112-121). Septimius Severus inverted the system so that the State distributed the annona’s merchandise (Remesal 1986, 95-108). Camps-Fabrer appears to confuse the annonary transport of North African goods with ‘external commerce,’ which in her opinion is commerce that is not carried out wholly among territories of North Africa. She does not take into account, therefore, the free commerce undertaken by individuals without State intervention except in the collecting of the corresponding taxes (Camps-Fabrer 1953, 72).

The State also possessed its own large farming estates for provisions, the Africa Proconsularis being particularly well known due to the discovery of six inscriptions in the Valley of Bagrada (Medjerda) (Camps-Fabrer 1953, 31-36; Kehoe 1988; Kolendo 1991, 47-74). These inscriptions provide abundant information about the organization of the imperial farming estates, since three of them shows regulations contained in the lex Manciana and in the lex Hadriana de rudibus agris, while the other three contain complaints by the tenant farmers8.

Basing her arguments on Cagnat, Camps-Fabrer describes the stages by which North African oil was taken to Rome (Cagnat 1916; Camps-Fabrer 1953, 75-82). This same process could be generalized to other products and other destinations. As we have seen, the taxpayer went by his own means to pay the tax in kind in horrea municipalis; from there the product was transported to the mansiones and later to the horrea in the ports. Some of the amphorae that contained North African oil have been preserved in Monte Testaccio (Rome), and from these we can trace the route that they followed (Étienne 1949; Camps-Fabrer 1953, 74). However, this huge deposit was not formed as Cagnat and Camps-Fabrer believe from amphorae containing African and Baetican oil in similar proportions, but as the excavations in the Spanish Mission on the Monte Testaccio have demonstrated, the percentage of African amphorae deposited there is extremely low; in fact it can be calculated to be around 15-20% (Blázquez et alii 1994, 12, 133-146; Remesal 1995; Burragato et alii 1995; Di Filippo et alii 1995; Blázquez, Remesal, 1999; 2001; Pons 2001a).

It was also possible to resort to the indictio: the compulsory requisition of products, utensils or animals in exchange   On military stores cf. Erdkamp’s extract, 1998, 46-52, centred on the republican period. 6   R.E. sv. ‘horrea’ (= Thédenat 1899), 274-275 (par. IV, on the subject of provincial horrea). In the Proconsularis: in Carthage, those quoted by Amm. Marc., 28, 1, 17; in Gamart a doubtful horreum publicum; some Utika horreorum Augustae (C.I.L. 8, 13190); en Horrea Caelia (= Hergla). In Numidia: in Rusicade (C.I.L. 8, 19852); in Cuicul (= Djemila). In la Mauretania Caesariensis: in Saldae (= Bougie) and in Aïn Zada (C.I.L. 8, 8425). Cf. Camps-Fabrer 1953, 70. Those in Cuicul are in good condition. According to the inscriptions preserved in them, they were built at the colonia’s expense and were run by the annona. The rooms with an added height of around 80 cms and a double floor paving are interpreted as having been used for the storage of grain, since the added height would facilitate the unloading of the grain and the double floor paving would have the function of protecting it from the damp. Those without these characteristics are interpreted as stores for wine or oil. A table of measures from the fourth century AD containing references to wine, wheat and barley, has been found here. According to CampsFabrer, this does not eliminate the possibility of their having contained oil at some other time (Allais 1933; Camps-Fabrer 1953, 71). 7   In Mauretania Caesariensis: in Henchir bit el mal (Southeast Thabudeos) and 1,5 km. North of Castrum du Confluent; Baradez 1949: 202-207; 215-299. 8   Inscription in Henchir-Mettich (AD 116-117), C.I.L. 8, 25902; in Aïn-el-Djemala (Hadrian times), C.I.L. 8, 25943 and Suplement of C.I.L. 8, 26416; in Aïn-Wassel (AD 198-209); Souk-el Khmis (182 AD), C.I.L. 8, 10570 and 14464; Aïn-Zaga (AD 181), C.I.L. 8, 14451 and Gasr-Mezuar (AD 181), C.I.L. 8, 14428. Imperial farming estates are also known to have existed in other places: Tripolitania, cf. Kolendo 1986, 152-153; Africa Proconsularis, the saltus Massipianus (Henchir elhamman, Túnez), fundus Ver[---], fundus [---]ilitani (Henchir Sidi Salah, Túnez), fundus Iubl(tianensis) (Kairouan, Túnez); in Numidia, fundus Thavagel[---] (Henchir el-Aouinet), Mauretania Caesariensis, defenicio Matidiae (El-Mehiriss, Argelia), saltus Horreor(um) Pardalari (Aïn Zada, Argelia), kastellum Thib[---] (Aïn Melloul, Argelia); cf. Kehoe 1988, 197-215. 5

2. Methods of distribution One interesting example of redistribution at the provincial level is provided by the military camp at Golas (= Bu Njem) in the Tripolitania (Rebuffat 1989; 1995b; 2000b)10. We should assess the information that it offers in order to understand the mechanisms by which the provisioning of   There are numerous references to requisitions from Julioclaudian times (Suet. Cal. 42; Suet. Nero 38. 2; Tac. Ann. 4. 6). It may have been under Domicianus that they were administratively organised (Plin. Pan. 29. 4-5), although the problems caused to the citizens did not disappear until Trajan decided to pay for the products at their market price (Plin. Pan. 29. 4-5). At the time of Severus these problems arose again and frequently, to the point that they damaged the interests of individuals. (Ulp. Dig. 7. 1. 27. 3; 19. 1. 13. 6; 26. 7. 32. 6; 33. 2. 28; 50. 4. 14. 2; 50. 5. 8. 3). 10   Cf. Rebuffat 1989; 1995b; 2000b. Cf. Also Enc. Ber. sv. ‘Bu Njem’ (also by Rebuffat), with bibliography on the deposit. 9

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military camps from the same province could have worked in Tingitana.

century BC13. This procurator was considered to be at the rank of sexagenarian, thus establishing a parallel with a sexagenarian of Trajan’s times, a curator frumenti comparandi in annonam urbis. His function, perhaps an unusual one, was to buy oil in this African region for the annona and was carried out in Rome (Remesal 1986, 107). He later occupied the posts of subpraefectus annonae and of procurator monetae, both of centenarian rank.

The findings in its interior and surroundings can be dated with accuracy, since it was occupied ex nihilo in AD 201 and abandoned in the period AD 259-263. Inside it, twenty-eight stamps have been found on amphorae that contained oil: twenty different stamps of the amphorae called ‘Tripolitana’, four of the amphorae called ‘African 2’ and one of the amphorae called ‘African 1’ (doubtful) (Rebuffat 1997, 163, 172). We do not know the origin of this oil. It could proceed either from the tribute of three million litres of oil Lepcis offered from Caesar’s times, in which case it would come from Lepcis; or it could be from the oil-producing farms that were relatively nearby, through any of the means mentioned above, that is to say, by taxation, direct purchase or the indictio. The ostraca nº 75 could correspond to a dispatch of 200 l. of oil, ordered by a procurator and probably from a coastal store, near Lepcis (Marichal 1992, 103-104 and 181-182; Kissel 1995, 155-156; Rebuffat 1997, 165). On the contrary, the ostraca nº 8811 could indicate a consignment from a nearby oil-producing zone; in it the decurio was informed of the arrival of a consignment driven by camellarius Macargus and delivered in a native measure, the name of which has not been preserved, but whose equivalent is given in urne. From this we can deduce that it was a liquid. It was probably oil and the quantity would be around 210 l., which are equivalent to the contents of two Tripolitan amphorae and the load that a camel could normally carry (Rebuffat 1997, 164. On the centurions of Gholaia, Rebuffat 1985c ).

The second high office is Sextus Iulius Possesor, who was, in Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus’ times, adiutor Ulpii Saturninii praefecti annonae ad oleum Afrum et Hispanum recensendum item solamina transferenda item vecturas naviculariis exsolvendas (C.I.L. 2, 1180; Remesal 1986, 100-101; Le Roux 1986; Remesal 1991). In Remesal’s opinion he fulfilled his administrative functions from the same praefectura annonae in Rome and as an atypical mission related to the First Marcoman War14. He controlled the reception of African and Baetican oil, as well as the transport of other annonary products and paid the cost of the transport that the navicularii undertook for annona. The term afrum might refer to the zone situated directly opposite the Baetica, that is to say, the Tingitana, or it could also refer to the Africa Proconsularis. This latter thesis is closer to studies of Latin etymology15. In CampsFabrer’s opinion, this adjective refers to the Tingitana and the function is situated in the Baetica (Camps-Fabrer 1953, 75). The Tingitana. The annona had the same modus operandi throughout the Empire, so that the reception of the annonary products, their transport, and the provisioning of the military units would work in similar ways. The Tingitana, as a province, which during the Early Empire had between 18 and 20 auxiliary units, was also integrated into this system (Rebuffat 1998). Let us examine the information that we have about this subject.

3. Ranks within the annona. The annonae administrative structure had the emperor at its apex. He delegated part of his functions to the Praefectus annonae in Rome, as chief administrator of the resources, and to the Procuratores augusti in the provinces, who were in charge of collecting the products12, aided by the soldiers integrated in the governer’s officium, and who actually collected them. This explains why during the Early Empire there was no military post directly related to annonary provisioning. It is difficult to define the real function of all the soldiers related to the provisioning of the army: praefectus castrorum, primus pilus, signifer, optio, beneficiarius, tesserarius, curator, summus curator, frumentarius, actuarius, exceptor, mensor frumentarius, duplicarius, cibariator, etc. Until their titles can be demonstrated to have a definite and specific link with the annona, this relationship can only be considered as hypothetical (Remesal 1986, 89, 91-94).

1. Literary sources. These sources contribute a single reference: Cassius Dio 60. 24. 5, who points out that the governor of the Baetica Umbonius Silo was expelled from the Senate in AD 44, on the false accusation of not having transported enough cereal for the army from this province to Mauretania16. We do not know whether the falseness of the accusation lay in the fact that he had never been commended this mission or whether, as a matter of fact, he had been ordered to transport grain to the Tingitana and had carried out this order badly.

We know of two high offices related to the service of the annona in Africa. The first was anonymous, was procurator ad olea comparanda per regionem Tripolitanam and can be chronologically situated halfway through the third

  Remesal 1986, 107; Manacorda 1976-1977, 542-555. On the meaning of the word regio, cf. Manacorda 1976-1977, 549-554. 14   Remesal 1986, 101; 1991, 287. Contra Pavis d’Escurac 1976, 91, 128, 133, 190, 214, who holds that Possessor carried out his functions in the provinces. 15   Cf. Enc. Ber. sv. ‘Afri’; Février, 1990: 141. 16   Cf. Carcopino 1943, 37, who commits several errors. In the first place, he situates the fact some years previously, during the war of conquest. In the second place, he thinks that the grain came from Britannia or was shipped by means of boats that were going to this province. In the third place, Carcopino does not refer to the fact that the accusation was only an excuse to expel Umbonius Silo from the Senate. 13

  ‘... camel]larius Macargus in s[... / [native measure] quattor [quae] fiunt urne s[edecim]’, Marichal 1992, 103-104 and 195-196, nº 88. 12   Remesal 1986, 87-89. In Pavis d’Escurac’s view (1976, 160-164) the annonary structure at the provincial level depended directly on the governor, not the procurator. 11

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We think that he had actually been ordered to move the grain, since a war of conquest had been waged in the Tingitana and the presence of troops would be abundant. We believe that the grain was assigned to the Tingitana because at that time, after the war of conquest of the kingdom of Mauritania, which included the so-called Aedemon War that ended in AD 4117 and the mauri uprisings that ended in AD 4218, the Tingitana was quite certainly militarily occupied, although the clashes had temporarily ceased. The conflicts all arose in the western half of the province, the future Tingitana19, whereas in the eastern half, that is to say, the future Caesariensis, the situation remained calm (Coltelloni-Trannoy 1997, 61-64; Rebuffat 1998c, 287-291). Therefore, the conflicts were not related to the war of conquest, which was over by then. Rather, they may have been related to the regular supplies the annona militaris service would send to the army in the Tingitana from Baetica20.

is a military officer, with military, not police, attributes, as has been suggested (Euzennat 1989, 164-165). Secondly, regarding the province, we believe that the reference demonstrates the presence in the Tingitana of the annona militaris structure of services. In the Tingitana there is also epigraphic evidence of the subaltern military ranks who could have carried out some kind of function related to the services of the annona. The I.A.M.lat., 3423, found in Tingi, alludes to a signifer of a numerus Germanorum of the ala I hamiorum24. On the other hand, the I.A.M.lat., 1125, which is also from Tingi, mentions a duplicarius, a term that appears to be used as a nomen and thereby shows the deceased’s filiations. However, it is extremely rare that the deceased’s cognomen Puer (Besnier 1904, 430, note 1; Chatelain 1942, number 12; Marion 1948, 133) should be placed before the filiations and that the latter appear only with the nomen. In addition, it is the only occasion on which duplicarius has been proven to be a nomen26. Neither is it known as a cognomen27.

2. Epigraphic sources. We have one valuable inscription, the I.A.M.lat., 307, dated AD 144. It is the decree of the decurions of Sala with which they honour Marcus Sulpicius Felix for several reasons. The one that interests us refers to the occasion on which the inhabitants of Sala, at a time of difficulty owing to the attacks by indigenous nomads who were in the south of the city, offered the civilian population part of the supplies that were meant for the soldiers without causing the latter any loss21. We cannot be certain about the origin of these victuals, but they could have reached Sulpicius Felix’s hands through any of the previously mentioned manners. The only one that has been put forth is requisition, which Carcopino interprets among the ll. 18-1922. However, it is also possible that he obtained them from other parts of the province or even from another province by means of sea transport, as the situation of Sala, at 3 kms from the coast, on the banks of the Bu Regreb, would easily allow this. Rebuffat determines that they were probably not given away to the inhabitants, but sold at a high profit (Rebuffat 1974a, 505).

The information supplied by these inscriptions is unfortunately of little use unless they refer directly to the services of the annona. Nevertheless, the fact that both are from Tingi, the capital of the province and the place where most of the governor’s officials’ activities would have been conducted, is one more piece of evidence to be taken into account28. 3. Archaeology As for the data supplied by archaeology, one possible horreum publicum was found in Banasa. Thouvenot and Luquet defined it as such, although they failed to offer any arguments to justify this hypothesis29. A zone of horrea is known in the castellum of Tamuda. It is situated in the southwestern corner, in the highest and sunniest part of the camp. Here we find two kinds of horrea: on the one hand, we have those that were used for cereals, consisting of several rooms with thick walls and floors paved with opus signium to protect the grain from

This reference is very interesting; firstly, since the reference refers to the discussion on the different interpretations attributed to the inscription, we see that the use and control of the resources of the annona prove that Sulpicius Felix

  I.A.M.lat., 34 (= C.I.L. 8, 21814a): ‘D(is) m(anibus) s(acrum). / ...vellico (o Vellico), mil(iti) n(umeri) Germ(anorum) / ... alam Hammior(um) / ... dem, item signifero / [alae eius]dem, sub sig(no) Martis / [uix(it) an]nis XXXV. / ... principa[l]is / ... [in c]omitatu agens fr[ater ?] / t(estamento) ? ] f(ieri) i(ussit)’. 24   Besnier 1904, nº 9; Chatelain 1942, nº 9; Carcopino 1943, 180-181; Marion 1948, 129. l. 2, Zuckerman 1994, 67-68, restores, accurately in our opinion, n(umerus) Germ(aniciana). Contra Rebuffat 1998, 205-209, who restores n(umerus) Germ(anicianorum). 25   I.A.M.lat., 11: ‘D(is) m(anibus). / L(ucius) Anton(ius) / Puer / Duplicari f(ilius) / uix(it) an(is) VIII, / men(sibus) VIIII, / dieb(us) XXIII. / S(it) t(ibi) t(erra) l(euis)’. 26   Cf. EDH (= Epigraphische Datenbank Heidelberg). 27   Kajanto 1982, 299, 319-320 does not include duplicarius among the cognomina that come from military terminology; only one case of Puer as a cognomen is known, in Numidia. 28   Tingi has only given 50 inscriptions and, therefore, we do not know the officium of the governor. For a well known case, cf. Bérard 2000. 29   ‘...c’est l’extremité de cet alignement de boutiques qui commence en face du Forum, adossé à ce curieux édifice sans isssue qui semble bien avoir constitué, à un certain moment, les horrea publica, les magasins du ravitaillement officiel’, Thouvenot and Luquet 1951b: 96. 23

  D.C. 60. 8. 6; I.A.M.lat., 448.   D.C. 60. 9. 1-5; Plin. Nat. 5. 14-15. 19   The Tingitana and the Caesariensis were created at the end of 42 or the beginning of AD 43 from the division of the province of Mauretania created in 40 AD due to the assassination of Ptolomaeus. Gascou 1974, 307-308; Thomasson 1982, 32; Di Vita 1992, 844-847; 1994. 20   From the information of Cassius Dio’s text, we can conclude that the provisions were meant for the army. Gozalbes (2002, 455) presumes that the provisions were also meant for the civilian population. He justifies his claim with D. C. 60.8.6, which is another famous passage related to the Tingitana, but which is not related to this subject. 21   ‘... seu annonae auaris difficultatibus ex copis armaturae suae plurima ad nostram / utilitatem, nihil at militum damnum commodando ...’, (ll. 15-16). Carcopino 1943, 218; Jacques 1984, 671. 22   ‘... et agrorum praebuisse, tu pro tutela operantium frequens excubaret, ita in cetera omni elegantia uitae equabilem egisse / tu, promisquo usu rerum omnium, occasione benefaciendi, non potestate, praecederet, atque ean[d]em comitatem, praesenti ...’, ll. 18-19 (Carcopino 1943, 218). 17 18

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the damp. On the other hand, we have the horrea pensilia, built on thick low walls and big blocks of silica stone, which allowed the store to be raised for the preservation of meat or salted fish (Villaverde 2001, 514).

A new element can be added to the aforementioned. It has been suggested that buildings situated on high ground and that had good visibility should be interpreted as military watchtowers. They would have been buildings with a rectangular ground plan, of approximately 10 m. in length, that had stonework in their corners, rubblework, brick and tiles in their walls44. This system of towers may have been created in AD II and may have disappeared with the reorganization of the province in AD III. However, recently it has been proposed that the majority of them be considered horrea for grains to facilitate the collection of this product as a tax. They were placed on high ground for improved preservation of the grains and were distributed throughout the provincial territory to cripple the territory by means of taxation45.

Quite certainly, all the military camps of the Tingitana required similar installations, but for the present they have not yet been excavated (Rebuffat 1973-1975; 1987; Euzennat 1989, 107, 293, 309; Limane et Rebuffat 1995; Rebuffat 1998). The single other case that has been excavated, besides the one at Tamuda, is the camp at Thamusida, where a zone of horrea has recently been found. Publication of the findings is in preparation. In our opinion, further proof of the arrival of annona merchandise at the military camps of Tingi lies in the presence of Dressel 20 oil-bearing amphorae, some of which have epigraphs. As a result of the prospections and borings, the following stamps have been found: in the camp at Zoco Al Arba del Garb (= Souk-el-Arba du Gharb) two stamps are known: AP(anfora)F (Dr. 20)30, BELNES (Dr. 20)31, VRITILIB (Dr. 20)32, PCICELI (Dr. 20)33, QVC[… (Dr. 20)34 en Thamusida, …]ENTN[… (unknown typology), VNLE (unknown typology)35, CVP (unknown typology)36, PCICELI (Dr. 20)37, …]L[…]COD (Afr. I)38, FANFORTCOLHADR (Afr. II)39; in Jedis, ARIST (Dr. 20)40; in Tocolosida, QCR (Dr. 20)41; in Aïn Schkour, …] MV (unknown typology)42. The low number of known specimens is insufficient to rule out the hypothesis, for, as we have seen, the camps of Tingi are very poorly known. In addition, we should bear in mind that the province was obviously an oil-producing one, which would allow the units to obtain supplies directly from the provincial territory, thus reducing the amount of oil that the annona would have to transport for them43.

We believe that the given information demonstrates, albeit in an indirect way, that the Tingitana was integrated with the normal annona militaris structure and its troops benefited from the supplies that were paid for by the State. The inscription of Sulpicius Felix is the only one that refers directly to a person of military rank who freely uses resources from the annona, both in their receipt and their use. Regarding the collection of products, the military units could have obtained supplies by themselves in their immediate surroundings. With reference to State provisions from its own large estate farms, we have no information in the Tingitana that could safely indicate the presence of this kind of property. On the other hand, food supplies from other provinces may have reached them, as we believe to be the case of Dio on Umbonius Silo and also of the Dressel 20 found in the military camps and their surroundings.

  Callender 1965, nº 96; Ponsich 1979, 51-53; Will 1983, 413-414, nº 53, fig.5.53; Remesal 1986: nº 196 e; Euzennat 1989, 120, nº 35, fig. 66, reads A(anfora)PA; Blanc Bijon et al. 1998, 271, nº 1350. In our opinion, the letter A, considered by Euzennat to be the first letter of the stamp, might also be an F. Cf. Pons 2000, 1275; 2001b, 933; 2000 [2002], nº 25. 31   C.I.L. 15, 2851?; Mayet 1978, nº I.3.9; Euzennat 1989, 121, nº 36, fig. 66; Pons 2000, 1275; 2001b, 933. 32   Thouvenot 1955-1956, 83; Mayet 1978, nº I.3.104; Euzennat 1989, 121, nº 37, fig. 66; Pons 2000, 1275 (cited); 2001b, 933. 33   Thouvenot 1955-1956, 81; Mayet 1978, nº I.3.70; Euzennat 1989, 110, nº 8, fig. 66; Pons 2000, 1275 (cited); 2001b, 933. 34   Thouvenot, 1955-1956, 81; Mayet 1978, nº I.3.106; Euzennat 1989, 111, nº 9, fig. 66; Pons 2000, 1275 (cited); 2001b, 933. 35   Callu et al. 1965, 195, nº 417 a-b; Pons 2000, 1275; 2001b, 933. These two stamps are on the same piece. 36   Callu et al., 1965, 194, nº 414; Pons 2000, 1275; 2001b, 933. 37   Callu et al. 1965, 195, nº 1439; Euzennat 1989, 110-111, nº 8, fig. 66; Pons 2000, 1275; 2001b, 933. 38   Callu et al. 1965, 194, nº 707; Mayet 1978, nº II.1.11; Pons 2000, 1275; 2001b, 933. 39   C.I.L. 15, 3375 a; Callu et al. 1965, 194, nº 544; Mayet 1978, nº II.1.5; Pons 2000, 1275; 2001b, 933. 40   Pons 2000, 1275; 2001b, 933: Lagóstena 2001, 393-394, nº 19a; Pons 2000 [2002], nº 10. Another unpublished stamp of the same origin, but unfortunately very deteriorated, is …ET, Pons 2000 [2002]: nº 58. 41   Euzennat 1989, 302, nº 30-31; Pons 2000, 1275; 2001b, 933.. 42   Euzennat 1989: 320, nº 31; Pons 2000, 1275-1276; 2001b, 933. 43   Exactly the opposite happens in Britannia and Germania, where the presence of Dressel 20 in the camps of the limes is enormous (Remesal 1986; Funari 1996; Remesal 1998; Carreras and Funari, 1998). We have

already expounded this hypothesis in Pons 2000, 1275-1276; 2001b, 933. Contra Gozalbes 2001, 898, for whom ‘...en este caso no puede documentarse una relación concreta entre centros militares y lugares de mayor consumo. La procedencia de las ánforas con estampillas de origen bético no señala los castella de asentamiento de las guarniciones militares’. 44   Rebuffat 1986, 233 (In the annex titled Comment identifier une tour de guet). On the criteria for the pottery dating (crockery and amphorae), cf. Limane and Rebuffat 1992, 471-472, nota 71; 1995, 303-306, 321-344. 45   Villaverde 2001, 507, note 76 and 514, note 112-114. According to this author, the term is overused in Euzennat 1967; Ponsich 1964; 1970, 356-358; Limane and Rebuffat 1995, 321-336.

Conclusions.

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Remesal Rodríguez, J., 1980, ‘Reflejos económicos y sociales en la producción de ánforas olearias béticas’, in J.M. Blázquez Martínez Producción y comercio de aceite en la Antigüedad. I Congreso de Madrid. (Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid). Remesal Rodríguez, J., 1986, La annona militaris y la exportación de aceite bético a Germania, (Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid). Remesal Rodríguez, J., 1990 [1995], ‘El sistema annonario como base de la evolución económica del Imperio romano’, PACT. Revue du groupe européen d’études pour les techniques physiques, chimiques, biologiques et mathématiques appliqués à l’archéologie, 27, pp. 355-367. Remesal Rodríguez, J., 1991, ‘Sextus Iulius Possesor en la Bética’, Gerión. Alimenta. Estudios en homenaje al Dr. Michel Ponsich, Anejos III, pp. 281-295. Remesal Rodríguez, J., 1995, ‘Epigrafía y arqueometría: el Programa Testaccio’, Estudis sobre ceràmica antiga. Proceedings of the European Meeting on Ancient Ceramics. (Barcelona: Generalitat de Catalunya). Remesal Rodríguez, J., 1998ª, Heeresversorgung und die Wirtschaftlichen Beziehungen zwischen der Baetica und Germanien. Materialen zu einen Corpus der in Deustchland veröffentlichten Stempel auf Amphoren der Form Dressel 20, (Stuttgart: Konrad Theiss Verlag). Remesal Rodríguez, J., 1998b, ‘Hispania en la política alimentaria del Imperio Romano’, Hispania. El legado de Roma, (Zaragoza: Ministerio de Educación y Cultura). Remesal Rodríguez, J., 1998c, ‘Baetican olive oil and the Roman Economy’, Journal of Roman Archeology. Supplementary series number 29, pp. 183-199. Remesal Rodríguez, J., 2002, ‘Heeresversorgung im frühen Prinzipat. Eine Art, die antike Wirtschaft zu verstehen’, Münsterische Beiträge zur Antiken Handelsgesichte, 21, pp. 69-84. Thédenat, H., 1899, ‘Horreum’ in C. Daremberg, E. Saglio, E. Potier, Dictionaire des Antiquités Grecques et Romaines, (Paris). Thouvenot, R., 1955-1956 [1958], ‘Rapport sur l’activité de l’Inspection des Antiquités du Maroc pendant le second semestre 1954’, Bulletin Archéologique du Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques, pp. 78-88. Thouvenot, R., Luquet, A., 1951, ‘Le macellum (?) et les bâtiments voisins’, Publications du Service des Antiquités du Maroc, 9, pp. 81-99. Van Berchem, D., 1934 [1937], ‘L’annone militaire dans l’empire romain’, Mémoires de la Société Nationale des Antiquaires de France, 79, pp. 117-202. Villaverde Vega, N., 2001, Tingitana en la Antigüedad tardía (siglos III-VII). Autoctonía y romanidad en el extremo occidente mediterráneo, (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia). Zuckerman, C., 1994, ‘Les campagnes des Tétrarques, 296-298. Notes de chronologie’, Antiquité Tardive, 2, pp. 65-70.

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Provincial interdependence in the Roman Empire: an explanatory model of Roman economy José Remesal-Rodríguez University of Barcelona

Introduction The political economic understanding of the Roman Empire has been limited, until now, by two propositions, both established in the 19th century: the so called ‘primitivist’ vision, supported by M. Finley (1973; 1974; 1983; 1985) and his students, and the ‘modernist’ vision, with M. Rostovzeff (1926), as its most famous supporter for many years. I must point out that, since the beginning, I have felt closer to Rostovzeff’s thesis. First, because I share with him the experience of having traveled around most of the Roman Empire, which gave me the opportunity to perceive that objects produced in a corner of the Empire appear in very distant places from where they were produced. Secondly, because I follow his criterion of counting on archaeology when learning to write history, particularly economic history (Remesal 1995; 1997). Like the primitivists, I recognize that the means of production and of transportation were very limited in the ancient world. Nevertheless, this limitation cannot make us deny the existence of long-distance commerce in the Roman Empire. The archaeological evidence demonstrates that such commerce existed, so the question here is to explain how and why, despite all the limitations highlighted by the primitivists, such traffic of goods ever existed. The point is to explain why this commerce existed and not to deny it, as the primitivists do. In short, I hope I have been able to go beyond this dichotomy in my research, offering an explanatory model that will allow us to understand how and why a long-distance system of trade was produced in the Roman Empire. The archaeological data and written sources to study Ancient Economy I have departed from a system of micro-regional analyzes. My point of departure was the study of Beatican olive oil production and commerce during the Roman Empire. As my research gained depth, I started to ask general questions regarding the meaning of economy to the Roman Empire and its influence on social and political life (De Blois 2002).

If we take only the textual sources into account, all we can say is that Beatica produced olive oil in great quantities and that this oil was exported to Rome. But if we consider the archaeological evidence, the fragments of the amphorae that transported the Beatican olive oil and the associated epigraphy, our view changes profoundly. Nowadays, almost a hundred production centers of those amphorae and a thousand associated stamps from Beatica are known. We were able to show those amphorae to have been most disseminated around the Roman Empire’s western area. Nevertheless, they also appear in the eastern part of the Empire, reaching even India. Furthermore, in Rome there is a mount called Testaccio, an artificial mound made up, exclusively, of remains of amphorae, with more than 85% of them being Beatican. At Testaccio we have not only the stamps on the amphorae, like in Andalusia and in the rest of the Empire, but also, luckily, the so-called ‘tituli picti.’ These are the equivalents of our modern labels; on them appear both the tare and the net weight of the amphorae’s content, the name of the dealer and a fiscal control. From the 2nd century onwards we have also consular dating among the data. For the first time in the economic history of the ancient world, we have serial data. The threatening question of lack of data, in Ancient History, can be thus faced. As Droysen used to claim, the sources do not establish the questions; historians do so. The point is to know how to ask the right questions of the sources and to ask ones they can answer. We began with two initial questions. Why did Rome use almost exclusively only Beatican olive oil during the first two centuries of the Christian era? Why did Beatican olive oil, a product foreign to the diet of the European northern peoples, become so widespread in Britannia, Germania, Gaul and Retia? Fortunately, in the European world, nowadays, hunger within its territory is no longer a major concern. Europeans hear about famine only through the press. Nevertheless, if we pay attention to what is written in newspapers and magazines, we can perceive a great deal of tension within Europe regarding production and distribution of food supplies and the political control. In this sense, I understood it to be relevant to ask about the issue of political control

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over food supplies in the Roman Empire, and so I have dedicated my attention to this subject, studying not only the literary sources, but also the archaeological evidence. Finley and his school did not investigate the latter.

different from the old citizen army; they did not make an oath to the health of the Republic, but rather to that of the emperor’s. Since Mommsen (1996) [1856] the belief that Caesar was a politician capable of planning all the major changes inherent to a new political situation has been common. On the other hand, Augustus is seen as a character who, without having great initial plans, accommodated himself to the circumstances of the moment. For instance, the argument goes that the creation of the praefectura annonae at the end of his reign, when he held, since 22 BC, the position of cura annonae, is proof of his ability to improvise and to accommodate himself to each moment.

Aristotle (Ath. Pol., 43, 3) shows us how hunger was a constant issue in the urban communities of the ancient Mediterranean when he points out that the first thing to be dealt with in the meetings of the prytanies was the question of wheat. Once this issue was resolved, other political subjects could be addressed. In fact, Rome overcame very rapidly the stage of citystate and soon started to make use of resources extracted from beyond its territory. In 299 BC we have a note of a concession of grains at reduced prices (Liv. 10, 11). In 203 BC, the great quantity of wheat that came from Hispania enabled the curule aediles to distribute great amounts of grain at reduced prices (Liv. 30, 26). Notwithstanding, it will only be in 123 BC that the novel political attitude of the Gracchi will transform food distribution into a true political weapon: the state should facilitate the acquisition by citizens living in Rome of a certain amount of grain at a reduced price. In fact, the only benefit received by Rome’s plebs, among so many conquests, was a plate of lentils.

Notwithstanding, in the Res gestae, the first political fact that projects Augustus, after he enumerates his deeds, is precisely his acceptance, in 22 BC, of the cura annonae, being that according to him he accepted the titles given to him by the Roman people. He decisively affirms that ‘non sum deprecatus in summa frumenti penuria curationem annonae quam ita administravi, ut intra dies paucos metu et periclo preasenti civitatem universam liberarem impensa et cura mea’ (RGDA. 5, 2.). Expressions like Privata impensa, ex horreo et patrimonio meo often appear in the Res gestae (1; 5; 1). When Suetonius (Aug. 101, 3) describes to us Augustus’ final act, he puts in his mouth the argument that he would not leave to his heirs much money because the fortune he received from his two fathers and the enormous amounts received from his friends, as they had stipulated, had all gone to the creation of a new state. Augustus was fully aware of the fact that he was creating a new state, as can be seen in the decree that he, according to Suetonius (Aug. 28, 2), made public: ‘I hope that I can establish a fully prosperous state on a solid foundation and that I can attain the result that I aspire to gain through this enterprise, which is none other than to be considered the founder of the best political regime...’

The year of 57 BC marks a qualitative jump within this policy. In the context of the struggles for power between Caesar and Pompeius, the latter obtains, during five years, the cura annonae (Cic. Att 4, 1, 7), by which citizens receive a certain amount of grain for free. This grain is only for a defined number of citizens and is known as frumentationes. The importance of this fact did not escape Pliny the Younger, one and a half century later. When comparing Pompeius and Trajan, he affirms that what brought more glory to the former, besides having freed the seas from the pirates, and besides his political advances, was precisely the fact of having held the position of cura annonae. Nevertheless, to Pliny’s eyes, Trajan had accomplished even more because he built ports and roads, which enabled products from any part to be found everywhere, as if they were local products (Plin. Paneg. 29).

Thus, in my opinion, the late creation of the praefectura annonae did not happen due to Augustus’ inability; rather, the contrary occurred. Augustus left the direct control of food supplies in the hands of others only when he was certain he had control over the whole system. Proof of Augustus perspicacity is that he entrusted both the praefectura annonae and the praefectura Aegypti to individuals of equestrian rank, a social group that, at the time, could not dream of having political aspirations. To leave Egypt under the control of an individual of senatorial rank, with legions under him and control over a considerable portion of the grains needed in Rome, would have been to create a potentially dangerous enemy.

The importance of this fact did not escape Caesar. He imposed upon Numidia, through his military conquests, a tax to be paid in olive oil. The reason for this was clear: when Caesar celebrated his triumph in Rome, not only did he give away grains, as Pompeius had done, but he also added olive oil to the package (Suet. Caes. 38, 1; Cass. Dio 42, 21, 3). Augustus’ triumph left him with an immense territory made up of ancient conquered spaces administered by the Senate, and of new territories recently conquered by Caesar and Pompeius. Augustus left to the Senate the administration of the old provinces, whereas the new territories were kept under his control, where he established armies. His argument was that peace had been brought to those areas only recently. The armies set by Augustus were very

Food and Politics Up to now, the research on the frumentationes has led to the belief that the function of the praefectura annonae was to assure the storage of the necessary grain for the same frumentationes. I have defended the idea that the 156

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frumentationes and its organization do not coincide with the praefectura annonae. The frumentationes are a privilege for a reduced group of Roman citizens, rightful claimants. Moreover, the praefectura annonae should keep social peace in Rome, keeping everyone’s belly full, as Seneca (De brev. vit. 18, 5) affirms when he refers to his father-in-law, a praefectus annonae: Pompeius Paulinus: cum ventre humano tibi negotium est.

Research on military supply in the Roman Empire has been conditioned by a sentence attributed by Livy (34, 9, 12) to Cato, bellum se ipsum alet: war feeds itself. This was the answer Cato gave the Senate when the possibility of taking the war into Hispania was denied to him due to lack of resources. The sentence does not have, in this sense, a general scope, but rather a specific meaning at a specific moment. The army created by Augustus, for which he fixed the rules of conduct, a salary and the guarantee of a final reward due to the deposits kept in the Aerarium militare, was not a predatory army, in search of new territories at war, but an army quartered within the territory of the Roman Empire, a guarantor of the frontiers and of peace in the recent conquered lands (Edrkamp 2002; Remesal 2002a; 2002b; 2002c). It could not live off the pillage of the very place where it stood. On one hand, an army quartered in a same place for a long period of time could need products that were not produced there, for instance, metals. On the other hand, the regular supply for an army cannot be left to the randomness of circumstances, as Vegetio’s words (3, 3) remind us: ‘Saepius enim penuria quam pugna consumit exercitum, et ferro saevior fames est. Deinde reliquis casibus potest in tempore subveniri, pabulatio et annona in necessitate remedium non habent, nisi ante condantur. In omni expeditione unum est et maximum telum, ut tibi sufficiat victus, hostes frangat inopia.’

Suetonius (Aug. 42, 3) affirms that in a case of hunger in Rome, Augustus withdrew from the city as many people as he could. As the number of mouths to feed decreased, the resources available increased proportionally. That is, in the case of hunger, it was expected from everyone that Augustus would satisfy all. In order to fulfill the alimentary need of Rome, Augustus counted on resources from the immense imperial properties and on the tribute paid in products by the provinces. Additionally, if it was necessary, he could also make use of the feared indictiones, that is, obligatory selling to the state, by fixed price established by the state. The inhabitants of Rome expected Augustus to fulfill all their needs, as can be seen in the famous text in which the people ask for Augustus to intervene in the price of the wine, which had become too expensive. Augustus’ response, ‘my son-in-law, Agrippa, has built sufficient aqueducts for us not to feel thirsty’ (Suet. Aug. 42, 1), is not an appropriate political answer, but I believe to have an explanation for it. Just as grain arrived in Rome, as tribute, from various provinces, and olive oil mainly from Baetica, the wine trade was in the hands of members of the senatorial rank. Augustus could limit their political power but could not attack their pockets. Columella used most of his work De re rustica to talk about the advantages of producing wine. This is for me proof that this business rested outside the realm of the annonaria interventions. In fact, the first indications of wine grants to the Roman people are from Aurelian’s times.

The Latin analysis of papyrus proposed by Ginebra 1 states that, approximately two-thirds of the soldiers’ salary was retained by the army as payment for products that the state had made available to them. Those who defend the ‘primitivist’ view have calculated the volume of nummary necessary to keep the army, and have stressed that the Roman state did not possess such volume. Moreover, the cost of transportation of such volume of nummary to where the army was quartered could be higher than the volume itself. However, from my point of view, the Roman state did not need to coin this enormous amount of nummary, nor transport it: it only needed a third of the total, since the other two thirds the soldier received in products. So, I believe I have solved one of the main points that the primitivists have set upon the study of the Roman economy.

Augustus was also aware of the negative effects upon the Italic peninsula and upon agriculture of the frumentationes system and of the general aid to maintain food prices at low levels. He thought of suppressing these benefits. Nevertheless, as Suetonius points out (Aug. 42, 3) he did not carry out such a plan because he knew that any other ambitious politician would offer these benefits again to the people and that making such a change could have meant the end of his political career. What started to change the italic agriculture was the fact that Rome was not anymore a market for the Italic products. Rome had turned into a venter that engulfed products arriving from the provinces. Columella (R.R. 1 Praef. 20) complains bitterly, in the prologue to his work, about the fact that products arrived in Rome from the provinces and not from the land of Saturn. But this was the first consequence of the system created by Augustus. Augustus had to ensure the general provisioning of Rome and had to obtain the plebs’ support against Senatorial control, and so he assumed the perpetuity of the tribunicia potestas. He bought the vote of Rome’s plebs in exchange for the assurance of their subsistence.

In this way, supplying of the army with all those products that were not produced in the region where it was quartered was made easier by the imperial administration (Funari 1996; 2002). On the other hand, as I have already pointed out, the multiplicity of products that came from the imperial properties and those received as means of payment were used by the administration in order to fulfill the needs of the Roman plebs, army and servants to the administration. Putting those products into circulation allowed a considerable economic activity to happen, without the use of nummary, which would entail on the creation of an administrative compensation system among the provinces and between them and Rome, as I believe 157

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to have demonstrated. I believe that grain was not the only annonarius product, as has been sustained so far. All those products necessary for feeding Rome and the maintenance of the army were annonaria. For instance, let us remember that the Frisians paid their tributes in ox skins, which were used for the soldiers’ tents. Olive oil, one of the most important products of the Mediterranean diet, was included among the annonaria products since Augustus’ time, as can be perceived by the existence of Mount Testaccio (Rome) and by the fact that an exogenous product, like olive oil, was present in all the camps of the western limes of the Roman Empire.

that Hispania, and specifically Baetica, had a relevant role. Moreover, during Julio-Claudian times, products coming from all over the Mediterranean basin arrived at the German limes. Notwithstanding, from the Flavians on, the preponderance of Hispanic products is complete, and products from Gaul are also abundant. There was no logistical reason for African products not to arrive at the limes, but they did not, or rather their volume is inconsiderable. This fact has led me to propose that the formation of the limes by Vespasian and the concession of ius latii to Hispania are related. The information one can gather from the epigraphy of the amphorae also allows for the hypothesis that some regions of Baetica, in certain moments, had defined relations with other determined regions of Germania. We still cannot answer too many of the questions we have asked ourselves, for instance, who was in charge of those precise relationships and how were they organized, but, at least, we were able to propose those questions.

I sustain the position that the need to provide Rome and the army with supplies, two of the foundations of Augustus’ power, is a determining element in the evolution of the Roman Empire’s economy, politics and administration. In my opinion, the functions of the praefectura annonae were to control those resources and to be responsible of their redistribution. This redistributive function cannot be understood as true commerce, even though it generated an economic activity, because those in charge of transportation received a payment, the vecturae, from the state and because under the shadow of this redistribution free commercial activities could be accomplished. Those activities, since Claudio’s time, were encouraged by the concession of social privileges to those who dedicated themselves to satisfying the needs of the Roman market.

The election of Trajan as emperor was influenced by the ‘Spanish clan’, as is well known, but I want to stress here that his rival, Curiatus Maternus, was also Spanish, which proves, in my opinion, the determining role of Hispania and its men in the organization and good use of the Roman Occident, and, consequently, the outstanding role of its elites. It was those Spanish emperors who allowed the rise of yet another province, Africa. The Roman World was unable to develop new models of production, so the only means of increasing production was the exploration of new lands. Trajan and Adrian instigated the agricultural occupation of Africa and, in my opinion, tried to use in Africa the same model of municipal development that was set in Baetica by Vespasian. The municipal and economical development led Africans to power in Rome. By the end of the Spanish dynasty, the struggle for power happened among Africans, Clodius Albinus and Septimius Severus. I sustain that Severus’ violent reaction against the Spanish and Gauls has a marked economic interest, which marks the decline of the western provinces.

I perceive the relationships that emerged between Rome and each of the provinces, as well as those among the provinces, as motivated by the Roman State’s needs, through an interdependent point of view. These relationships determined the role fulfilled by each of the provinces in specific moments and, lastly, the political and administrative evolution of the Roman Empire. One can better understand the Roman Empire’s evolution through this perspective and can explain the reasons for both the rise and the decline of each of the provinces.

Concluding remarks

In my opinion, the conquest of Gallia and of Germania had important effects on Hispania and its men. Firstly, because Cornelius Balbus, and, without a doubt, many other equites from Gades financed Caesar’s expeditions, which enabled them to join the Roman elite rapidly. Secondly, because it led to the conquest of Cantabria and of Gallaecia. Rome needed, then, to navigate between the Mediterranean and the Rhine without facing enemy territory. An extraordinary evidence, the lighthouse of Corunna, built by Augustus, is the best argument to support my proposition. The lighthouse was not dedicated to the recently overcome Callaici, but to the vessels that, according to Arminius (Tac. Ann. 2, 15, 2), enabled the Romans to receive supplies from the sea beyond.

Augustus created an Empire with precarious conditions, using his own resources in order to maintain a weak administration, trying to create a balance among the interests of the people, of the those involved in agriculture, and of the merchants, so tells us Suetonius (Aug. 42, 3). This balance grew impossible as the administrative mechanisms grew larger and consumed a big portion of the state’s resources. A state unable to create new models of production, this is how I have interpreted the continuous proscriptions and condemnations of wealthy individuals; not as a proof of the paranoid illnesses of the emperors, but as inherent needs of the state’s administrative mechanisms. This can be demonstrated in the accusation against Sextus Marius or the confiscations of property by Nero in Africa. Pliny the Younger (Pang. 29, 5) tries very hard to demonstrate that in Trajan’s times the old balance between

The recent research that I and my students have produced regarding the supplying of the Britain – Rhenish – Danubian limes using amphorae fragment shows clearly 158

Provincial interdependence in the Roman Empire

the interests of the state and those of private parties was recovered. But the state that Augustus created carried within it the seeds that would transform it profoundly. We can affirm that, from Severus onwards, the state served only the state itself.

References Aristotle, 1932, Politics, (London: Harvard University Press/Loeb). Augustus, Res Gestae Divi Augusti, 1992, (London: Harvard University Press/Loeb). Cassius Dio, 1914, Roman History, (London: Harvard University Press/Loeb). Cicero, 1965, Letters to Atticus, (London: Harvard University Press/Loeb). Columella, 1941, On argriculture, (London: Harvard University Press/Loeb). Pliny, the yonger, 1969, Panegyricus, (London: Harvard University Press/Loeb). Seneca, 1924, De breuitate uitae, (London: Harvard University Press/Loeb). Suetonius, 1989, The lives of the Caesars, (London: Harvard University Press/Loeb). Tacitus, 1986, Annals, (London: Harvard University Press/Loeb). Titus Livy, 1974, Ab urbs condita, (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Vegetius, 1923, Epitoma rei militari, (London: Harvard University Press/Loeb). Modern Bibliography De Blois, L. et Rich, J. (eds.), 2002, The Transformation of economic Life under the Roman Empire, (Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben). Erdkamp, P. (ed.), 2002, The Roman Army and the Economy, (Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben). Finley, M., 1974, Studies in Ancient Society, (London: Routledge). Finley, M., 1983, Economy and Society in Ancient Greece, (London: Penguin). Finley, M., 1985, Ancient History: Evidence and Models, (New York: Viking). Finley, M., 1973, The Ancient Economy, (California: University of California Press). Funari, P.P.A., 1996, Dressel 20 Inscriptions from Britain and the Consumption of Spanish Olive Oil, (Oxford: BAR). Funari, P. P. A., 2002, ‘The consumption of olive oil in Roman Britain and the role of the army’, in: P. Erdkamp. (ed.), The Roman Army and the Economy, (Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben). Mommsen, T., 1996 [1856], Roman History, (London: Routledge). Remesal Rodríguez J., 2001, ‘Politik und Landwirtschaft im Imperium Romanum am Beispiel der Baetica’, in: P. Herz, G. Waldherr (ed.): 235-255. Remesal Rodríguez J., 2002a, ‘Military Supply during Wartime’, in: L. De Blois, J. Rich (Eds.), The Transformation of economic Life under the Roman Empire, (Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben). Remesal Rodríguez J., 2002b, ‘Baetica and Germania. Notes on the concept of ‘provincial interdependence’, in: P. Erdkamp (ed.), The Roman Army and the Economy, (Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben). Remesal Rodríguez, J., 1995, ‘El sistema annonario como base de la evolución económica del Imperio romano’, in: T. Hakens, M. Miró (eds.): 355-367. Remesal Rodríguez, J., 1986, La annona militaris y la exportación de aceite bético a Germania, (Madrid). Remesal Rodríguez, J., 1990, ‘Die procuratores augusti und die Versorgung des römischen Heeres’, in: H. Veters, M. Kandler (eds.): 55-65. Remesal Rodríguez, J., 2002c, ‘Heeresversorgung im frühen Prinzipat. Eine Art, die antike Wirtschaft zu verstehen’. MBAH 21/1, pp. 69-84. (In Spanish: Boletim do CPA. Campinas 17, 2004, 163-182). Rostovtzeff, M., 1926, Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, (Oxford: Clarendon Press).

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(Almost) forgotten complicity: Socrates (and Plato) between the Oligarchic Coup of 404 BC and the Democratic Restoration of 403 André Leonardo Chevitarese LHIA/DH/UFRJ, Brazil

Gabriele Cornelli FIL/UnB, Brazil

Introduction It is impossible to understand philosophy in its origins without addressing, at once, the figure of Socrates and, after him, the figure of his most famous disciple, Plato. But to understand these two figures, their relationship and the novel ways of thinking that emerged from them, it is necessary to embrace, with historiographic honesty, the hard and extraordinary years that marked the end of the 5th century in Athens. More specifically, we will study the oligarchic coup of 404 in Athens and the democratic restoration of 403.1 The almost mythological founding role of Socrates in the history of philosophy recommends an even bigger attention to the two events cited above because they are fundamental to understanding what has often been considered a true enigma: the Socratic enigma that is, the legal justification for his condemnation to death in 399 BC. The proposal of this brief essay is to unite synergistically two complementary approaches, one from Ancient History and one from Ancient Philosophy. The intention is to unveil the narrative of a violence that, to this day, determines Western culture in its ideological bases and its political practice. The oligarchic coup of 404 Although the oligarchic form of government lasted only a few months, its results were devastating to the already consolidated democratic system. This happened because the principal aim of the Thirty Tyrants2 (herein, the Thirty) - as the leaders of the oligarchic coup came to be known among historians3- was to decimate the political leadership of the Athenian democratic faction. This coup came as a direct result of the difficult conjuncture faced by Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian War. The

Lacedemonians, as the greatest winners of the conflict, would support the installation of a government with eminent oligarchic characteristics because this was closer to their interests (Lysias 12.71-76; Xenophon. Hellenica 2.3.20, 2.3.2, 2.3.11-14; Pseudo-Aristotle. The Constitution of the Athenians 34.3, 37.2; Diodorus Siculus. Library of History 14.3.4-5; Plutarch. Lysander 15). The government of the Thirty will mainly be remembered for its extreme use of violence during its time in power (Lysias 12.17, 21, 95-97; Andocides 1.94; Isocrates 18.17; Xenophon. Hellenica 2.3.14, 17, 21, 39-41, 2.4.9-10, 13, 21; Pseudo-Aristotle. The Constitution of the Athenians 35.4; Diodorus Siculus 14.4.2, 14.5.5-7; Plato. Apology 32c-e). It should be noted that this imposed violence was not characterized only by political motivation, but also by the brutal confiscation of visible and invisible possessions4 (Xenophon. Hellenica 2.3.21, Memorabilia 7.2; Lysias 12.6-12, 18-20; Isocrates 21.2, 12; Diodorus Siculus 14.4.4). This question points to the existence of a transfer of wealth within the proprietary class. This transfer may be considered small, in absolute terms; nevertheless, it has an enormous political meaning5 (Strauss 1986, 54). Two different movements can be identified in the interior of the Athenian polis after the end of the Peloponnesian War and after long years of continuous occupation of the Attic territory by the invader army (413-404): 1st. The chora receives its ancient proprietors back and the land returns to being fertile (Xenophon. Hellenica 2.4.4, 26). The return of crop production means, above all, the recuperation and the gradual rise in the value of farmland, because that land had been practically abandoned in the last decade of the war. It also represented the depopulation of the urban space.   One should understand by the use of the term ëinvisible possessionsí, properties or wealth that an individual may possess but which are unknown to public agents, or even, to close relatives. This is the case, for instance, in Aristophanes (Assembly of Women 602) when he speaks of a aphane plouton. 5   A very good example, regarding the political reflexes derived from the confiscation practices in 404, can be found in the pejorative memory of the government of the Thirty in Diodorus Siculus 14.2.1. 4

  Except where noted, all dates cited in this work belong to the era before Christ (BC). 2   This denomination should be assigned to the fact that the democrats associated, in the end of the 5th century, oligarchy with tyranny. See: Brock 1989, 160. 3   The complete list with the Athenian names that took part in this government is given by Xenophon. Hellenica 2.24, 2. 1

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2nd. The asty starts a new phase, from the battle for Aigospotami (405), as the urban space evolves into a picture of extreme famine (Xenophon. Hellenica 2.2.11, 14, 21)6 due to the return to Athens of all the Athenians who were at the Hellespont (Xenophon. Hellenica 2.2.1-2), the interdiction of the Piraeus port to the entrance of mercantile ships (Xenophon. Hellenica 2.2.9-10) and the massive presence of the rural population within the city walls.

linked with the ways of the Thirty, not only because of the violence that was imposed during their government, but also because of the aims that were then stated. Among these aims, we can draw attention to: 1st. Propitiate to those who hold power, as well as to those that support them, the opportunity of augmenting their patrimony (Lysias 12.6, Against Hippotherses, fragment 5). 2nd. In the face of the oligarchic government, bring terror, humiliation and disgrace to opponents (that is, to the democratic leadership) (Diodorus Siculus 14.5.6-7).

It is within this context of recuperation and rise in property values of both urban and rural spaces that the government of the Thirty’s confiscation policy of agrarian properties and of possessions is set.

3rd. Fight democratic ideology through measures that would make real the superiority of the oligarchs in face of the democrats (Xenophon. Hellenica 2.3.24-25, 34).

Ancient texts, including that of Lysias (Against Eratosthenes), speak very little about the events that marked the year of 404. There are few passages that directly mention the confiscation of agrarian properties. Two of these belong to the immediate moment after the writing of the list made by the Thirty, containing the names of the three thousand citizens who were able to participate fully in public life. One reads in the first passage (Xenophon. Hellenica 2.4.1):

Socrates and the Coup of the Thirty Plato represents to us an extremely meaningful witness of the violence of the oligarchic coup. In his Letter VII, the only one among the twelve Letters attributed to him that can be considered genuinely authentic8, Plato describes his initial enthusiasm, one that he defines self-mockingly as juvenile (neotetos, 324d), when power was taken into the hands of many of his relatives and acquaintances, who were all among the leaders of the Coup:

‘(The Thirty) restricted access to the city (asty). Nevertheless, the property of the listed people was being seized and distributed to friends of the Thirty’.

‘power was in the hands of the fifty and one citizens: eleven in the City and ten in Piraeus look over the administration of public matters, the other thirty governed everybody in full powers. Among those, some were relatives of mine (oikeioi) and acquaintances. These soon invited me to take part in public life, thinking that I had a natural tendency. Because of my youth, it is not strange that I would believe that the new governors would restore justice to the city, against the injustice that reigned before’ (324c-d). 9

The second passage, situated in the same context, comes from Diodorus (14.5.5): ‘After the death of Theramenes, the Thirty wrote a list of the wealthy, charged them with false accusations, executed them and seized their properties’. The contexts of the texts where these passages appear refer to Athenian citizens. The Thirty, therefore, took the possessions of their opponents, who were mainly located within the civic body7. There is, however, the use of two different words to designate confiscated possessions: khoríon and ousías. The first, according to Pritchett (1956, 268-69) has a more restricted sense and may be translated as land, agrarian property; the second term, on the other hand, is associated with a broader idea (Bailly 1950, 1425) and characterizes a whole group of assets, wealth or fortune of a single person.

But, using Plato’s own words, this enthusiasm did not last long. The violence used by the Thirty engendered in young and promising Plato a certain disaffection towards politics. It is not by mere chance that, among the various kaká to which Plato refers indirectly, the violence suffered by Socrates in the case of Leon of Salamina is the one that drives Plato away not only from a consensus with the new tyrannical government, but also from politics as such: ‘nevertheless, not much time had passed when I understood that those men made the previous government look like a Golden Age. Among other things, they have decided that a friend of mine, older than me, Socrates, a man that I am not afraid of considering the most just one of his times, went together with other people

Ousías has a broader sense than khoríon, since it suggests the existence of visible - land and/or home - and invisible possessions - slaves, coins, jewelry and furniture. In this sense, ousías seems to be a term more appropriately   The term that is used in the cited passage from Xenophon is limos, which means total absence of food, famine. Regarding the differences among the words used by the ancient texts to speak of food crises, see: Garnsey, 1989, 18-20. 7   Stockton (1990, 160) states that the citizens who did not appear on the list of the three thousand were expelled from their lands: it should be noted, also, that the Thirty took the possessions of the wealthy metics. See: Lysias 12.6; Xenophon. Hellenica 2.3.40; Diodorus Siculus 14.5.6; see also: Sinclair, 1991, 209; Stockton, 1990, 159. 6

8   Letter VII must have been written around the year 353, therefore, six years before Platoís death. Regarding the comments of the majority of the researchers that tend to consider Letter VII as the only authentic one, see Brisson, 1997, 232-71. 9   This and all subsequent translations are ours.

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(Almost) forgotten complicity: Socrates (and Plato) between the Oligarchic Coup of 404 BC and the Democratic Restoration of 403 to arrest a citizen who had been condemned to death: they tried, in this way, to make him an accomplice of theirs. He, notwithstanding, did not obey and preferred to risk his life rather than being involved with their violent actions. I, seeing these and other, not less grave, cruelties, was vexed and kept away from such nefarious actions’ (324e-325a).

the three belonged to one of the most traditional families of Athens (Davies, 1971, n. 8792). 2nd. Critias, Charmides and Plato participated in the Socratic circle. 3rd. Socrates’ name was written in the catalogue of citizens - the three thousand ones - created by the Thirty. This implies that, while many Athenians (both wealthy and poor democrats) lost their right to citizenship, were assassinated for political reasons, were banned from the urban space (or, in many cases, from the polis itself), and had their possessions confiscated, Socrates was safe and sound throughout this; the same, obviously, happened to young Plato.

The event in question is the prison of Leon of Salamina. We will soon discuss this in greater detail. It is necessary, first of all, to analyze attentively the Platonic discourse regarding these same facts. Plato’s declared disaffection with the politics of his times should not deceive us: Socrates’ and Plato’s historical trajectory is profoundly marked by a confrontation with the political forces of their times. If young Plato, at least for some time, became disillusioned with politics, Socrates seems not to have experienced the same feeling. The declaration that Plato puts in Socrates’ mouth, in Apology, that his daimon prevents him from dealing with public policy (31 c-d), does not seem to be completely countersigned by the facts that we shall discuss here. If it is true that Socrates was but once a member of the Council (in the unfortunate occasion of the Arginusae ten captains, 32 b), Socrates’ participation in Athenian political life, especially during the period studied here, is very relevant.

4th. As we have seen through Plato’s own testimony, from Letter VII above, Socrates, along with four other citizens, was given by the Thirty the task of arresting Leon of Salamina. Plato alleges above - and this is a fair claim that Socrates did not uphold that order. And even so, not only did the other four citizens bring forth Leon, arrested, but also he was subsequently assassinated. As Strauss has observed (1986, 95), Socrates seems to have done nothing to help Leon of Salamina, and he opposed the arrest; Socrates’ own account of his decision, supposedly given in the first person, which appears in Plato’s Apology, does not have the heroic tone one might expect: ‘That government, although violent, did not scare me to the point of inducing me to fulfill injustices. When we left the Tholos room, while the other four went to Salamina to arrest Leon, I went home. I believe that for this reason alone I would already be dead, if that government had not been overthrown shortly afterwards’ (32d).

This point was very clear to his fellow citizens. In fact, if we analyze some data from the tribunal that condemned Socrates to death, straightaway we notice some elements that project the decision made by the jury far away from religious, philosophical and pedagogical questions, the ones that are usually emphasized in the history of philosophy handbooks and in a certain Socratic hagiography. The latter, actually, has been extremely satirized since Erasmus’ famous adagio: Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis!

It is not possible to know if Socrates was fearful for his safety after this supposed challenge to the power of the Thirty. However, it is a fact that Plato uses, once more in his Letter VII, this case of objection to an unfair violence imposed by the Thirty, sustained by Socrates, with the exact intention of showing the mistake of condemning the philosopher to death, a penalty given by the restored democratic government:

We shall take the interpretation of the tribunal decision to the field of politics, relating it not only to Socrates’ open political position against Athenian democratic practices (for instance, regarding his criticisms of the principle of raffling in order to fill public posts, the composition of the assembly and the basic and fundamental role that this institution held in Athens; for a short but convincing analysis, (Mossé 1990, 87-89; Finley 1975, 80-99), but also relating it to his direct involvement with the government of the Thirty.

‘Some powerful people have dragged my friend Socrates to court with the most terrible and least proper accusation for someone like him: the accusation of impiety (asebeia), for which he was condemned and killed, he who did not want to take part in the prison of one of his friends [Leon], those who suffered then the pains of exile’ (325 b-c).

Some signs seem to point decisively in this direction. Among them: 1st. Two important members of the Thirty, Critias and Charmides, killed in the battle of Mouniciva, while fighting against the democratic forces, were - as we have seen above - direct relatives of Plato10. We should note that

The question, therefore, is a bit ambiguous. Nevertheless, the complaint made by Plato, that those who condemned Socrates did not take into consideration the ‘favor’ done by him to one of their adherents, seems to indicate, through the contradictions of the discourse itself, once more, that

  It is very interesting to note that Plato has two works named Charmides and Critias (the latter came to us in a fragmentary manner). Critias took part, also, in four other dialogues (Protagoras, Charmides, Timaeus and Eryxias), of which the last one (Eryxias) may not be an authentic Platonic text. As Stone has pointed out (1988, 78), ëboth [Charmides and Critias] are portrayed in a highly favorable manner in the platonic dialogues, as 10

friends of Socratesí.

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Socrates’ ‘side’ was very much defined and, obviously, was not the same as that of the democratic party.

than the richer ones; 4th. the democrats should respect the terms of the amnesty.

5th. Aeschines, in a speech dated to 345 (Against Timarchos 1.173), therefore a bit over fifty years after the death of the philosopher, addressing the members of the Athenian tribunal, seems to use a memory present in Athens, when he associates Socrates, the sophist, who had been sent to his death by the same court where Aeschines stood, in the position of orator, as responsible for the instruction of Critias, one of the Thirty, who had overthrown democracy.

One should observe, at once, that in this game of opposition between a rich oligarch and a poor democrat, the second element is praised, while the first one is placed at the lowest levels. This contempt, imbued with a visible sentiment of hatred for the oligarchs, on Thrasybulos’ part, is perfectly understandable given the violence that the Thirty imposed during the period that they were in power. What is curious is the silence held by the referred Athenian democrat or, more credibly, Xenophon’s omission regarding the devolution of the confiscated properties by the oligarchs. Where does Thrasybulos’ disdain from the oligarchs come from? Why is he interested in praising the poor? The scorn for the oligarchs and the praising of the poor should be seen as a response to the injustices practiced by the Thirty and their adherents. Those wounds were synonymous with a loss of civil rights, assassinations, proscriptions and confiscations of visible and invisible property.

6th. If such a memory11 was still alive fifty years later, one can conclude that it was being formed within the democratic and popular culture of the demos, soon after the long stasis, which culminated in the unification of the Athenian territory in 400. It was hard to avoid a reaction from the democratic faction, or at least from part of its members, in trying to punish those responsible for the excesses practiced during the oligarchic government. By the data gathered previously, in the heat of the arguments that followed, it became almost impossible for the plethos to dissociate Socrates from the Thirty. This may explain why the demos behaved differently from Socrates’ friends, that is, it never regretted nor decried his death.

The terms of the amnesty give only a hint of the confiscated properties. It is most probable that there was a repossession of visible possessions, like land and homes, by the exiled citizens, without any kind of compensation payment (under the pretense of improvements) to those who had bought or won them during the oligarchy. The old owners hardly could have regained their invisible possessions - slaves, coins, jewelry and furniture - in their totality (Strauss, 1986, 55).

Thus, obviously, the assertion of Diogenes Laertius (2, 43) saying that the Athenians, soon after the philosopher’s death, regretted and condemned some of his prosecutors to exile and Meletus to death, must be understood as belonging to the assertions sustained by the group that admired Socrates’ ideas.

More than twenty years ago a work dealing with the confiscations and selling of properties executed by the Thirty Tyrants, the Ten from Piraeus and the Eleven Poletai was published using the epigraphic evidence. Walbank (1982, 74-98) published nine fragments that had been found in different places, but none within its original context (Walbank 1982, 90). They seem to derive from a single monument, built with some stelae, possibly six, and located at the Agora (Walbank 1982, 75). This document may date to 402-401.

This group perpetuated his image as a neutral defender of justice, from whatever party it might originate. The signs shown thus far seem to tell a different story. Democratic restoration and the legal case against Socrates We are very ill informed about the terms held in the amnesty that ended the conflicts between the democrats and oligarchs. There are hints, however, that show an intention, on the democrats’ side, of taking back the confiscated possessions. Thrasybulus’ speech, given to the Athenians when the civil war ended, shows this concern. One can apprehend, from it, four basic points (Lysias 12; Xenophon. Hellenica 2.4.40-42; see also: Pseudo-Aristotle. The Constitution of the Athenians 39.1-40.3):

The model seems to show that the buyers of those properties were neighbors of the original owners, that is, the purchaser and the ancient owner belonged to the same demos (Walbank, 1982, stele I, fragments a, b, c, lines 11-12, 16-17; stele II, fragment d, line 5). There is, nonetheless, the possibility of a purchaser from a different demos from the one of the person who had his property confiscated (Walbank 1982, stele II, fragment d, line 10-17; stele IV, fragment f, lines 4-10).

1st. the demos had a more dignified behavior than the oligarchs; 2nd. the oligarchs were unjust;

The stelae are very damaged, so all of them need an enormous effort of recomposition. They do not bring any information that can alter or modify profoundly the data analyzed above on the Thirty government (Walbank 1982, 93). They show, however, a transfer of wealth within the proprietary class and, at the same time, demonstrate the concern of the Athenian democrats in punishing the Thirty and their adherents, making public the sanctions imposed upon those oligarchs who practiced an extremely damaging

3rd. the poorer citizens were more capable, politically,   One should observe, here, the interesting substantiation made by Claude Mossé (1990, 142), that if we did not have the double testimony, both from Plato and from Xenophon, we would have no way of knowing that Socrates was condemned to drink hemlock. The cited historian notices that the only sources that could give us an idea of what kind of popular reaction happened - Aristophanes’ comedies and the judiciary and political speeches (Lysias, Andocides, Isocrates) - do not allude to or mention Socrates’ legal case.

11

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(Almost) forgotten complicity: Socrates (and Plato) between the Oligarchic Coup of 404 BC and the Democratic Restoration of 403 an exemplary attitude regarding future opposition to the Athenian form of democratic government.

policy towards their fellow citizens. Those stelae give us very few names linked directly to the Thirty: Eumathes of Phaleron, [Anaetius] of Sphettos, Dracontides of [Aphidna], maybe Theomenes of Xypete and Peison of Keramikos12.

Among these exemplary attitudes of revenge, the condemnation of Socrates is like a history lesson: it was decided by the same people who, during the Coup, felt the ‘pains of exile’. (Letter VII, 325 b-c).

Walbank (1982, 94) believes we should not assume that the properties of the Thirty and their adherents killed in the civil war were expropriated or even that their families were charged. According to this author (Walbank, 1982, 94, note 48), if we use information given by Lysias (12, 36 and 12, 83), the exclusion at the amnesty of 403 seems to have been applied only to individuals and not to their properties. If we assume, for the sake of analysis, that the hypothesis established by Walbank is correct, two questions remain unanswered. Supposing that Critias, Theramenes, Hippomachus (members of the Thirty) and Charmides (one of the Ten of Piraeus), killed during the conflicts involving Athenian oligarchs and democrats (one should note, nevertheless, that this happened before the oligarchic government, in which they participated actively, was taken over), had augmented their patrimony with confiscated possessions during the time of the coup, would their families have maintained their properties? Should not one expect a complaint addressed to the courts, sustained by those families that had been deprived of their patrimony, as a means of regaining them? The data concerning the oligarchic coup and the democratic restoration are meager, besides being truncated (this happens, mostly, because the authors who wrote about those facts were either sympathizers of and/or friends with the Thirty - Lysias being an extremely rare exception). It is thus difficult to propose a clear answer to these queries.

In fact, aside from all the thinking done here, it is very clear that the democrats, now in power, considered Socrates a bigger threat than did the Thirty. After all, it was the democrats, and not the Thirty, who condemned him. It is true that Xenophon remembers in his Memorabilia (1, 2, 33-38) a prohibition, received by Socrates directly from the mouth of Critias, of ‘dialoguing with the young’ (toiÍj ne/oij mh\ diale/gesqai, 33); but Socrates was never expelled from the city or withdrawn from the lists of citizen that the Thirty kept in Athens. Socrates stayed in the polis during the tyrannical government in Athens. One should take into close consideration, in this sense, the repetitious justifications regarding this ‘stay’ of Socrates, which in the discourses of apology at the tribunal have, rhetorically, a feeling of reinforcement of Socrates’ heroic character and ethical-political integrity, because he does not flee from the death sentence (Apology, Criton). In fact, the apologetic insistence of Socrates’ staying could very well serve the purpose, rhetorically, of facing the democratic jury’s political vision regarding one of Socrates’ biggest crimes: precisely that of being considered among ‘those who stayed’, an expression that in common language indicated exactly the supporters of the Thirty (Canfora 2003, 31). Our attention is caught, finally, by a detail that appears in the brief account that an elderly Plato gives us, in Letter VII, of Socrates’ indictment: Plato speaks of an unfair and unsuitable charge that was presented against Socrates, that of impiety, but seems to forget the very first one, that of corrupting youth.

Although they belong to different fields of knowledge, one perceives that there is a certain proximity between what the ancient texts say and what the material evidence suggests, that is: the democratic followers were violently hunted down and the richer citizens especially had their possessions confiscated. Their properties went into the hands of other rich citizens who supported or who had a different liaison with the government of the Thirty. On the other hand, one can see that the democrats tried to revert a picture of political, economic and social instability caused by the Peloponnesian War, but also by the actions of the Thirty and their adherents. The followers of democracy, after the fall of the Thirty, and based on decisions taken by the Popular Assembly (ecclesia), had the initiative, in 402-401, of confiscating and selling the agrarian properties of the leaders of the Oligarchic coup of 404, not only as revenge for their disastrous actions, but also as

If on the one hand the accusation of impiety is an apolitical charge against a certain ‘liberty of thought’ that characterizes philosophy in its origins (Anaxagoras himself, as we know, had acted in this manner years before), but one that rarely is recognized and taken forth by the philosophers themselves, on the other hand, the accusation of corrupting young men is not something new. As we have seen, the tyrant Critias, in Xenophon’s Memorabilia, had tried to impose restrictions on Socrates’ ‘teachings’. Once more, a certain ‘liberty of thought’ on the philosopher’s part must have disturbed the regime. It so happens that, now, at the tribunal, the democrats who confronted Socrates in trial possessed almost testimonial evidence of the Socratic practice of corruption. Alcibiades and Critias were key witnesses for Socrates´ condemnation. They were both close members of the Socratic’ circle, and represented, at least for the democratic regime, proof of how distant from the democratic ideals the Socratic teachings must have been. Both had been, in the years leading up to the trial, concrete and historical threats to

  The last two names furnished by Walbank (1982 78-79, 94) offer some particularities: Theomenes of Xypete may be admitted if Theognis of Xenophon is an error of transcription on the part of the author or his copyist; the other name, which comes from the Keramikos, of a person who died in combat against the democratic forces, would be Peison if Xenophonís list is in an official order based on the Tribes and if we restore stele I, fragment abc, line 25. 12

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overlook the fact that, regarding the confiscation of wealth, this matter is a sign of the existence of a transfer of goods within the proprietor class.

democracy and its ideology. In this manner, regarding the two accusations, this second one must have been the stronger political accusation and, perhaps not be chance, exactly the one Plato forgets about in the end.

Within these tensions for power and property, in a period of particular instability, one can understand Socrates’ trajectory. His ‘place’ in these political and economic conflicts first gave him power and then led to his disgrace, and at the same time, supplied to Plato’s and to other disciples’ pages the extraordinary histories of a man of his times. It seems to us that it is not a question of choosing as much of the philosophical literature seems to induce us to do - between the historical Socrates and the philosopher Socrates.

Conclusion If one of the usual aspects present at the various ancient Greek staseis - one should note, as has Moses Finley (1985, 124), that even Athens, considered a stable polis, had eleven such conflicts - is that relating to the expropriation of possessions of those defeated in civil war, made by the victorious political faction, it is important to point out that such actions seem to be linked to the opportunity, for the victorious members, to augment their patrimony and to bring terror, humiliation and disgrace upon their opponents in the face of a new government. One should not, however,

Both History and Philosophy are capable of a profound criticism of their own myths and of, nevertheless, continuing to love them.

Bibliography Dictionaries Bailly, A., 1950, Dictionnaire Grec-Français (Paris: Hachette). Rocci, L., 1983, Vocabolario greco-italiano, (Firenze: S. E. Dante Alighieri). Specific Texts Benoit, A. H., 1996, O nascimento da razão negativa, (São Paulo: Moderna). Brisson, L., 1997, Platon. Lettres, (Paris: Flammarion). Brock, R., 1989, ‘Athenian Oligarchs: the Numbers Game’, in: The Journal of Hellenic Studies 109: 160-64. Canfora, L., 2003, Um ofício perigoso: a vida cotidiana dos filósofos gregos, (São Paulo: Perspectiva). Davies, J. K., 1971, Athenian Propertied Families (600-300 BC), (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Diogenes Laertius, 1972, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 2 vols, (Cambridge/London: Harvard Univ. Press). Finley, M. I., 1985, A Política no Mundo Antigo, (Rio de Janeiro: Zahar). Finley, M.I., 1975, ‘Sócrates y Atenas’, in: Aspectos de la Antigüedad. (Barcelona: Ariel). Garnsey, P., 1989, Famine and Food Supply in the Graeco-Roman World. Responses to Risk and Crisis, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Lintott, A., 1987, Violence, Civil Strife and Revolution in the Classical City 750-330, (London: Croom Helm). Mossé, C., 1990, O Processo de Sócrates, (Rio de Janeiro: Zahar). Platone, 1999, Opere Complete. Edizione elettronica a cura di G. Iannotta, A. Manchi, D. Papitto. Indice dei nomi e degli argomenti a cura di Gabriele Giannantoni. (Roma: Laterza). Pritchett, W. K., 1956, ‘The Attic Stelai’, Part II, Hesperia 25: 179-317. Sinclair, R. K., 1991, Democracy and Participation in Athens, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Stockton, D., 1990, The Classical Athenian Democracy, (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Stone, I. F., 1988, O Julgamento de Sócrates, (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras). Strauss, B. S., 1986, Athens After the Peloponnesian War. Class, Faction and Policy 403-386 BC, (London: Croom Helm). Walbank, M. B., 1982, ‘The Confiscation and Sale by the poletai in 402/1 BC of the Property of the Thirty Tyrants’ in: Hesperia 51: 74-98.

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Power and Solar Cult in Ancient Egypt An Iconographic and Political-Religious approach Julio Gralha

Ph.D. Candidate - Cultural History (Egyptology) UNICAMP, Brazil

The Dynastic gods Pharaonic Egypt, during approximately 3,000 years of its history (3000 – 30 BC), knew basically four dynastic gods1: Horus, Ra, Amun and Aten. Horus (the falcon), was the dynastic god of both the unification concluded by Menes2 and of the first three dynasties (not to be confused with Horus, son of Isis and Osiris). With traces of a progressive ‘solarization’ of the royalty in the IV dynasty, which seems to have been systematized in the V dynasty, the god Ra, solar god of the city of Heliopolis,3 became the new dynastic and primeval god. Such a presence can be partly attested through the expression ‘son of Ra’ (sA-ra) in the title of the monarch and in the composition of the coronation name (Valbele 1998, 64-65). The solar cult, due to internal conflicts, starts to lose ground to the cult of the god Amun of the nome4 of Thebes,5 which once solarized,6 becomes Amun-Ra. Two episodes seem to be decisive for the supremacy of Amun-Ra: the conflicts between Thebes and Herakleopolis7 and between Thebes and the Hyksos. Fragmentation of political power, weakening of the king’s image and concentration of power in the monarchs’8 hands took place in the first Intermediary Period (Table 1). In this seeming chaos, the monarchs from Herakleopolis and   God that rules a dynasty, i.e., a family and members of the same kin.   Regarded as the Pharaoh of the first dynasty. 3   City of the Delta (north of Egypt), now a district of the city of Cairo. 4   Can be translated as province. It is a Greek term, corresponding to the Egyptian spat. 5   This name was located in High Egypt and had Thebes as its capital city, whose Egyptian name Uaset — ‘city of the scepter Uas’ — and uas means power in ancient Egyptian language’. Said city was the headquarter of the theocratic power during most of the New Kingdom. 6   Process wherein the god, by divine assimilation, comes to have attributes of the god Ra of Heliopolis, having thus primeval god prerogatives. 7   City near the Delta. 8   Province (nome) chiefs. They hold power and prestige during this period and in the Middle Kingdom. Simplifying a bit, we could compare them to feudal lords. 1 2

from the Delta were fought by the rulers of Thebes. In this encounter, the reestablishment of a united Egypt is at stake. The Thebans then establish a mythical relation with the god Amun who, in turn, came to have the prerogative of being the propeller of this region’s interest in this conflict (2064–1986 BC). Therefore, Amun becomes the new dynastic god. In the Second Intermediary Period (Table 1), herds of Asians and Libyans settled on the Delta, becoming allies of local peoples who apparently react to Theban control and, probably after a number of encounters, drastically reduce such control, dividing Egypt once again. These kings were known as Hyksos (hekau-khasut: ‘rulers of foreign lands’) and formed the XV and XVI dynasties (1640 BC - 1550 BC). Mostly Semites from possible migration of Amorites, Asians ruled from the Delta, in the fortress city of Hutuaret (Avaris) and, during this period, the kings of Thebes were subject to the payment of tributes (Cardoso 1994, 110), whereas Nubia (Sudan), traditionally a vassal of Egypt, remained free and allied to the Hyksos. In a new reaction, generations of Theban monarchs from the XVII dynasty, through military campaigns once again led by Amun, manage to reestablish Egypt’s unification, expel the Hyksos and subjugate the Nubians. Such reunification is completed by Pharaoh Ahmes, founder of the XVIII dynasty (this lineage is called Ahmesside). Said conflict might have triggered a desire for territorial expansion and a new understanding of the Pharaonic theocracy. The campaign or the fact, proven by the text of Kames, of the strong commercial relations between Egypt and Syria-Palestine under the Hyksos, allied to the new technologies, allowed Egypt, also under the Hyksos, to reach a technological level compared to that of West Asia, including regarding military techniques (Cardoso 1994, 110). The major role of the campaign was the establishment, pioneer among Egyptians, of a permanent, professional army and fleet without which an expansion would have been impossible. With such campaigns, the god Amun consolidates its mythical connection (the one who pushes away chaos, legitimates the monarchy and establishes order) with the new dynasty that was emerging during this reunification of Egypt.

Julio Gralha

Description Protodynastic Period Archaic Period Old Kingdom Ist Intermediate Period Middle Kingdom IInd Intermediate Period New Kingdom IIIrd Intermediate Period Late Period Ptolemaic Dynasty  Roman Period

Period ( BC) Around year 3000 2920-2575

Dynasty

2575-2134

IV-VIII

2134-2040

IX-XI

2040-1640

XI-XIV

1640-1532

XV-XVII

1550-1307

XVIII-XX

1070-712

XXI-XXIV

712-332

XXV-XXX

deities linked to the solar religion, having its vertex during the reign of Akhenaten, when Aten becomes the dynastic god and unique primeval god? We could also question the motivation of monarchs such as Ramses II and Ramses III, the latter from the XX dynasty, in carrying out a cults diversification program (Bonhême & Forgeuau 1998, 83), strengthening Ra from Heliopolis and Ptah from Memphis, among others, seemingly in an attempt to place such cults and the cult to Amum from Thebes on the same level. What is the reason behind the rise and fall of primeval dynastic gods, particularly Amun and the ones linked to the solar cult, in a likely political-religious project? Or, otherwise, if we can identify such a political project, what is the reason behind its need for the rise of a dynastic god? What reasons could lead a monarch or a group of monarchs to take such a position? Furthermore, this change was in whose interest? Who were the social actors? What segments would be affected, privileged or otherwise disqualified in this project? Is it possible to identify them?

I – III

332-30 30- 395 A.C.

Table 1. Ancient Egypt Periods (Baines and Málek 1996, 36-37)

Firstly, one could think of something related to a conflict or tension between Amun’s clergy and the Egyptian theocracy that, in a sense, seems to be an intuitive association to some researchers, probably based on tensions that existed between the Church and the State during the Middle and Modern ages. However, traces of such a conflict or tension have not been found. It seems there is neither documental nor iconographic reference leading to such a hypothesis. Egyptian temples are bodies of the State, not institutions of a church (Assmann 2002, 214). There is no separation between the civil and the religious (Husson & Valbele 1992, 76). In the Pharaonic theocracy, both temporal and divine powers are part of the dual nature of the Pharaoh. Even in the coronation ceremony, it is the king who, having his access to the throne confirmed after the death of the preceding king, delegates part of his powers to a Priest so that he can conduct the ceremony (Bonhême & Forgeuau 1998, 252). Even some temples resources are not under total control of priesthood. For example: after military campaigns, products, provisions, labor, and the like are donated to the ‘coffers’ of such temples, but these very same resources are employed by the Pharaonic theocracy for new campaigns, construction programs, irrigation, commercial expeditions, etc. As for the priestly segment, ultimately its members are employed by the State. One example is the assignment made by Ramses II, probably by a royal decree or royal order (wD-nsw), wherein a Priest of the Ptah cult from the city of Memphis is chosen to occupy the post of first prophet (highest Priest) of Amun from Thebes. We may even infer that Amun’s clergy did not like this assignment, but we cannot regard this episode and others as something that generated serious conflicts of a political-religious nature or opposition between the clergy and the State. Therefore, it is not the intention of this work to follow a theoretical line that places monarch and clergy in significant conflict.

During the reign of Akhenaton, through a swift action that some authors classify as a revolution, the god Aten, associated with the solar cult, takes on the position as dynastic god and unique primeval god, although for a short period no longer than 17 years. However, throughout the XVIII and XIX dynasties several monarchs tried to reduce the influence of Amun by favoring the solar cult. It is interesting to note that the rise and fall of these dynastic gods with primeval features seems to be related to a political-religious project carried out by the king and his followers and explained through an iconography of the Pharaonic theocracy and a religious architecture. It is not the intent of this work to analyze all periods in which such an event may be observed, but rather to concentrate on and analyze a moment in Ancient Egypt’s history comprising part of the New Kingdom, i.e., the XVIII and XIX dynasties (1550-1224 BC), especially the period between the reign of Thutmes IV (1401-1391 BC) and the opulent reign of Ramses II (1290-1224 BC). In this period, Pharaonic Egypt was experiencing a seemingly whole new phase – a State organized in the political-social sphere and in sectors linked to trade and production. Furthermore, a significant development of the worshipping of gods, some new conceptions of arts (painting, architecture, sculpture and literature) rich in religious character and a remarkable influence on the Near East and part of Northeast Africa (in present-day Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia) can be also identified. The power relation between monarchs and dynastic gods Considering this context, we could ask the following questions: why, at a specific moment, do the monarchs of the XVIII dynasty seem to tend again to the solar cult? Why do such monarchs seem to lessen the importance of the god Amun, the ‘victorious god’ of two reunifications, which took place due to the political crisis of the First and Second Intermediary Periods (table 01), in favor of

If that is not the case, if there does not seem to be a conflict between the clergy and the Egyptian theocracy, we shall then deal with other elements in an attempt to answer the previous questions. 168

Power and Solar Cult in Ancient Egypt

In a moment when the Pharaoh actually becomes the living god (Amenhotep III, Akhenaton and Ramses II, for instance), a very strong dynastic god could confront the deity of this rising monarch, who intends to be as divine as the dynastic god. In that case, two options are possible for this model: to reduce the influence of this strong dynastic god, in this case Amun, by means of the strengthening of other cults (adopted by Ramses II), or to raise a god to the status of dynastic primeval god (adopted by Akhenaton, raising the god Aten). Therefore, the supposed conflict would not be established between the clergy of a god and the monarch who represents the State; rather, a tension would exist between the image of the god and the monarch in divine legitimacy.

We start off from the construction of the monarch’s image (translated mostly through iconography and temple architecture), which has a dual nature (human and divine). It seems the king, through this nature, had become the link between creator and creation, since in the myth of the divine monarchy he is a direct descendent of the creating god. Therefore, Egyptian cosmology – in all of its variants – seems to be connected to the myth of the divine king, a direct descendent of the creating god and therefore the heir of the whole cosmos – that is, the legitimate owner of foreign countries as well as of Egypt – in charge of upholding Truth/Justice/Balance of he Universe, personified as the goddess Maat. It should be noted that at the end of the Second Intermediary Period and beginning of the New Kingdom a new idea about the meaning of being a king seems to have taken shape, and a new god-monarch relation seems to have emerged (Gralha 2002). In this conception, the monarch begins to have a similarity with the gods, both in appearance and in actions, a similarity much greater than that found during the Old Kingdom.

Another element that could be listed pertains to the establishment of a dynastic legitimacy by a group of monarchs that we called Thutmessides, due to a possible ideological conflict with the Ahmessides. These formed the royalty of the XVII dynasty, which included also the Pharaoh Ahmes, founder of the XVIII dynasty and responsible for the unification of Egypt before the Hyksos, whereas others, who did not have royal blood (Thutmes I), either for the lack of a connection with the royal household of the Ahmessides or for being sons of secondary wives (Thutmes II and III), formed a new royal family. After the reign of Hatshepsut, the last descendent of both royal households, the balance of power shifted to the Thutmessides. If, on one hand some political consolidation of the Thutmessides was achieved during the reign of Thutmes III, who effectively ruled after Hatshepsut, on the other hand the administrative and clerical organization and the web of relations were still based on an Ahmesside inheritance, like the dynastic god Amun-Ra.

As the dynastic god Amun-Ra took on the attributes of the primeval god Ra through solarization and in part through other deities, so too the monarch’s actions and representations came to have a direct link with the attributes and wishes of the god. It should be acknowledged that in solarization, gods that do not have cosmogonic or primeval features absorb the attributes of the god Ra. Therefore, certain combinations can be found. Examples include Amun-Ra, from the city of Thebes, and Sobek-Ra, from the city of Kom Ombo. We can identify three aspects in this relation: 1. The monarch acts by order of the god.

We may suppose that the attempt at full consolidation of the Thutmessides began with the reign of Thutmes IV, in which the religious axis tilted to the solar cult, due to a political-religious project’s having as its theological basis a dream before the Gizeh Sphinx, enumerating several deities related to the solar cult of Heliopolis. In fact his father, Amunhetep II, had already made the Sphinx an object of private cult (Valbele 1998).

2. The monarch acts as the god by assimilation of attributes of gods at a specific moment. 3. The monarch comes to be represented as a god and worshipped in life, which is uncommon, being in a given moment on par with the gods from the main cosmogonic school of that time (Amun-Ra from Thebes, Ra from Heliopolis, Ptah from Memphis).

It is interesting to note that the text on the dream mentions only the solar deities Ra-Hakhty (Harmakis), Khepri, RaAtum, the Sphinx and Geb (as a synonym for earth). Amun seems to have been forgotten, and the apparently ruined condition of the Sphinx could also be an allusion to the apparent reduction of the solar cult of Heliopolis due to the cult to Amun (Gralha 2002).

This last condition, it seems, did not exist in other periods and is probably more striking in the 5th monarch of the XVIII dynasty, i.e., the Pharaoh-Queen Hatshepsut, followed mainly by Amenhotep III, Akhenaton and the first monarchs of the XIX dynasty. The Egyptian theocracy could make use of such prerogatives to generate new dynastic god-monarch associations. The king’s representations, his relation with the divine world and the impact on the world of men had great power, especially when translated by an iconography and a huge religious architecture. In a country where just a small segment was literate, the image and grandiosity of architectonic works as means of propaganda and legitimacy became a sine qua non for the political-religious project. Therefore, during the period under study, the following relations could be made.

One of those days it came to pass that the king’sson, Thut­mose (Thutmes IV), came, coursing at the time of midday, and he rested in the shadow of this great god. A [vision] of sleep seized him at the hour (when) the sun was in the zenith, and he found the majesty of this revered god speaking with his own mouth, as a father speaks with his son, saying: ‘Behold thou me! See thou me! my son Thutmose. I am thy father, HarmakhisKhepri-Re-Atum, who will give to thee my 169

Julio Gralha

kingdom on earth at the head of the living (in the beginning). Thou shalt wear the white crown and the red crown upon the throne of Geb, the hereditary prince. The land shall be thine in its length and breadth, that which the eye of the All Lord shines upon. The food of the Two Lands shall be thine, the great tribute of all countries, the duration of a long period of years. My face is thine, my desire is toward thee. Thou shalt be to me a pro­tector (for) my manner is as I were ailing in all my limbs [-]. The sand of this desert upon which I am, has reached me; turn to me, to have that done which I have desired, knowing that thou art my son, my protector; [come hither], behold, I am with thee, I am thy leader.’ When he had finished this speech, this king’sson [awoke] hearing this - -; he understood the words of this god, and he kept silent in his heart. He said; ‘Come, let us hasten to our house in the city; they shall protect the oblations for this god which we bring for him: oxen [-] and all young vegetables; and we shall give praise [to] Wen­ nofer, - - - Khaf[ra], the statue made for AtumHarmakhis…(Breasted 1988, 815; Cumming 1984, 247 ).

Akhenaton’s political-religious project (Gralha 2002) seemed to be much more ambitious than his predecessors (Thutmes IV and Amenhotep III), as it aimed at radically redirecting the sociopolitical and religious order, raising the god Aten to the category of dynastic and unique primeval god, banishing the cult to Amun-Ra and other deities (in fact, how efficient such banishment was is unknown), apart from the construction of a new capital and administrative reforms. However, such a power relation was ephemeral, and its traces seem to have disappeared in less than five decades, especially during the Ramesside period. It was finally up to Ramses II to establish a kind of equality in power and importance among the many cults, partly restricting the activities of Amun-Ra from Thebes, to set up a capital on the Delta (northern Egypt) and to maintain the prerogatives of living god, in spite of not being a Thutmesside himself. The social players of the political-religious project Although the Pharaonic theocracy has a certain stability in its institutions (administration, priesthood, nobles, military, bureaucrats, specialized professionals, etc.), the construction of the monarch’s image and rise and fall of dynastic gods in the political-religious project could be based on a tense relationship between central and provincial governments (Trigger 1996, 66; Valbele 1998, 49) and varied forms of legitimacy, which are a form of response to the fear of a power vacuum. That would explain the juxtaposition of the divine right with hereditary succession (Bonhême, & Forgeau 1998, 277), where the Pharaonic theocracy seems to establish a program capable of reducing tensions.

It also seems that there was the intention of favoring the administrative centers from the north, such as Heliopolis and Memphis (Bryan 1998, 49), to reduce the influence of the Ahmessides’ capital, Thebes. In fact, monarchs somehow linked to the Thutmessides or those lacking any association with them left the city of Thebes. As examples we have Akhenaten, who established himself in Akhet-Aten, Amarna; Horemheb, who preferred to establish himself in Memphis (Bonhême & Forgeau 1998, 109); and Ramses II, who opted for establishing himself in the city of Pi-Ramses. This action (abandoner city of Thebes) could represent the full legitimacy and resistance to the Ahmesside inheritance, without creating significant political-religious and social conflicts – after all, there was no interest in internal conflicts. Furthermore, the monarch’s attitude in fomenting several cults apart from the solar one (the pluralization of cults) could have been a strategy to place Amun-Ra on the same level as other dynastic, primeval gods (Ra, Ptah and Khnum, for instance).

According to Dominique Valbelle (1998, 3), in order to appreciate better the kinds of changes developing within a stable but not unchangeable organization, it is convenient to define the region and players. We understand the region to be Egypt, its vassals and neighbors: Nubia to the south, Palestine and Asia to the east and the Libyans to the west. We understand the players to be the social segments connected to the Egyptian State (in a sense the institutions of the Pharaonic theocracy), which are privileged or disqualified in each political-religious project. The core of this State is the king, his collaborators and opponents, but also the gods and Priests (Valbelle 1998, 3). As for the participation of the less favored sectors of the Egyptian population, little is known. However, a labor strike at the royal necropolis in Thebes on the XX dynasty could be identified (Cardoso 1984, 85-86).

Amenhotep III seems to have followed the steps of Thutmes IV, his father, by establishing a stronger relation with the solar cult. During his reign, the god Aten (who represents the solar disk) appears on the royal epithets. As of the jubilee, or festival-sed (ritual for strengthening the vital forces and ratification of the monarch to the Egyptian throne),9 which normally took place on the 30th year of the reign, Amenhotep III starts to be united with the god Ra-Harakhy (one of the forms of primeval god in the solar cult), becoming a living god (Johnson 1998, 87), legitimated in power by his actions and by divinity.

Based on the work of Bruce G. Trigger (1996), the social actors related to the Pharaonic theocracy would have the following hierarchy: the king, members of the royal family, members of preceding monarchies, members of other families of individuals linked to high functions of the State, such as the Vizir, Works Directors, Supervisors, members of high religious and military functions and nobles in general. A second group can be identified: the dependent specialists.

9   For a study on the Jubilee, HEB-SED, refer to Gohary (1992) and Gralha (2002).

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Fig. 1. Temple of Ra-Harakhty: Ramses II sculpted in four colossal statues on the external side and the reduced statue of Ra-Harakhty in the center. Photo by Julio Gralha (Temple of Ra-Harakhty at Abu Simbel -1995). In this way, based on the return to the Solar Cult, whatever the variant or the ascription of a new quality to the Pharaoh may be, it seems to be indispensable that the political project have as foundation a mythical-religious justification, and can be capable of reaching the many segments of Egyptian society, that is, the ‘world of men’. This way, such a project must be translated by an iconography of the monarch and his divine nature and by a monumental architecture of religious nature that is capable of impressing the various segments by its grandiosity.

Said segment is quite internally stratified and in general dependent on the State or members of the nobility. They are mostly Artists and qualified Engineers, Clerks, certain groups of Priests and members of a secondary bureaucracy (one of execution rather than creation of policies). This group would also include Merchants, Military men and Craftsmen. A third group of dependent specialists would be formed by attendants and peasants. Some royal attendants could achieve the status of nobility, which indicates some vertical mobility. In this group, there seemed to be no clear place for slaves, as they were relatively few and in general urban.

Ramses II was probably the monarch who best dealt with such elements. The temple of Abu Simbel, dedicated to the god Ra-Harakhty (Ra, the Horus of both horizons), is perhaps one of the best examples. The temple features Ramses II sculpted in four colossal statues on the external side (fig 1). By Egyptian reasoning, the number four (Kitchen 1982, 177) could represent wholeness in the universe or complementarity. The four statues could symbolize the four cardinal points and represent the pylon, the horizon of the temple through which the Sun traveled (in this case, the reduced statue of Ra-Harakhty in the center). In this way, it is possible that Ramses II was the representation of the horizon through which Ra-Harakhty would go on his daily journey, which could establish an association with the god Ra. This construction must have been visible from the distance as a landmark of a power to be respected and feared and must have generated a significant impact on both Egyptian and foreign populations from the southern border.

Once such actors have been defined, the legitimacy of a monarch, based on a political-religious project, should somehow favor such segments or the new members of such segments. The appointment by monarchs, as well as the rotation of such segments in sectors linked to the administration of the State and nomes (provinces) served also as a solid basis for the legitimacy of the monarch’s actions, maintaining the status quo of the ‘world of men’ and social control, which is one of the Pharaoh’s functions. The king keeps chaos away from the organized world, and he would be the measure of the political-social organization and the universal ordination in Egyptian reasoning, acting upon the world of men, but having been divinely engendered (son of a couple in which the father is a god and the mother is human). 171

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It was unusual for a god to be depicted in smaller proportions than the monarch. However, given that the statues of Ramses II represented the horizon (the pylons) and the battle against chaos (Kitchen 1982, 67), we believed this could partly explain such a situation.10 In the central sanctuary (fig 2), at the deeper end of the temple, the monarch appears as a god next to the three main primeval gods — Ra from Heliopolis in the shape of Ra-Harakhety, Amun-Ra from Thebes and Ptah from Memphis. More importantly, they are represented on the same hierarchical level, with the same shape, proportion, kind of material, actions and gestures according to the classification proposed by Richard Wilkinson (1994). It seems no other monarch accomplished so well the task of being accepted as a living god. Even Akhenaton, with his religion, did not reach such an acceptance level by the segments of the Egyptian society as in the case of Ramses II. By what we could perceive, the success of this project was linked to the way political intentions, the mythical-religious justification and the development of representations were articulated (iconography and monumental architecture). In other words, an iconographic and political-religious approach to power was used.

Fig. 2. Central Sanctuary: From left to right it is possible to identify Ptah, Amun-Ra, Ramses II and RaHarakhty all in the same proportion. In fact, in some periods, the Sun travels from Ra-Harakhy to Amun-Ra, ‘touching’ these gods, defining a kind of hierarchy of among them. In this context, it seems that Ramses II is more important than Amun-Ra (Ra-Harakhy, Ramses II, Amun-Ra and Ptah). On the order hand, Ptah, as a lunar god, is never touched by sun rays. Photo by Julio Gralha (Temple of Ra-Harakhty at Abu Simbel -1995).

  We understand that, on the external walls, Ramses II is the god that pushes chaos away from Egypt, but he serves his ‘father’ Ra-Harakhty.

10

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Concordia, Discord And Political Legacy: The Rule of Geta and Caracalla  Ana Teresa Marques Gonçalves Goiás Federal University, Brazil

Introduction With the assassination of Pertinax by members of the Praetorian Guard, several candidates emerged to assume the position of Roman Emperor.  Septimius Severus came out of this contention victoriously, but from the year 193 AD, he faced a number of civil wars, confronting Didus Julianus, Pescenius Nigro and Clodius Albino and their respective groups of supporters in an effort to conquer once and for all the honor of being the Emperor. No man, neither before nor after him, had ever tried to rise to and stay in power in such a solitary manner without the political, economic and social support of the members of the various classes within the population.  We infer that only through gaining the trust and support of the members of four specific social groups would it have been possible for the ruler to maintain himself in the Imperial command. It was important to count on the minimum adherence of the soldiers, the senators, and the provincial elites, as well as members of the plebs in Rome. We shall now reflect on these four social classes at the beginning of the Severan period using a synthetic approach.   According to Eugen Cizek, in the Severan era the provincialism of the Senate grew more intense (Cizek 1990, 160), an opinion also shared by other authors. Mason Hammond has supplied us with the greatest amount of data on the topic from a statistical study of the origin of the senators, a group of 937 in the governments of Septimius and Caracalla. Of these, 43% were Italians and 57% came from the provinces. From the provinces 26% were of African origin, 57% came from the eastern provinces, 15% from the western provinces and 2% did not have any identifiable origin (Hammond 1957, 77 and Hopkins 1983, 200). The growth of the eastern influence and the provincialism of the senators were in this way gradual processes that were self-asserting since the Antonines, of whom the Severans called themselves heirs, mainly from the moment in which Severus declared within the Senate that he was the son of Marcus Aurelius and moreover undertook the reconstruction of the memory of Commodus.  

According to Paul Petit, the Severans were responsible for the senatorial order’s decidedly becoming a ‘superior class’ (Petit 1974, 64-65). They comprised in the Roman Senate the main exponents of the most important elites who lived within the limits of the Roman Empire, and not just the exponents of the aristocratic Italians. Few were those who stayed in the local Curios. In light of this, the Senate’s very decision-making process changed: it was sufficient to have only seventy senators present to permit the validity of a senatus consultum, since a number of them were always in the process of traveling to their native lands. The formation of this superior class could also be understood through the incorporation more and more quickly and easily of the members of the equestrian order by the Senate through several adlectiones promoted by the Emperors. It had already been some time that the senatorial elites had been feeding off the equestrian forces. Since the time of the Flavians and the Antonines, registration of the equites became, to say the least, common in the senatorial hierarchy.    Despite the insertion of these new members in the Senate, the forma mentis or senatorial ‘mentality’ did not disappear. The senators continued to distinguish themselves from the rest of the population by their way of life and their aspirations. The pride of the patres and their prestige maintained them united (Cizek 1990, 160), in spite of the increasing diversity of their territorial origin. Ancestral customs and private ethics based mainly on Stoic principals guaranteed to the senatorial group a minimum of social coherence and bodily spirit. To belong to the senatorial group was to share moral and cultural notions as ancient as the emergence of the first Senate. The new men immediately adhered to the values and traditions of the Senate (Chastagnol 1970, 314).  During the Severan period the senators lacked any possibility of choosing the Emperors, which was a task that had been taken over by the army. However, the ruler only found himself legitimately in power through the ratification he received from the Senate when this governing body attributed him the title of Augustus. In a text about the transmission of power effectuated from

Ana Teresa Marques Gonçalves

Nero to Alexander Severus, Mason Hammond concluded that in this period the Senate continued to be recognized as the only true source of Imperial power. The prerogative of the Senatus Populusque Romanus in selecting the new Emperor was in fact passed on to the troops (legions or praetorians), but this was not quite enough. The conquest of Senate acceptance was vital, even though this may have meant using armed force (Hammond 1956, 124-125). 

going completely against their will (Yavetz 1984, 183). And the Emperors had to deal with them through ‘visible’ instruments: handouts and games, and ‘invisible’ ones: propaganda (Macmullen 1992, 163). This concept of ‘invisibility’ used by Ramsay Macmullen only indicates that the Emperors used symbols and ideas to draw near to social groups, besides the devices of economic character, which are defined by the author as more ‘visible’ instruments. In this work of Macmullen’s, entitled Enemies of the Roman Order: Treason, Unrest and Alienation in the Empire (Macmullen 1992), the relationship between the Emperors and the common people through the use of ‘visible’ instruments such as financial aid and entertainment is privileged to the detriment of other devices used to gain their support. 

Senatorial Amicitia and Plebs Power   In this way the Emperor had not only to try to guarantee the minimum privileges of this social group but also to demonstrate friendliness toward the senators. The senators wanted a ‘friend’ and opposed all the Emperors who deviated from the ideal of the amicitia.  According to Richard Saller, while relations of patronage and influence executed reciprocal exchanges among men of honor and unequal status, as established between the Emperor and the army, and between the government and members of the plebs, what characterized the amicitia was the fact that those who maintained this type of relation saw themselves as sharing the same interests and  were trustees of equal honor and status (Saller 1990, 49). 

The Support of the Army  To guarantee the support of the army, Septimius Severus and his successors, Geta and Caracalla, sought to increase soldiers’ privileges. Septimius opted to place men coming from Syria (legions that supported him initially), from Africa (specifically Leptis Magna, his birthplace, where he also had provided several public works and where some of his relatives still lived), and Iliria (where extremely powerful legions were stationed) in the highest positions of the army (Seltman 1939, 25). Besides this, both parts sought to increase the wages of the legionaries and the Praetorians. Authors such as R. Develin and M. Alexander Speidel showed, through the construction of numerical scales, how Septimius Severus and Caracalla increased the military’s salaries. A legionary received in the reign of Augustus 900 sesterce per year; in the reign of Septimius these wages were raised to 2,400 sesterce per year; and Caracalla raised them further to 3,600 sesterce per year (Speidel 1992, 88). Centurions for example received 13,000 sesterce per year at the time of Augustus, 36,000 at the time of Septimius and 54,000 at the time of Caracalla (Speidel 1992, 105). We know that at least 70 million denars per year were involved in the payment of military personnel (Develin 1971, 688). Because the more traditional works on the Severans always highlighted the link between their governments and the military, there is a vast bibliography with respect to increases in army wages and the concession of donations, analyzing the motives that led to the increase in the soldiers’ stipendium by these Emperors.  

Furthermore, as emphasized by Peter Garnsey and Richard Saller himself, the friendship depended on shared values and interests to constitute it as such (Garnsey; Saller 1987, 154). It was of no use for the Emperor to share only opinions with the aristocrats and to be their friend; he had to show all this through his actions and images built and spread throughout the Empire. In this way, the rich senators and equestrians had to show their friendship toward the Prince, ordering the construction of public works and erecting statues in his honor in Rome and the provinces.  As J.B. Campbell states, the Emperors who did a good job in the opinion of the senators related well to the Senate and demonstrated having a certain minimum of respect and consistency in their government, as well as managing to die peacefully in their beds and not in military uprisings or palace conspiracies (Campbell 1984, 425-426). We should remember that Septimius died stricken with disease in the city of York while fighting the Bretons. This was a fate unlike that of Geta and Caracalla, who were assassinated, Geta at the hand of his brother and fellow ruler, and Caracalla at the hand of his own Mayor of Pretoria, Macrino, the first equite to rise to the Imperial command in this period. 

Nevertheless, the soldiers did not want only material benefits. They needed a good patron whose image they could emulate. They were anxious to have a government led by a provider who was courageous, generous and virile, as we can gather by analysis of textual documents. Herodian, the author who lived during the time of the reigns of Septimius and Caracalla, wrote in his work the History of the Roman Empire after Marcus Aurelius that: 

     The urban plebs of Rome was still the political actor who had to be taken into consideration in this passage from the second to the third century of our era. The Emperor took upon himself the function of their patron, distributing goods and offering games. As Yavetz puts it, one does not gather so much force, including budgetary, to gain favor from a social group totally deprived of political importance. The Empire cannot be governed only with the support of the common people, but it cannot be governed

 ’(Septimius Severus), when going through very high mountains and rigorous climate, marched with his head uncovered under rain and snow,

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The Concept of Power and the Propagation of a Positive Imperial Image  

demonstrating in this way valiant conduct that enthused the soldiers. In this way the soldiers resisted all adversity (…) with the desire to imitate the Emperor’ (Herodian III, 6, 10). 

As Georges Balandier states:  ‘The power established only through uncontrolled force or violence would have its very existence constantly threatened; the power revealed under the exclusive illumination of reason would have little credibility. It could not maintain itself neither through brutal domination nor through rational justification. It can only achieve and be conserved through transposition, through the production of images, through the manipulation of symbols, and its organization, a picture of ceremony. (…) Soon, the collective past elaborated into tradition, as the custom, is the origin of legitimacy. It is a reserve of images, from symbols, from models of action; permitting the employment of an idealized history, constructed and reconstructed according to the necessities, at the service of the present power. This generates and holds its privileges drawing heritage into scene’ (Balandier 1980, 7). 

From this short passage we can see how the soldiers sought to imitate their ruler. Only a good ruler could guarantee a good government, since the State itself was always regarded as an extension of the man who ruled it.    Besides this tripod formed by the senators, soldiers and members of the plebs, the Emperor also procured the support of the inhabitants of the provinces. Besides the official propaganda instigated by the Princes, these leaders could also count on favorable manifestations coming from the provinces, which led to the construction of monuments, statues and inscriptions, through which the provinces announced their acceptance of the Imperial power and their loyalty to its sovereignty.  The Provincial Power   As stated by Mason Hammond, many Emperors sought the support of the provinces to increase their supreme power, becoming in some cases the voice of these provinces (Hammond 1956, 126), and the provinces were grateful to them, showing their affection for the sovereign through visible signs.  However, we can remember that up to the Severan period, the provinces had already suffered a profound and remarkable process of Romanization, as was pointed out by Sandra Gozzoli (Gozzoli 1987, 81-108) and Fergus Millar (Millar 1983, 76-96). The latter author emphasized the relationship of patronage that always distinguished the bonds of some Emperors with some provincial cities, which determined that some economic benefits should be awarded in the form of military and political dedication, as well as a demonstration of respect by the erection of structures in homage to the achievements of the Imperial cult. We are also reminded that the Imperial Liberalitas could be directed as much to individuals as to communities (Manning 1985, 78), according to their actual necessities, and the cities struggled to conquer the attention of the rulers, building great works in their honor and sending ambassadors to speak to the  Princes and to solicit new benefits. 

For these reasons, it would be interesting for the Emperor to count on the help of parts of several social groups. In his book, The Fabrication of the King, Peter Burke sought to focus on the public image of King Louis XIV of France, trying to contribute to the history of the communication, production, circulation, and reception of symbolic forms. In his work, he studied a little art and politics, giving prominence to the analysis of royal rituals, of the cult to the sovereign, and of the system of communication that was being produced by the fabrication of ‘the great man’ and the subsequent revelation of this public image to the subjects. He noticed how the image of the king was always under constant review, adjusting itself to the facts as they happened and how the comparisons to Alexander the Great were becoming less common. Thusly, he defended the use of the term ‘propaganda’ in its broader form, with the aim of contributing to the study of attempts of persuasion and manipulation of subjects and the transmission of values to them. Nevertheless, he underlined the importance that these transmissions not be understood only as attempts at persuasion, but mainly as expressions of the king’s power and of the devotion of some of his subjects (Burke 1994, 13-16). 

To Fergus Millar, three factors highlighted the relationship of Rome with the provincial cities: the army, because many legionaries were originally from the provinces; patronage, which linked the cities to the Emperor; and Roman laws that integrated the cities under the same characteristically juridical protection (Millar 1983, 77). Sandra Gozzoli, in turn, added elements to this analysis. According to this author one cannot forget the support that Rome gave to the provincial aristocracies since the republican period in exchange for their faithfulness (Gozzoli 1987, 82). Besides this the actual presence of the legions in the provinces served to maintain social stability and the Roman order in provincial parts of the Empire, as well as exporting Roman models of spatial, social and political organization (Gozzoli 1987, 91). 

In this study, Peter Burke used the notion of ‘The Theatre State’ from Clifford Geertz, perceiving how rituals, ceremonies, and festivals contributed to the art of ‘administration of impression,’ that is to say, how these public activities, in which the sovereign presented himself to those he governed, offered to the king and to those around him privileged moments in which monarchial power could be reaffirmed and authority reconstructed symbolically. This authority required constant renewal. The centralized State needed a central symbol, and this was the king (Burke 1994, 20-25).   177

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According to Burke, Louis XIV tried to present himself as a Roman Emperor and to talk of his reign as an Empire. For this reason, he felt himself the successor of the Roman rulers, a new Augustus (Burke 1994, 191-192). In this way, Louis XIV’s counselors studied the Imperial rites, and sculptors were sent to Rome to study the statues of the ancient monuments with the intention of transforming Paris into a new Rome. The writers came to ancient Rome to go beyond these ancient rivals for the greater glory of Louis XIV. The accumulation of parallels with the Romans is notable, but we should not assume that the similar or identical images had the same meaning in the two contexts, since the political and cultural differences between the two eras should always be taken into consideration. As Burke stated, the appeal to the same image of power in such different cultures should not surprise us. The implicit identification between the political order and the cosmic order is the classic example of legitimacy that has been perpetuated through time (Burke 1994, 205-209).  

to nominate his sons as heirs to his throne. Caracalla was acclaimed Augustus and Geta, Caesar, so that afterwards he also could be acclaimed Augustus. In order to do this, Severus had to show that the brothers lived in harmony and could rule the Empire together, in a united way, imitating the rule shared by Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. Concordia in the Roman World    To the Romans the term Concordia meant the union of hearts around the same desire, a community of ideas, interests and feelings. Its importance was considered so great that its conception was regarded divine even at the beginning of the republican system. The first temple erected in the city of Rome and dedicated to Concordia was consecrated by Camillus in 367 BC. It commemorated the ascension of plebs to the Consulship, which was a measure that diminished existing tensions between the plebs and patricians at the beginning of the formation of the Republican regime. (Amit 1962, 135).  

We have identified several points in common between the royal images studied by Burke and those we perceived in the readings of textual documents and Roman iconography. We lack, however, specific documents about the receptivity of these images. We can identify some of the constructed images, the messages that were transmitted by these images, the supporting factors by which these messages were passed and sometimes which social elements were reached by representation, but it is difficult to glean from the sources that remain the repercussion of these images and their messages among the diverse social strata of the time.

When there was some kind of representation of Concordia on the coins and inscriptions, this fact not always indicated that the situation in Rome and the Empire was completely calm. As M. Amit shows, the image often appears as a vow, a hope that the situation will calm down, that conflicts will be resolved and that people of diverse opinions will arrive at a consensus.  For Michel Manson the inscriptions on the Roman coins expressed primarily ‘forceful-ideas’ of power, and for this reason the coins were advertising vehicles of values by way of these inscriptions and their images, in a way as semantic as it was iconographic (Manson 1975, 21). In turn, for Barbara Levick, the Concordia engraved on the coins was a political ‘slogan’ and a philosophical ideal, not anything real, which actually helped to demonstrate the Prince’s power, since only a victorious man full of success could offer Concordia and, in the case of co-rule, it was shared by those who were in power (Levick 1978, 217) 

This notion that public men live as if in a theatre, having their public and private lives examined by the population, we can see this from a letter by Marcus Tullius Cicero, sent in 60 BC to his brother Quintius, and called the Letter of the Good Public Administrator. In it, Cicero states:  ‘I finish this letter asking and insisting: such as good poets and highly acclaimed authors do, that you be more careful in this last phase and conclusion of your tasks and activity, for the purpose of showing the third year of your government as the third act of a show, giving the impression of being the most perfect and beautiful’ (Cicero, Letters, XVI, 46). 

G. Hamberg linked the conception of Concordia with that of Fides. For him, the ideal base of Concordia would be the organization of a contract of fidelity among the social forces starting from the Roman re-reading of the Greek conception of the notion of Homonoia, in which loyalty to Fides would be one of the fundamentals of the establishment of Concordia. In this way Concordia represented at the same time citizen piety, prosperity in modern times and/ or social harmony necessary for the maintenance of the Empire. There were at least twenty-two variations of the image of Concordia on the coins (Hamber 1945, 19-20), and the most common ones for the Imperial period were those that were represented as a goddess with a cornucopia and a patera in her hands or with military banners, or even representations where the Emperors appeared together with their heirs, wives and colleagues in power.  

Therefore the comparison of the political arena to a stage for theatrical shows, and the presentation of public men like that offered by actors, is something that has been done since the Republic and maintains itself in the political imagery throughout the High Empire, like the Prince occupying the place of the soloist in reciting politics.  In this way the Emperors sought the propagation of a positive image of their governments and of their successors so that power would be maintained within the same group. After the Parthian wars, Septimius, having shown his warlike power against his old enemies and taking over the rule of the Mesopotamian region, felt strong enough

The image of Concordia appeared for the first time on the coins of the republicans on a piece minted by Publius 178

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Foneio Capito, in 61 BC commemorating the beginning of the understanding between Pompey and the Senate in a moment of extreme conflict between aristocratic factions at the end of the Republic. On this coin, Concordia appears represented by the female figure with a veiled, crowned head and having the inscription Concordia on the reverse side. Later, between 54 and 55 BC this image reappeared on the coins, indicating the existence of Concordia among the triumvirs (Amit 1962, 141-142).

that is to say, the two Princes shaking right hands as a sign of their comradeship and harmony (Hamberg 1945, 24). In some other models the representation of Concordia itself also appeared between the busts of the two sovereigns, as if it was a divine entity capable of maintaining them united and in peace with each other. This idea was considered valid for the positions occupied by the statues of the imperial family, placing them together in the same public space.  

In this way, the notion of Concordia should not be separated from its antithesis, the notion of Discordia, which was not commemorated, but always marched along side the former notion. In the rule of Octavian Augustus monetary types appeared that indicated the Concordia Augusti, that is to say, the existence of peace in the provinces ensured by the Emperor, which could for a certain time reduce provincial disturbances, so much so that in 7 BC, Tiberius ordered the reconstruction of the ancient temple dedicated to Concordia. Later under the rule of Nero, representations of Concordia appeared as a winged woman having a cornucopia in one hand and a patera in the other (Amit 1962, 147). In this way, two ideas were joined in the same representation: Concordia was also responsible for guaranteeing wealth, for only through the maintenance of a minimal level of provincial tranquility could the economic exploitation of the Imperial territory be maintained.  

Geta, Caracalla and the Concordia/Discordia Binomial    In the era of the Severans, quite a few inscriptions appeared on coins that had been used before by the Antonines. Among them was the Concordia inscription that gained a few attributes such as Concordia Aeterna, Concordia Felix, Concordia Militum and Concordia Augustorum, in which members of the imperial family appeared together sharing happy moments.   Through the affirmation of ideas of eternity, happiness and perpetuity there was an attempt to spread the word of the benefits of accepting hereditary succession that would guarantee the permanence of peace and abundance. Thus, almost always these inscriptions were found placed over images of Septimius and Caracalla, the two Augusti rulers together, and after that Geta also received the title of Augustus in 209 AD, with the images of Geta and Caracalla starting to appear together, showing themselves as the heirs to the imperial throne united by Concordia. Also it was common to propagate the images of both Imperial couples, Septimius and Julia Domna, Caracalla and Plautilla, with the inscriptions indicating Concordia among them. The same can be said of the images associated with the army, in which the inscription Concordia Militum indicated the consensus sought after within the army and the support that the Emperor judged to have among the legions to maintain the peace in the provinces of the conquered territory.  

In this manner the appearance of the image of Concordia, referred on coins, seems to indicate that for a moment, however brief, there would be a good understanding among citizens or harmony within the Imperial family, as a mystic symbol of internal peace and prosperity of the Empire, or a consensus between the Emperor and the army from the ideal of consensus militum (Amit 1962, 169), guaranteeing the maintenance of Imperial exploitation.   To confirm his understanding that the appearance of the image of Concordia did not always indicate a period of provincial tranquility, M. Amit reminds us that in the rule of Traianus seven hundred and seventy-four types of monetary instruments were minted, among which none carried the inscription Concordia (Amit 1962, 151), even though his rule was considered to be one of the calmest in social terms during the imperial phase.

This image of Concordia also appeared on several royal seals. On one royal seal studied by Drora Baharal, we can see the image of the three Augusti in 209 AD, representing the understanding they must have had among themselves. In other royal seals analyzed by A. M. McCann in his work, The Portraits of Septimius Severus (McCann, 1968,210), Severus appears between his sons/Augusti (Cabinet de Médailles, Paris, 209 AD.), or Septimius appears sideby-side with his sons as they are crowned by Victories (Cabinet de Médailles, Paris, 209 AD), or the image of the four members of the Imperial family together is even portrayed (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 209 AD), as always propagating the image of Concordia reigning in the domus severana.  

From the rule of Adrian, Concordia started to appear as one of the attributes of the Imperial family at the same time it started to be regarded as the guardian of peace and prosperity in the provinces of the Empire. Thence the reigning Concordia appear among the imperial couples and among the sovereigns who shared power (Amit 1962, 156-157), such as Marco Aurelius and Lucius Verus and, afterwards, Caracalla and Geta. Concordia started to represent the promise of good relations among sovereigns and the necessity of collaboration among them so that the destiny of the Empire would be secured. For this reason, in the case of the two Augusti in power, it was very common that one of the models minted with the inscription Concordia would be a replica of the dextrarum iunctio,

The inscription Concordia also appeared to describe the relationship established between the two successors of Septimius, the brothers Geta and Caracalla. Textual documents, however, demonstrate that the brothers never really got on well despite the diffusion of the image of Concordia.  179

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Herodian tells us of this difficult period, in which the two brothers got on badly: 

and safety measures increased accordingly.’ (Herodian IV.4.1-3). 

‘But the two sons that were just two boys were corrupted in their habits by the luxurious life of Rome and by the excessive eagerness for spectacles, chariot races and parties. Besides these excesses, the two brothers did not get on well with each other. They started fights because of childhood rivalries and competitions, from fights among quails, cocks, and even fights among children. (…) There was nothing that they mutually enjoyed, as what was agreeable to one was hateful to the other. Their adulators and servants stimulated their mutual animosity even more so (…). Severus realizing this fact tried to reconcile them and correct them’ (Herodian III.10.3-4).

Dion Cassius also cited the existence of conflicts between the Princely heirs. He said that they only had one thing in common, the vices of violating women and abusing boys and of wasting time in games and chariot races, but they were very different in their factions, one always supporting the opposite of the other (Dion Cassius LXXVII, 7.1). It was not surprising that Dion Cassius did not find Geta’s assassination strange, as according to him, despite a few troops’ supporting Geta, Caracalla seemed to rule by himself after the death of his father in 211 AD (Dion Cassius LXXVII, 7.1). Power and Propaganda in the Severan Age Authors such as Jean Beranger defend the view that in the case of Caracalla and Plautilla, and Caracalla and Geta, we are dealing with ‘false advertising’, as the real-life situation would be the direct opposite of the propaganda (Beranger 1973, 378-379). Nevertheless, like M. Amit, we believe that the image of Concordia that appears mainly on seals of the coins was much more of a vow, an appeal to the deities and men, and more of a hope than a reality, besides being a traditional image that the Severans wanted to use repeatedly to give the idea of continuity within the families that had previously ruled.

Severus therefore knew of this animosity since their early years of childhood and sought to resolve it by creating a co-ruled government for his successors like the one of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. Severus revealed the treasury full of wealth and the temples full of coins to show them that to maintain such accumulated riches concordia had to reign between the heirs to the throne (Herodian III, 13.4). Nevertheless, their discord continued as they grew up and moved their way quickly up through several public positions within the Roman hierarchy: 

It becomes quite interesting to notice that during the civil wars waged by Septimius against Pescenius Nigro and Clodius Albino, hence in moments in which no concordia whatsoever reigned among them, coins appeared minted with the inscription Concordia. For example, there were gold coins and denars minted in Antioch by Pescenius Nigro in 193 AD, on which appeared under the inscription Concordia on the reverse side the personification of Concordia itself holding two cornucopias as if this candidate for the Empire could acquire more riches than Septimius himself. And there are sesterce and asses minted by Clodius Albino in Rome in 195 AD on which Concordia held two cornucopias and a patera as if this temporary Caesar were the one who would be able to guarantee the wealth of the Empire, revealing a contraposition of images during the civil wars.   

‘They did not use the same living quarters, they did not even eat together; they eyed everything they ate or drank with apprehension (…) fearful that a servant had added some poison. (…) They divided the palace and each one inhabited his part. All the private passages were closed and only the public entrances remained open. Each one appointed his own guards, and they were never seen together, unless in brief public appearances (…)’ (Herodian IV.1.2-5).   On one of these occasions they participated side by side in a ceremony of the apotheosis of Septimius that turned them into sons of a divus (Herodian IV, 2.1-11). Their disagreements were so great that they even thought of dividing the Empire: Caracalla would keep the western provinces and Geta the eastern ones, the latter basing himself in Antioch or Alexandria. But they were thwarted in fulfilling this plan by Julia Domna (Herodian IV, 3.5-7). Their hate and rivalry only increased with time, particularly after the death of Severus and with the subsequent necessity to divide the rule:

Besides all this we know through the history of Augustus that Severus worried so much about his sons’ getting along with each other and about the succession of the Empire that he ordered the erection of a statue of Fortune in his sons’ bedroom to remind them to rule together and with tranquility (HA, The Life of Severus, XXIII). In this way the ideas of Concordia, Fides, Fortune and Victory intermixed with Roman politics.  

‘Always when they had to appoint citizens to military or civil positions each one wished to promote his friends. When they administrated justice, they came to contradictory judgements (…). They prepared every type of intrigue and tried to persuade the servants and cooks to put fatal poison in each other’s meals. But this was not an easy task for anyone, as the security

In the western provinces as well as in the eastern ones, there were efforts to propagate the image of the mutual understanding that rested in the heart of the Imperial Severan Family. On the coins there was a profusion of

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images of Concordia among the members of the family; moreover, in the inscriptions, references to divina domus became more prevalent. The same as was occurring in the positioning of the statues and the construction of temples dedicated to gens Septimia, and somewhat like the Leptis Magna. According to Tadeusz Kotula, the family cult was the creation of Augustus that in good time provided the organization of the ideal of the gens Augusta. The second Roman dynasty followed this example and advertised the cult as gens Augusta. The Antonines had not organized a similar cult because they rose to power mostly through the practice of adoption. In this way, the Imperial Family cult re-established itself only with the Severans. In the first governments, the temples erected in the provinces were dedicated to gens Septimia in which statues of the four members of the Imperial family (Septimius, Julia Domna, Caracalla and Geta) were erected. During the rule of Alexander Severus, temples appeared dedicated to gens Septimia Aurelia, where cults were performed in reverence to the Severans and the Antonines Emperors.

The temple was dedicated to gens Septimia Aurelia, and in its interior, fragments of statues of Septimius Severus (in this case a colossal statue), of Julia Domna, of Caracalla and of some of the Antonines were found (Kotula 1990, 52-53). We emphasize the construction of this temple specifically because in front of it a statue of a winged Concordia with a cup in her hand and a patera in the other was also found. These were symbols of the union of Concordia, and the sovereignty and fecundity guaranteed by the gods, as seen in the reconstitution presented. This temple had been constructed in Africa, the region whose citizens dedicated numerous monuments to the Severan family, propagating union of the Roman State with the local elite. Even though the temple of Cuicul had been consecrated in the rule of Alexander Severus, it is a good demonstration of the association that existed between the image of Concordia and the domus severiana since the time of the governments of Septimius and Caracalla, and in such a way that the images had appeared positioned together inside this temple in a later construction. 

The temple was always a considerably cultist manifestation of the political loyalty of the province and normally showed gratefulness for the benefits received as it maintained and propagated the eternal Imperial power in the Urbs Aeterna and in the provinces (Kotula 1990, 54). Art gained in this way the power of revealer, assisting in the symbolic construction of authority linking the present to the past and helping to advertise the sacred content of the sovereign power, as its image and the images of its family members were erected in the interior of the temples. After all, we not only have to work with statues but also with the factors that transform these objects important for a society, or better, that affect in an important manner those who make them or who own them (Geertz 1997, 180 and 185). The idealized image contains an invitation to expand values through society for all of those who had a chance to appreciate it (Sennett 1997, 23). 

Conclusions   Through an analysis of the dedication, we can see that it justified the continuity of the dynasty linking the Severans to the Antonines and emphasized the maiestas of Alexander Severus for belonging to a family in which so many divi were found. In it as well, the inhabitants of Cuicul expressed their devotion to the Imperial maiestas and numem that passed through all members of the family.   We have therefore seen how the cities embellished themselves to express their thankfulness for Imperial benefits and to propagate their faithfulness to the rulers, emphasizing the construction of temples dedicated to the Imperial family and through statues for all the members of the domus divina. Concordia was the devoted image transmitted in manifestations such coins, royal seals, statues and temples. Concordia in this way was not always held prominent because of its actual existence, as in the case of the short co-rule of Geta and Caracalla, but also because of its craving to be thus constituted so that it could maintain the wealth and integrity of the Imperial territory.  

For example, in 229 AD, the Res Publica Cuiculitanorum (that is to say, the citizens of the city of Cuicul located in the north of Africa, present day Djemila) dedicated a temple in the city’s Forum to Alexander Severus and his mother, Julia Mamea (CIL, VIII, n. 8322).   REFERENCES  Sources 

Cassio Dio, 1961, Roman History. English translation by Ernest Cary. (London: William Heinemann - The Loeb Classical Library). Cassio Dio., 1998 Storia Romana. Traduzione di Alessandro Stroppa. (Milano: BUR). Catalogue du Musée du Capitole, 1912, (Paris: Payot). CÍCERO, 2000, Carta do Bom Administrador Público. Translation by Ricardo da Cunha Lima. (São Paulo: Novas Alexandria). Epitome de Caesaribus, 1846, Translation by M.N.A. Dubois. (Paris: C.L.F. Panckoucke). Erodiano, 1967, Storia dell’Impero Romano dopo Marco Aurelio. Text and Version by Filippo  Càssola. (Firenze: Sansoni). 181

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Eutrope, 1990, Abrègé de l’Histoire Romaine. Translation and Introduction by Maurice Rat. (Paris:  Garnier). Herodiano, 1985, Historia del Imperio Romano después de Marco Aurélio. Translation and notes by Juan J. Torres Esbarranch. (Madrid: Gredos). Hérodien, 1990, Histoire de l’Empire Romain après Marc-Aurèle. Translation and Commentary by Denis Roques. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres). Mattingly, H.; Sydenham, E. A . (ed.), 1936 The Roman Imperial Coinage. (London: Spink and Son). Mattingly, H.; Sydenham, E. A . (ed.), 1950, Coins of the Roman Empire in the British Museum. (London: British Museum). Nodelman, S. Severan Imperial Portraiture. Yale University, unpublished. Sextus Aurelius Victor, 1975, Histoire des Césars. Translated by Pierre Dufraigne. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres). Soechting, D., 1972, Die Portrats des Septimius Severus. (Bonn: Rudolf Habelt Verlag). The Scriptores Historiae Augustae, 1953, English translation by David Magie. (London: William Heinemann - The Loeb Classical Library).  Modern Literature Amit, M., 1962, ‘Concordia: Idéal Politique et Instrument de Propaganda’. Iura. Napoli, 13, pp. 133-169. Balandier, G., 1980, O Poder em Cena. (Brasília: Edunb). Béranger, J., 1953, Recherches sur l’Aspect Idéologique du Principat. (Basel: Verlag Friedrich Reinhardt). Béranger, J., 1973, Principatus. (Genève: Droz). Burke, P., 1994, A Fabricação do Rei. (Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar). Campbell, J. B., 1984, The Emperor and the Roman Army. (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Chastagnol, A ., 1970, ‘L’Évolution de l’Ordre Sénatorial aux IIIe. Et Ive. Siècles de notre ère’, Revue Historique. Paris, 496: 305-314. Cizek, E., 1990, Mentalités et Institutions Politiques Romaines. (Paris: Fayard). Develin, R., 1971, ‘The Army Pay Rises under Severus and Caracalla and the Question of Annona Militaris, Latomus. 30(3): 687-695. Garnsey, P.; Saller, R., 1987, The Roman Empire. (London: Duckworth). Geertz, C., 1989, A Interpretação das Culturas. Rio de Janeiro: Guanabara, 1989. Geertz, C., 1997, O Saber Local. (Petrópolis: Vozes). Geertz, C., 2001, Nova luz sobre a Antropologia. (Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar). Gozzoli, S., 1987, ‘Fondamenti Ideali e Pratica Politica del  Processo di Romanizzazione nelle Province’, Athenaeum. Pavia, 2, pp. 81-108. Hamberg, G., 1945, Studies in Roman Imperial Art. (Copenhagen: Ejnar Munkigaard). Hammond, M., 1957, ‘Composition of the Senate AD 68-235’. Journal of Roman Studies, 47, pp. 74-81. Hammond, M., 1956, ‘The Transmission of the Powers of the Roman Emperor from the Death of Nero in AD 68 to that of Alexander Severus in AD 235’, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, 24, pp. 118-128. Hopkins, K., 1983, Death and Renewal. (Cambridge: University Press). Kotula, T., 1985, ‘Thèmes de la Propagande Impériale à travers les Inscriptions Africaines du Bas-Empire Romain’, Bulletin Archéologique. 19, pp. 257-263. Kotula, T., 1990, ‘Le Culte de la Gens Impériale: Son Éclipse au IIIe. Siècle ?’ In: Croisille, J.M. (ed.). Neronia IV. (Bruxelles: Latomus), pp. 52-57. Levick, B., 1982, ‘Propaganda and the Imperial Coinage’. Antichton. 16, pp. 104-116. Levick, B., 1978, ‘Concordia at Rome’, Carson, R. A .G. et Kraay, C. M. (ed.). Scripta Nummaria Romana. (London: Spink and Son), pp. 217-229. MacMullen, R. 1992, Enemies of the Roman Order. (London: Routledge). Manning, C. E., 1985, ‘Liberalitas - The Decline and Rehabilitation of a Virtue’, Greece and Rome. 32 (1):pp. 73-83. Manson,  M., 1975, ‘La Pietas et le Sentiment de l’Enfance à Rome d’après les Monnaies’ Revue Belge de Numismatique et de Sigillographie. 121, pp. 21-90. Mccann, A. M., 1968, The Portraits of Septimius Severus. (Rome: Americam Academy in Rome).

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Millar, F., 1983, ‘Empire and City, Augustus to Julian: Obligations, Excuses and Status’ Journal of Roman Studies, 73, pp. 76-96. Petit, P. 1974, Histoire Générale de l’Empire Romain. (Paris: Seuil). Saller, R., 1990, ‘Patronage and Friendship in Early Imperial Rome: Drawing the Distinction’, Wallace-Hadrill, A . (ed.). Patronage in Ancient Society.(London: Routledge), pp. 49-62. Seltman, M. A . (ed.), 1939, The Cambridge Ancient History.: The Imperial Crisis and Recovery.(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Sennett, R., 1997, Carne e Pedra. (Rio de Janeiro: Record). Speidel, M. A., 1992, ‘Roman Army Pay Scales’, Journal of Roman Studies. 82, pp. 87-106. Yavetz, Z., 1984, La Plèbe et le Prince. (Paris: Découverte). 

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Section III Ancient representations: subjectivities and identities in interpreting gender, ethnicity, religion, literature and art

The Erotic Collection of Pompeii: Archaeology, Identity and Sexuality Marina Regis Cavicchioli MA History UNICAMP; doctoral candidate UNICAMP

Introduction Roman History and Archaeology had a very important role in the construction of concepts of national identity and in the idea of cultural inheritance (Hingley 2002, 28). Overall, emphases were giving to the Roman past in its territorial expansion, its imperialism, its warlike force, its literature, its monumental architecture and its art: each of these subjects was favored depending on the historical context in which the past was exploited. Each epoch, based on values of that specific moment, tried, in accordance with particular identity needs, to recover one specific type of past, searching to establish the ideas of cultural inheritance and historical continuity. The desire to belong is vital to a definition of national identity, and the linking of ethnic identities to certain types of archaeological evidence became a powerful instrument in England as in some European countries (Hingley 2002, 30-31). Thus, when the idea of identity was constructed for Rome, because sexuality was viewed with prejudice and as taboo, an assexualised past was constructed: over a long period of time, archaeologists and historians of art excluded this subject from their research. Examples of this are the collections of Roman painting and Roman art, such as the Enciclopedia dell Arte Antica, remembering that, as noted De Certeau (1999, 30), historical discourse starts in the election and transformation of objects distributed in other forms into documents. It is only in the last few decades that sexuality has been considered at all. Such a fact cannot be explained just as a result of a changing view of sexuality; it is also the result of a long process of change in the general approach to history and human sciences. Generally, for many centuries and until recently, the dominant form of historical discourse was the narrative of politicians and military events (Burke 1997, 17). The school of the Annale played important roles in the constitution of a new model of historiography: subjects such as the daily life and the history of mentalities had gained prominence. Thus, feelings, eating habits and gender relations started to be studied as historical subjects.

From a theoretical point of view, post-modern theories contributed something new, inquiring into the ways History was formulated and the meaning of these narratives. This theory considers History as a discourse that scholars in the present make about the past, where the past is not ready to be unmasked, but rather a creation of historians, which reflects the historians’ values, subjectivity and theoretical questions. These questions exist at the time the historian is living, guiding his or her decisions regarding subjectmatter and approach. Because of this, sexuality, which had been a subject many times neglected in historical and archaeological research, started to be part of History. In this context, the contribution of feminist theories and gender theories must constitute a starting point for thinking about sexuality in history. Feminist theories and the history of sexuality Feminists have discussed the exclusion of women in the study of History and have discussed universal History, which was based on masculine History. They have inserted women into the study of History, and, relatedly, they have developed a series of questions that have led to the creation of Gender Theory. Gender Theory, in its diverse strands, developed a new form of thinking about sexual differences which was not biologically determined, but socially constructed (Barbieri 1991, 29). Each gender position or identity (masculine, feminine, homosexual, transsexual) is constructed in a different way in each culture and society, also presenting differences within the same society in accordance with the social group in which it is inserted. That is to say, gender relations are constructed socially and culturally. Thus, considering that for each society the experiences, practices, sexual representations and rules are distinct, we cannot consider sexuality and sexual practices as innate to humans because we must remember that sexual behavior has its rules directed by culture. This can be seen in the fact that moral and religious concepts have influenced sexual behaviors quite strongly. In these discourses (moral and religious ones), women, for a long time, were considered objects of masculine pleasure, being disenfranchised of their own pleasure, being in this way, as in many others,

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riandare all órigine e riconoscecersi.’ ( D’ Avino 1993, Coversheet). Nevertheless, one cannot think about the concept of sexuality among the Romans in the same way that we deal with it today. The concept of sexuality is culturally constructed (Foucault 1985; Laqueur 2001). Therefore, to define such a concept for the Roman world would be anachronistic, because then we would be starting with a contemporaneous concept. Our world considers sexuality as a distinct part of our everyday lives, valued most of the time as an experience in its own right. Sexuality for the Romans For the Romans, sexuality, as well as economies, war, and politics, was not a distinct part of life, influenced by others things such as religion and morality. It was seen as a continuum: sexuality was intrinsically bound to religion. Thus, we cannot think of religion as influencing sexuality, but as being part of the same reality. It is thus that we find symbols that belong at the same time to the sacred and to the sexual. One example is the phallus: objects of daily use were constructed in the form of a phallus. These objects were supposed to bring luck or frighten away bad luck (Johns 1995: 92). The phallus, also with this function, was placed on doorsills, on walls and at the city entrances (Fig. 1). In the city of Rome, the House of Vestal Virgins had the large representation of a phallus, and in Empurias, in modern Spain, a funerary urn in the form of a phallus was found. In addition, there were gods and mythological beings represented with large phalluses, including Mars, Mercury, Pan and Priapus, an entiphallic god by nature. Roman gods and mythological beings were sexualized and represented practicing sexual acts and with feelings of desire. They had children by the sexual act.

Fig. 1. Phallus on city wall subordinate to men. For historiography, this new way of thinking about gender also represented a new historical approach to sexuality, since the role played by women throughout history had always been tied to their sexual character. With this in mind, how sexuality is viewed has changed, and it is no longer seen in traditional ways, as natural, biological and universal. Even if some researchers of the Roman world have used these new theories, we cannot forget that there exists one strong tradition among the Mediterranean archaeologists with a different interpretation. The Mediterranean tradition Mediterranean traditional archaeologists interpret the ancient world as a continuation with the contemporaneous world (and vice versa). They therefore believe that the feelings of the common man today would be the same as in Roman times, because they believe that man is always the same, only the circumstances are modified. Therefore, the concept of sexuality is thought of as an innate human behavior. A clear example of this type of position is in the words of D’Avino:

In mythology, an example of this is when Zeus fell in love with Alcmena and appeared to her in the form of her husband (Amphitryon). He had sex with her, resulting in the birth of a son, Heracles (Kury 1992, 23). This story, originally considered Greek, is also part of the Latin culture, having been told in the comedy of Plautus Amphitryon (Amphitruo). Another example, yet more significant, is in the myth of the creation of Rome, in which Romulus and Remus, the founders of the city, were children of the occult union between Rea Silvia and the god Mars (Kury 1992, 347). In contrast, in to the Christian religious tradition, God is asexual: the son of this god is not born through a sexual relation, and the mother of this son did not have sex with anyone.

‘A Pompei, nel bene e nel male, piú o meno, si viveva come si vive oggi. Esistevano allora uomini virtuosi e viziosi, i ricchi e i poveri, gli imbecilli egli intelligenti,, i cattivi e i misericordiosi, i ragazzaci e i giovani bene educati. Allora come oggi. Ci si abbruttiva allora per vizio e per bisogno, come oggi si cade nel vizio. Rispeto alla epoca antica le diversità riguardano l’ambiente , le dimensioni e le comoditá considerate in rapporto al progresso técnico.’ ( D’ Avino 1993, 3). ‘Questa pubblicazione vuole essere una divulgazione dei costumi dei nostri avi, per vederne il lato piú intimo e vero, in modo a

To us, nowadays, this relation between sexuality and religiosity may seem strange. The reason for this can be found in the predominant concept of religion in which, generally speaking, sexuality is something condemned, forbidden. And this conception influenced interpretations about this Roman past. To understand better how this point 188

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of view was constructed, we must reflect on the history of what is called the Erotic Collection and the excavations of Pompeii.

and destruction of the city, Varone (1998, 7) attributes this behavior to one particular practice of that period: collectionism.

The excavations and the erotic collection

In this way, even if the destruction is a desolating image, it does not have simply to be condemned, but rather understood in respect to the culture of the period. Moreover, Varone also suggested that the king was very interested in looking for antiquities, so much so that in 1755 he created the Accademia Ercolanese, so that the monuments of Pompeii would be ‘scientifically’ illustrated. Even after he returned to Spain, Carlo III continued to follow the excavation, eventually, in 1763, forbidding the practice of demolition (Varone 1998, 7).

‘La crónica de las excavaciones es una historia de transformaciones y de desarrollo de técnicas y objetivos, muchos de los cuales determinados por los cambios de situación política y de las diversas personas responsables por el trabajo’ (Berry 1998: 7) Since the city of Pompeii was buried in 79 AD, all its material culture was preserved until the beginning of the exactions in 1748, without undergoing the modifications that cultural transformations over the centuries could have imposed on the city. The Vesuvian area started to be explored systematically in 1738, from Herculaneum. Ten years later, the excavations of Pompeii began. The site was initially believed to be Stabia (Nappo 1998, 16; Funari 1988, 26). The results of the first excavations, however, were not satisfactory and the city was abandoned, but the excavations were taken up again in 1755. Only in 1763, when a registration was found, were the ruins identified as the city of Pompeii (Berry 1998, 7; Funari 1989, 26).

Thus, in 1764, F. de la Veja became the manager of the excavations of Pompeii and started to use different methods from those previously adopted. In an effort to preserve the city, the removal of architectural structures was avoided and the main objective of the excavations came to be the exposition of structures such as houses, temples and shops (Carandini 1995, 15; Funari 1989, 26; Nappo 1998, 16; Varone 1998, 9), which also contributed to visits to the archeological site (Parslow 2001, 20). The objects were not considered as important and were sent, largely, to the Royal Museum, where they were generally not studied. Some objects, due to theft or donation, were in private collections or in other museums, such as the Empress Tereza Cristina collection of the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro. Since the beginning of the excavations objects with sexual representations were found. These caused, in the words of Cantarella (1998, 166), embarrassment and rejection because of the culture of the time. The objects of sexual representation, when considered worthy of preservation, were stored in a special room of the Museo Ercolanese dei Portici, whose access was very restricted, obtained only through special permission (Cantarella 1998, 166).

Initially (1748-1765), the excavations had as their goal and practices the collection of materials considered objects of art, including wall paintings and some architectural structures, without identifying the objects’ original localization. These materials were selected in the following way: those considered precious would become part of the private collection of the king of Naples (Carlo III or Carlos de Bourbon), and the others, classified as of little importance, would have to be destroyed so that they would not fall ‘into the wrong hands’ (Nappo 1995, 16; Varone 1998, 7). The few preserved excavation diaries of this period and the documents in general were focused on the economic value of the found pieces (Nappo 1998, 16; Berry 1998, 7). The past, in this situation, was viewed from the aesthetic values of the Napolitan nobility of that period.

During the French dominion of Naples (1799-1815), procedures changed radically (Nappo 1998, 17). During the reign of Joaquin Murat, his wife, Carolina Murat (the sister of the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte) demonstrated a great deal of interest in the excavations, carrying out an ambitious project: she decided to expropriate private property, making the ancient city inside the walls and the area around it controlled by the State, in order to excavate the ancient city. The goals of Carolina Murat were the excavation of all of the ancient Pompeii in a few years and the creation of an itinerary for visitors. She provided extensive funds and many workers. Although she was quite persistent, putting more than 1500 laborers to work on the excavations, they were not completed - however, the expropriation of land was completed (Muscettola 2001, 29-30; Nappo 1998, 16; Varone 1998, 8-9). Moreover, Carolina Murat was very important in disseminating the results of the excavations, via letters she sent to personalities all over Europe, through money that

The removal of great structures, the covering of the place, and the lack of specific cares with the preservation of the city caused much controversy. In the first years of excavation the work was directed by military personnel (Varone 1998, 7). Archaeology as a research discipline with methods and techniques did not exist at that time, and thus, archaeologists also cannot be said to have existed. There were, however, some specialists in antiquary and some of these, such as J. Winckelmann (Nappo 1998, 16; Parslow 2001, 20), critics of the behavior of removal of materials, deemed Pompeii to have more to offer than decorative objects: for them, the whole city could serve for the discovery of a past. Although many authors, such as Nappo (1998, 16) and Parslow (2001, 20), believe the period of Carlo III to be a time of simple robbery of pieces 189

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she spent for printing city guides and by making possible the elaboration of the works that represented the summa of the excavations carried out in the previous period.

reactionary wave that followed this period caused the complete closure of the Gabinetto degli oggetti riservati in 1849 (Jacobelli 1998, 167). Three years latter the collection was transferred to a room, whose doors a wall was built: ‘ …si distruggesse qualunque esterno indizio della funesta esistenza di quel gabinetto e se ne disperdesse per quanto possibile delle memoria’ (Jacobelli 1998, 167) It is interesting to note that the materials from the excavations of Pompeii and the Vesuvian area were not the only ones to be made unavailable: there were also pieces of art by such famous painters as Michelangelo, Tiziano and Veronese (Jacobelli 1998, 167).

The persistence in extending the excavations of the city, in spreading and distributing the results and guides of the city, in the creation of itineraries for visitors, and in the document on the previous excavations, seems to demonstrate not only an interest in objects in themselves, but also in all the reconstitution of a history. In this way, even if the Pompeianists such as Muscettola (2001, 29-30); Nappo (1998, 16) and Varone (1998, 8-9) attribute the impulse received in the French period to a personal taste of the wife of the Emperor, Carolina Murat, it may not be baseless to assume that there was a relation between the excavations of Pompeii and the reconstruction of a particular type of past that could, perhaps, forge an identity between Roman and French imperialism. When leaving Naples, Carolina Murat took many objects from Pompeii to France (De Simone 1975, 168). With the return of the Bourbonic dynasty (1815-1863), there was a reduction in the number of workers and research on Pompeii. Nevertheless, some of the expropriated lands had been returned to their former proprietors: these lands had been expropriated in the period during which Naples was under French control, and some former proprietors, alleging the illegality of such actions, had achieved the return of their properties (Muscettola 2001, 29). Some of these proprietors had excavated their lands on their own and others had planted grapes on lands inside the walls of the city. This last fact was fortuitous, since agriculture helped to preserve that part of the city without excavations. The expropriation of all the lands on behalf of the State had been a difficult bureaucratic question that was drawn out over many years and was only concluded in the beginning of the twentieth century (Muscettola 2001, 29-32). The objects of the excavations, as well as paintings and mosaics, continued to be collected, being taken to the Palazzo degli Studi di Napoli (the Bourbonic Royal Museum), to which the materials from the Museo Ercolanese dei Portici had been transferred.

A short time later, the room was closed again, and the name of the collection was modified to Raccolta pornografica. While the collection was open, however, the superintendent of Pompeii from 1863 to 1875, Giuseppe Fiorelli produced the first printed catalogue with the objects of the Raccolta Pornografica. In 1863, 206 objects were catalogued as belonging to the collection, and today this catalogue is important because it presents many images of painting, that do not exist any more.

A special room called Gabinetto degli oggetti osceni was created in the new museum in 1810. The room contained 102 ‘obscene’ objects (De Simone 1975, 168). Entrance was allowed only to ‘people of known maturity and moral age’ because when Francesco I, duke of Calabria and future king of Naples, in a visit to the Bourbonic Royal Museum (part of the Palazzo degli Studi di Napoli), saw that objects, he revealed the necessity of ‘chiudere tutti gli oggeti osceni, di qualunque materie essi fossero, in una stanza, alla quale avessero poi unicamemte ingresso le persone di, matura etá e conosciuta morale’ (Jacobelli 1998, 167). Once more, the moral values of the nobility were defining the access to such objects. In 1823, the name of the collection was changed to Gabinetto degli oggetti riservati, but access continued to be restricted to those who had received royal permission (Jacobelli 1998, 167; De Simone 1975, 168). The events of 1848 and the

This project, however, was not directed only at this collection; it was part of a bigger project of Fiorelli in which all objects - including erotic ones – discovered after 1849 were catalogued. He was also responsible for the change in methods and techniques of excavations and is considered one of the pioneers in introducing a ‘scientific’ method of excavation. ‘Effetivamente gli studiosi attivi a Pompei nel periodo dopo il 1860, a partire della assunzione della direzione degli scavi da parte di G. Fiorelli, avevano avvertito l´urgenza di colmare le gravi mancanze del passato e di creare le basi fondamentali per il lavoro scientifico : si tratava di riorganizzare gli scavi , di impostare planimetrie generali, di pubblicare regorlamente notizie degli scavi, di avviare le costituizione di corpora di materiali .’ (Seiler 2001, 63). The method of excavation that he introduced consisted of excavating houses from the top, taking off the roof but preserving the

As part of the process of Italian unification, in 1860 Garibaldi entered Naples and proclaimed himself dictator of the Kingdom of Naples and the two Sicilies, in name of the King Vittorio Emanuele II, who in the following year, after the Unification of Italy, was proclaimed by the Parliament to be the first king of Italy. This fact changed the collection’s situation because in 1860, Garibaldi nominated Alexander Dumas (the famous novelist’s father) director of the Borbonic Royal Museum, whose name was changed to Museo Nazionale di Napoli. Dumas reopened the erotic collection to the general public except children, women and the clergy, who would have to get prior permission to enter the room (Jacobelli 1998, 167). It is interesting that the term ‘general public’ was used by cited authors and express a universal idea, when women and children, more of the half of the population, were not part of this ‘public’, which seems to demonstrate how these authors use this term without thinking about gender conflicts.

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other architectural structures in their original form (Nappo 1998, 17). Berry (1998, 7) believes that, not coincidently, the moment in which the excavations started to take a systematic form was the moment of Italian unification, in which Pompeii was converted into ‘el escaparate nuevo reino ‘.

discoveries, works and research on the city, even if the most famous ones are not scientific publications (Zevi 1998, 74). Maiuri was responsible, too, for the systematic excavations below level 79. Level 79 is the stratigraphic level where the city was found in the moment of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. It is the level where, overall, Roman presence is most detected. The excavations below this level, conducted by Maiuri, showed the presence of other peoples prior to the Romans. These new analyses carried with them the idea of Roman supremacy over other peoples. Fascism represented perfectly this same concept, sharing the idea of a superior culture overlapping but, mostly, dominating other cultures and in this way bringing them into civilization. Considering civilization as something that can be transferred (Hingley 2002, 34), Maiuri used to justify the colonialism.

Although new excavation methods and techniques have been introduced over the years and by the different directors of the excavations, it was only from the beginning of the twentieth century that paintings and mosaics have been kept where they were found (Nappo 1998, 19). This was, without a doubt, very important for the analysis of these materials in their context and for the interpretation of the meanings of these paintings in the ancient context. This fact provided new perspectives for research: in an analysis of paintings with sexual representations, previously removed and now left in place, they could be compared to other paintings and objects of the same place, and it was also possible to study the circulation of people in the places, helping to compose a combined interpretation of symbolic meanings. These paintings, previously assumed to have come from brothels, were now understood to have come from other places, such as the houses of the elite, and therefore, their social meaning was rethought.

Although during World War II the excavations were paralyzed and the city bombed (Berry 1998, 8), generally, it can be said that Pompeii received great aid from the fascist regime. At a moment of strong nationalism and ideological doctrine, fascists searched for an identity based on ancient Romans, and these new discoveries were emphasized. We should recall that in the 1930s, Roman History was interpreted by the majority of Italian classicists in the light of fascist politics and, overall, using Roman history to promote the idea of fascism (Cagnetta 1979, 10), being that Mussolini himself made official visits to the archaeological site, as can be seen in photographs from that period.

Spinazzola, superintendent of Pompeii from 1911 to 1923, had an important role because he paid attention to the preservation and restoration of the porches of the houses (Nappo 1998, 18; Berry 1998, 7), which was something new. But World War I interrupted the Pompeian research (Seiler 2001, 64).

During the fascist period, visits to the private collection of the Museu Nazionale di Napoli were still more controlled of than previously: the room could be visited only by artists with valid documents that certified their profession, with official permission. Such restriction was considered moral behavior by the fascists. We should remember that the fascist discourse searched for Italian identity in the Roman Empire at the same time in which fascists identified themselves with the morality of the Catholic Church. Thus, since Catholicism links sexuality to the idea of sin, the fascist doctrine could not be seen to be inheriting such an explicit sexuality. It would therefore be more appropriate to deny access to such a collection.

In the 1920s, research and excavations were taken up once again, with new ideas and ideologies (Seiler 2001, 64). At this moment, the great figure of Italian archaeology of the twentieth century appears as superintendent of Pompeii: Amedeo Maiuri (Berry 1998, 7; Nappo 1998, 18; Zevi 1990, 73). Maiuri occupied this position from 1924 to 1961, and his role has been controversial to this day, first because his works were developed in the context of fascism, being financed and encouraged by this government (Moormann 2001, 15). Thus, it seems logical to believe that he helped to construct an archaeology that was inserted in such an ideology. Secondly, Maiuri is known for his dynamism and qualification as an archaeologist, which led him to develop excavations in the city intensively (Nappo 1998, 18; Berry 1998, 8). However, Nappo (1998, 18) believes that the work was conducted hastily and with inadequate resources, so that most of the excavated areas were restored in a makeshift manner and then abandoned. Consequently, these areas, despite being the most recently excavated, have deteriorated the most.

After the end of the war, all the material of the museum was reorganized, but only in 2000 was an exhibition of the iconographic material that represented sexuality organized. However, before this material was displayed, the Vatican, worried about such representations, tried to prevent the exhibition. They said: ‘It does not matter what these objects meant for the Romans. Today they are obscene...’ (Revista Veja 2000, 70-74). We know that the obscene character of the objects is not in the iconography itself, but rather in the interpretation that each person gives to the objects. In semiotic terms, the obscene character would not be in the message (the erotic scene), nor in the means (the image), but rather it would be given by the interpreter - the person who would

This happened, perhaps, because of a desire to excavate and to make visible the greatest amount of material, remembering that Pompeii was a source of national pride and its new discoveries were very welcome. Maiuri was also responsible for extensive dissemination of the new 191

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of the past and use their own moral values to determine the type of cultural inheritance they want to emphasize. Since they believe in the linearity between the contemporaneous world and the past, they are anachronistic, and they do not permit the possibility of thinking about different interpretations.

be observing the image (Epstein 1986, 16). However, as the position of the Vatican exemplifies, a certain resistance to studies related to the subject of sexuality still exists. This room is today open to the public; however, an appointment is necessary, with specific schedules and museum tour guides. Visitor cannot go inside this room without a tour guide, and children need the permission of parents to enter. This demonstrates how such material is treated as taboo. Another institutional view on this same subject is that of the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro, where the phallic objects are open to the public, displayed together with other Roman materials. We can also cite the Museum of Empurias in Spain, where funerary urns in phallic form are displayed together with other Roman funerary objects.

In contrast to the Vatican’s pronouncements, for many researchers of the Ancient world, it is very interesting to understand the meaning of sexual objects for the Romans, even if they have a different symbolic meaning today. Fortunately, some recent research has sought to understand the meaning of those objects, the ways archaeology has constructed its interpretations of the past, and the ways in which different approaches can bring new objects, such as the study of sexuality, to light.

Conclusions Taking into account the facts in this paper, we can perceive how Pompeian archaeology contributed to the construction of an Italian national identity. This identity is certainly, therefore, constructed over a specific type of past, legitimizing particular set of public policies on this issue.

Acknowledgements I owe thanks to Dr. Pedro Paulo Funari, Dra. Renata Garrafoni, Dr. Antonio Varone, Alaister Cowan and Juliana Bastos Marques. I must also mention the institutional support of the Center for Strategic Studies (NEE/ UNICAMP) and FAPESP. I am solely responsible for the ideas expressed herein.

We have seen that some specialists understand the contemporaneous world as a linear historical continuation

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Moormann, E., 2001, ‘Una cittá mummificata: qualque aspetto della fortuna di Pompei nella letteratura europea ed americana’, in Guzzo, P. G. (ed.) Pompei Scienza e Societá (Milan: Electa). Muscetola, S., 2001, ‘Problemi di tutela a Pompei nell`Ottocento: il fallimento del proggeto di esproprio murattino’, in Guzzo, P. G. (ed.) Pompei Scienza e Societá (Milan: Electa). Nappo, S., 1999, Pompeii. A Guide to the Ancient City, (Vercelli: White Star). Parslow, C., 2001, ‘The Open-Air Excavations at Pompeii in the Eighthteenth-century: New Methods, New Problems’ in Guzzo, P. G. (ed.) Pompei Scienza e Societá (Milan: Electa). Revista Veja, 2000, Number 1640. (São Paulo: Editora Abril), pp70-74. Seiler, F., 2001, ‘Karl Lehmann-Hartleben e la ‘ nuova’ ricerca su Pompei’, in Guzzo, P. G. (ed.) Pompei Scienza e Societá (Milan: Electa). Varone, A., 1998, ‘Gli Scavi dal 1748 al 1815’, in D`Ambrosio, A. (ed.) Alla Scoperta di Pompei, (Milan: Electa). Zevi, F., 2001, ‘Aspetti dell`archeologia pompeiana nel Novecento: gli scavi Del Mauri a Pompei’, in Guzzo, P. G. (ed.) Pompei Scienza e Societá (Milan: Electa).

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Feminine and Masculine in Pompeii: Gender Relations among the Common People Lourdes Conde Feitosa*

Faculdades Integradas de Jaú, Brazil

Introduction The Colony Cornelia Veneria Pompeiorum carried in its name the influence and the protection of Venus, the goddess of love, and the common people of Pompeii had written a lot about ‘love’ on the city’s walls. These men left their declarations of love and greetings; they expressed supplications, gallantries and complaints involving lovers and/or their rivals; they revealed jealousy and injuries, and they made reference to sexual practices on Pompeii walls. These archeological documents give us instruments to establish some notions among the feminine and the masculine in popular groups of Pompeii. This work begins with an analysis of possible connotations that the terms ‘masculinity’ and ‘virility’ may have acquired in Roman society of the first century AD, in particular, among common groups. I discuss how the model of sexual conduct for men that is constructed by ancient and modern writers for Roman aristocrats is founded on the sexual and social disqualifications of commoners. The messages of love left on the walls by these women and men show us that the common lovers’ behaviors were radically different from those established for the aristocratic groups. These graffiti permit us to glimpse a particular conception of masculine and feminine among these common people. The novelty brought by this paper is at the reflection about feminine and masculine behavior among common people: slaves, former slaves and poor freemen, in a gender perspective, using their references to love left on the walls the Pompeii. Masculinity and virility The words ‘masculinity’ and ‘virility’ are intimately related, and, following their modern connotations, are Lourdes Conde Feitosa holds a doctorate in Cultural History from UNICAMP (State University of Campinas Brazil) and has been studying gender in Ancient History for several years, particularly associated with the CPA (Center of Studies and Documentation about the Classical Ancient Thought, Hellenistic and its Historical Posterity) and the NEE (Strategies Studies Center), both at UNICAMP.

*

associated with the idea of conquest, particularly sexual conquest. Regarding love, these words are commonly linked to the act of seduction and the exercise of one person’s attraction for another. In Pompeii, there are many registers with the verb futuere that, in a literal and colloquial sense, means ‘to fuck’, or, in polite speech, ‘to have sexual relations with.’ The question remains to define the connotations that these representation may have held in Pompeian popular culture. The walls of Vico Del Lupanare (Lupanar Street)1 exhibit many citations of this practice, as seen in the following selected sample. Through these graffiti, individuals anonymously wrote: Hic ego puellas multas futui (CIL, IV, 2175) [Here I fucked several girls]2 Also: Hic ego cum veni futui deinde redei domi (CIL, IV, 2246) [I was here, I fucked, and after that I went home]. This one was signed by Felix: Felix bene futuis (sic) (CIL, IV, 2176) [Felix fucks well]. And this one, by Placidus: Placidus hic futuit quem volvit (CIL, IV, 2265) [Placidus desired]3.

here

fucked

whom

he

In several places where we cannot make a direct connection between the graffiti and an established place where sex was practiced, we nonetheless find sexual references, such as in the inscription left on one of the columns of the Street of Fortune: Ephesus fututor (CIL, IV, 1503) [Ephesus, stallion] 1   Archeological evidence suggests the existence of various cases of prostitution at Pompeii, although there are controversies as to their number (Laurence 1994: 73). The Street of Lupanar is where the only brothel that remains intact post-excavation can be found. It consists of two floors with five beds on the lower level and five on the upper level. 2   As the graffiti are being interpreted as the popular expressions of the people of Pompeii, the transliteration from Latin to English maintains the expressions that I believe to most accurately approximate the popular usage. References to sexual themes follow this orientation. 3   The same was written by Solemnes, Vitalio, Hermero, Posphorus, Chryseros, and Successo, respectively in CIL, IV, 2186/ 87/ 95; 2241 e 4816.

Lourdes Conde Feitosa

or this one, written on the entrance to a house: 4 Fortunate animula dulcis perfututor Scribt qui nouit (CIL, IV, 4239)

In this sense, it is useful to consider the argument presented by Cantarella in justifying what she considers an almost obsessive insistence in making these kinds of references: ‘it shows that in reality what was more interesting to the Pompeii citizen was that his real or presumable sexual power was revealed, that the community knew, that none doubted his virility’ (Cantarella 1999: 141)7. However, two aspects of her analysis can be questioned. The first is her assumption that these graffiti are the work of ‘the citizens of Pompeii’. In this, it is important to keep in mind that Pompeian society was divided into three classes: free persons, freed persons, and slaves. In this schema, ‘citizens’ refers only to the free men, and therefore, the assumption is that these grafitti must have been created by and made reference to the elite. Her literal and commonsense interpretation of the graffiti, which does not take into account the more complex understanding discussed above, should likewise be questioned.

[Fortunato, small sweet heart, big stallion! Write who knows]5 The significance these references may have had in Roman society has been the subject of much discussion and controversy. I will consider a few interpretations that have been offered. For Varone, these frequent citations arise from an erotic pulsation as the expression of an uncontrollable necessity to write about and thereby share with others the pleasure derived from sexual acts. In this way, writing about sexual acts would be a continuation of the original pleasure (Varone 2000: 79). Adams proposes that these inscriptions could suggest a kind of advertisement made by prostitutes to indicate the sexual prowess of their clients, as in CIL, IV, 2176, seen above. More commonly, he argues, they may be an indication of the virility of the one who wrote the inscription, or at least, of an attempt to realize such virility (Adams 1996, 161). However, he makes an important observation, in noting that the word futuo is not typically utilized, either in graffiti or in elegies, in the passive form for the feminine role: ‘futuo (attivo) is usually attributed to the female in a normal sexual act’ (Adams 1996, 163).

Assuming that many of these messages were recorded with the intention of realizing or invoking virility, it is necessary to consider what meaning this concept had in popular culture. The connotation of ‘domination and imposition’ attached to virility by the ‘Romans’ or the ‘elites’ cannot be automatically assumed for a subaltern understanding of the concept of virility. The meaning of masculinity as insignia of authority, constructed by ancient and modern writers for Roman aristocrats, is built upon the fact that they ruled over and dominated the popular classes. The latter thus represented the aristocrats’ opposite, the passive, ‘sterile’, and emotionally uncontrolled masses, qualities which then supposedly justified and necessitated their need for domination.

That is, the verb ‘to fuck’ is typically used in the active voice – ‘I fuck’, ‘I have’, both for the masculine and the feminine. This can be seen in some inscriptions in which a woman is represented as the ‘possessor’: Miduse fututrix (CIL, IV, 4196)

Since my objective is to analyze the understandings of masculinity and femininity through sexual relationships, I focus on a few areas that orient this analysis of the possible ways of conceiving ‘virility’, namely, the sexual acts practiced between men and women, the dynamics of a slave-based society that includes within it the stigma of social subordination, and finally, which sexual-affective conceptions and notions of gender can be discerned from reading the extant graffiti. For this study I have selected two sexual practices that are fundamentally related to masculine and feminine sexuality: the act of futuere [to fuck] and that of cunnum lingere [the practice of cunnilingus]. I will present a number of interpretations that can be derived from reading the inscriptions. To sustain my argument, I present an articulation between lovers’ grafitti and general subjects about love, with the intention of emphasizing a feminine and masculine outline of social and affective life.

[Miduse possessor]6. The popular usage of this verb, always employed in relation to the use of the phallus in a sexual act and thus symbolically representative of ‘the active’, is interpreted by Funari (1995), Jacobelli (1995), and Varone (2000) in terms of its capacity to defend from the dangers of the ‘evil eye’ and, at the same time, to bring luck and protection. For this reason, Funari argues that, more than attributing the power of the phallus solely to the man, it is reasonable to assume that it represented the sexual relationship itself, implicit in this symbol that brought with it real protective potential. For this reason, he argues, it was used in the active voice for everyone, male or female, who made use of its apotropaic capacities (Funari 2003). This interpretation makes it possible to question the simple translations and understandings that are frequently adopted in looking at these traces from the past.   Reg. V, íns. 2.   This line was perhaps written by another person, but interpretation of this is disputed. [Observation of the editor] For this transliteration, I have followed the interpretation suggested by Cartelle 1981, 115. 6   Similar connotations also seen in graffiti 2204/3; 4381. 4

7   ‘Evidenzia che in realtà quel che più interessava al cittadino di Pompei era che della sua vera o presunta potenza sessuale si parlasse, che i suoi concittadini sapessero, che nessuno potesse mettere in dubbio la sua virilità’.

5

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Cunnum lingere: a characteristic of lassitude?

Other inscriptions have connotations that differ somewhat from those presented above. Expression like: Iucundus cunum lingit Rusticae (CIL, IV, 4264)11

The practice of cunnilingus (cunnum lingere), rarely represented in the iconography (Jacobelli 1995: 45), is mentioned with considerable frequency in the existing graffiti. It is based on a reading of this evidence, and taking into account the locations in which the graffiti can be found, that I rethink the interpretations that take these references either to be intended solely as offensive allusions, directed towards others (Adams, 1996: 114), or else as symbols of the failure or absence of self-control, as Parker argues was the predominant case in the aristocratic media (1997, 51; 58).

[Iucundus licks the pussy of Rusticae], Linge Laidi cunnum (CIL, IV, 1578) [Licks the pussy of Laidi]12, Due to their brevity, it is difficult to understand these inscriptions as isolated instances. Therefore, they are analyzed here in conjunction with other inscriptions in order to approach the general motivations that could have underlain their production. The question taken up here is how the concept of virility fits in with the practice of cunnilingus. Considering the assertion found in historiographic works13 that giving pleasure to another person was not considered a ‘virile’ act for a man to perform, the question then becomes what significance this conception could have had among the popular classes in Pompeii. The following section takes up this topic.

A series of inscriptions seems to suggest that, in fact, the writer wanted to attack the moral character of the mentioned person. Examples include those registered in the baths Stabiana: Colepius pater cunnu linget (CIL, IV, 2081) [Colepius father licks pussy]

Articulating gender in popular sexuality

or another on the peristyle of a house: Seruilius amat nec illi sit copia Seruil cunnulin...e (CIL, IV, 4304)

The walls of Pompeii exhibit an abundance of diverse expressions on the topic of love. I will begin by considering a group of these in which the authors took their inspiration from elegies. In these expressions, the authors register their faith in the joys of love, warn of the misfortune that befalls those who would impede it, and assert their belief in the uselessness of its prohibition. These themes can be seen such as in the following, written in a reception hall: (Quis)quis amat ualeat, pereat qui nescit amare. Bis tanto pereat quisquis amare uetat (CIL, IV, 4091)

[Servilius loves but doesn’t enjoy, as he only licks pussies].8 There were also those who would perform the act as an economic pursuit, through prostitution, as seen in the advertisement for ‘service’ given by Glico, left in a room of the bakery of n. 27: Glico cunnum lingit 2 a(ssibus) (CIL, IV, 3999) [Glico licks pussy for two asses]9,

[Long live he who loves, death to he who knows not how to! Death twice more to he who prohibits love!]

Another inscription is CIL, IV, 869810, where the lack of price makes it difficult to know if it refers to a male prostitute, because it has multiple possibilities of transliteration: Vettius cu(n)num li(n)get. Opt/atus. [Vettius licks pussy. good!]

Hum!

On the Street of Iminente we see the subtle advice that to prohibit love is the same as trying to stop the spontaneous flow of nature itself. Alliget hic auras si quis obiurgat amantes et uetet assiduas currere fontis aquas (CIL, IV, 1649)

This is

or: [Vettius licks pussy. He is good!],

[If anyone here were to reprehend lovers, may he as well stop the winds and prohibit the flow of waters from a fountain]14.

In the first interpretation, it is a register of the pleasure that Vettius had in practicing this activity, with the inscription serving as a marker of his appreciation for such an act. In the second, it is an announcement made by him about the quality of his ‘services’ that he is offering to a female clientele. There is also a third possible interpretation, in which it could represent the writing of someone who, having experienced the attention of Vettius, left behind an advertisement praising his expertise in this area.

Apart from being depicted as intrinsic to humanity itself and highly desired, love is also represented as a fire that leaves consequences, as was written on one of the walls of the Basilica: Quisquis amat calidis non debet fontibus uti Nam nemo flammas ustus amare potest (CIL, IV, 1898)   Found next to the fifth and sixth entrance to Reg I, ins. 4.   Found in a house on Fortune Street. Other references with the same theme are seen in CIL, IV, 2257, 2400, 4954, 4995, 5178, 5267, 8380. 13   Cf., for example: Foucault 1990: 79; Veyne 1990: 198; Quignard 1994: 23; Robert 1994: 131; Galán 1996: 29 and Cantarella 1991: 205. 14   Both 1645/9 are from the Street of Iminente. 11

  Reg. V, ins. 5. Other variations can be seen on graffiti like CIL, IV, 1331, 2257, 3925 e 10 150. 8

9

 

10

 

12

Reg. I, ins. 3. In a Column of the Reg. II.

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[He who loves should not bathe himself in hot waters, as none who has been burned can love the flames].

[Sweet love, may you last forever. I love Taine so much, my sweet, sweet love]17 We see the same arduous mention in another inscription, this one from the atrium of a house. The lacunas in the extant inscription do not permit us to know the name of the one who was so loved: [... a]e dulcissimae amantissimaeque [...] que salutem, ave (CIL, IV, 8177)

But that these effects of love may be fleeting is also recorded. Love itself, similar to the continuous cycle of nature, with its comings and goings, is seen as ephemeral: Nunc est ira recens nunc est disc(edere tempus) Si dolor afuerit crede redibit (amor) (CIL, IV, 4491)

[Homage to (...), sweetest and most loved (....), hail!] 18.

[Now the rage is new; time must pass. When the pain has gone, believe! Love will return!]15

In the inscription CIL, IV, 4858, we can glimpse the importance that Valentina had in the life of Amethusthus, as written by him in one of the walls: Amethusthus nec sine sua Valentina

This meaning seems to be present in another work of graffiti as well, although a careful reading allows us to glimpse another possible interpretation. We can read the following inscription as referring to an ‘accommodation’ to the feelings of love, when these manage to endure the passage of time: Nihil durare potest tempore perpetuo; Cum bene sol nituit, redditur oceano; Decrescit Phoebe, quae modo plena fuit. (Sic) Venerum feritas saepe fit aura l(e)uis (CIL, IV, 9123)

[Amethusthus cannot live without his Valentina]19 Restitutus, who may have been a peddler passing through the city, left on a wall an expression of how much he missed his beloved Urbana: Vibius Restitutus hic solus dormiuit et Vrbanam suam desiderabat (CIL, IV, 2146) [Vibius Restitutus sleeps here alone and ardently remembers his beloved Urbana] 20.

[Nothing lasts forever: although the sun still shines brightly, it returns to the sea. Phoebe (Moon) wanes after its fullness. Likewise, passion’s ferocity transforms itself, frequently, into a gentle breeze]16

The walls also hold the traces of many supplications of love left by men who request the affection of the woman they desire in simple and direct language. Such was the expression of Secundus in the atrium of a house:

We can also read another perspective, referring more to the ‘perpetual’ nature of love in other inscriptions, such as this enthusiastic salutation directed at Noete, written on the Eumachia Building: Noete lumen va(le) Va(le) usque va(le) (CIL, IV, 1970)

Secundus Prim(a)e suae ubi/que isse salute(m). Rogo, domina, ut me ames (CIL, IV, 8364) [Secundus sends to his beloved Prima a cordial greeting I ask you, my lady, to love me!]21,

[Nete, my light, hail! Hail! Now and forever, hail!]

The same was done by Aelius, in a kitchen:22

Through these inscriptions, it is possible to ascertain different opinions concerning love’s duration: ‘fleeting’ or ‘eternal’. In either case, the inscriptions imply that, rather than being something absolute or determined, love gained its character through the nature of the couple’s relationship. The graffiti suggests that both possibilities coexisted.

Aelius Magnus Plotillae suae salutem. Rogo, domina (CIL, IV, 1991) [Aelius Magnus greets his loved Plotila I beseech, my lady!]. This supplication was directed at Grata, left in the interior of a house: (Grat)ae nostrae feliciter (perp)etuo rogo domna per (Venere)m Física te rogo ni me (...)us habeto mei memoriam (CIL, IV, 6865)

Beyond these interpretations, the walls of the city give testimony to other facets of love relationships. The appreciation and regard that could be held for a loved woman, for example, was frequently registered in the graffiti in Pompeii. We can find effusive declarations of love, as in this one left for Taine, on the wall of a house: Dulcis amor, perias eta (pro ita) Taine bene amo dulcissima / Mea / Dulc (CIL, IV, 8137)

  Graffiti found on the House of Fabii Amandionis. My translation conforms to the interpretation of Cartelle 1981: 97 18   Reg. I, ins. 7 19   On a wall between doors n. 12 and 13 of the Reg. VII, ins. 15. 20   House from n. 15 of the Street of Eumaquia. 21   Reg. I, ins. 10. 22   House of Apollo and Corone, on School Street. 17

  Entrance to n. 19 from Reg. VI, ins. 12.   Entrance to a tavern from Reg. IX, ins. 12. My interpretation is similar to that given by Funari, 1989: 54. 15 16

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[To my dear Gratae, with eternal happiness. I ask you, my lady, by Venus Physical, not to forget me] 23.

[Restitutus seduced many girls on many occasions], and the same ones that led Successus and Severus to dispute the love of Hiris, as recorded in a ‘dialogue’ left on a pillar: Seccessus textor amat coponiaes ancilla(m), Nomine Hiredem, quae quidem illum Non curat, sed ille rogat, illa com(m)iseretur. Scribit rivalis. Vale.

An anonymous man in a hurry, possibly an artist about to perform his number, left this message for Sava in a corridor of the Theater: Propero. Vale, mea Sava, fac me ames (CIL, IV, 2414) [I’m in a hurry. Goodbye, my Sava. Love me forever!].

Invidiose, quia rumperes, sedare noli formonsiorem, Et qui est homo pravessimus et bellus.

We also see in the graffiti manifestations of pain and anguish from love’s frustrations, as indicated in inscription CIL, IV, 1837: Si potes et non uis cur gaudia differs spemque foues et cras usque redire iubes? (Er)go coge mori quem sine te uiuere coges. Munus erit certe non cruciasse boni. Quod spes eripuit spes certe redd(i)t amanti

Dixi, scripsi. Amas Hiredem, quae te non curat. Sev(erus ?) Successo, ut su(p)ra(?)...s..... Severus (CIL, IV, 8258-9) [The weaver Successus loves the tavern slave Hiris, who wishes to know nothing of him, but he asks that she have mercy on him. Respond, rival. Salutations. You intervene because you are envious! Don’t try to be funny, you are an unprincipled philanderer! I said and wrote (the truth): you love Hiris, who wants to know nothing of you. From Severo to Sucesso: what I wrote before is exactly how it is. Signed: Severo]28.

[If you can but do not wish to, why postpone the happiness and fan the hope, telling me forever to return tomorrow? In doing so you force to die someone whom you obligate to live without you. It will be a gift for you simply not to torture me. Certainly hope returns to the lover who had hope snatched away.]24 or another, written on the wall of the Minor Theater, in which the poet begs for the recognition and attention of the women he desires: Sei quid amor ualeat nostei sei te hominem scis Commiseresce mei da ueniam ut ueniam Flos Veneris mihi de ... (CIL, IV, 4971)

Fortunatus also wrote praising the ‘amorous combat’ he established with Anthusa. His victory in this combat was so important for him that it merited being celebrated with a paraphrase of Caesar’s conquest of Gallia: Fortunatus futuet t. hinc vine veni vide Anthusa (CIL, IV, 1230)

[If you know the force of our love and human nature, have pity on me, do me the favor of granting me your favors. Venus’s flower, for me…]25.

[Fortunatus fucked. I came, I saw and I won Anthusa]29.

The war-like and conquest-driven mentality attributed to the ‘Romans’ in historiographic works is reflected in those who found themselves far from the battlefields or who were themselves once the objects of conquest, by way of their amorous relationships. The verses of Ovid inspired the writing of this inscription: Militat omnes amans (CIL, IV, 3149)

I argue that the words of Fortunatus go beyond being just one more example of the many inscriptions intended to manifest masculine virility or left in honor of some erotic satisfaction. Taken together, these graffiti indicate other possible readings. Beyond serving as a trophy for a single conquest, they may be indications of a game of love instilled in the popular notions of affectivity and desire, as well as the confrontations and agreements established between lovers. It is in this sense that the inscription:

[Every lover is a soldier!] 26. Here war is associated with the sexual-affective field; in the end, to conquer a partner also involves the strategic use of clever ploys and skillful tactics. Perhaps these were the ‘arms’ used by Restitutus in seducing various young girls, as was mentioned in one particular dining room27: Restitutus multas decepit sepe puellas (CIL, IV, 5251)

Amplexus teneros hac si quis quaerit in ur(be), expect(at ceras) nulla puella viri (CIL, IV, 1796) [if anyone seeks loving embraces in this city know that no young girl waits for a man’s letter]30

  House from n. 11 of Reg. IX, ins. 5.   This inscription does not have a registered provenance. It can be found on Tablet no. 10 in the Archaeological Museum in Naples. Cf. indication by editor below the inscription. 25   Varone interprets this inscription as the supplication of one man to another (Varone 2000: 105). 26   Cf. Am. I 9, 1, indicated in CIL. 27   House from n. 11 of Reg. IX, ins. 8. 23 24

  Reg. I, ins. 10. I reproduce here the interpretation presented by Funari, 1989: 19. 29   Caesar: ueni, uini, uidi. Suetonio, Diuus Iulius, 37. Inscription found in the House of the Surgeon, on the Via Consolare. 30   Written on the walls of the Basilica. Interpretation by Funari 1989. 28

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gains its dimension of demonstrating that action and initiative also formed part of feminine behavior. The words ‘No young girl waits for a man’s letter’, that is, that she will not sit by waiting for male initiative, show that the ‘battle of love’ also belongs to her and requires mobilization, as seen here: Suauis uinaria sitit rogo uos et ualde Sitit Calpurnia tibi dicit. Val(e) (CIL, IV, 1819)

[Lucio Clodius Varus and his wife Pelagia]37, Staphilus hic cum Quieta (CIL, IV, 4087 ) [Staphilus here with Quieta]38. Another series of graffiti, written on the columns of the Porticus, shows the desire of lovers to leave their names united as requests for good fortune: (H)ic sumus felices. Valiamus recte (CIL, IV, 8657)

[I say to you: I want your sweet wine and I want it very much. Calpurnia says to you. Greetings!] 31.

[Here we are happy. And we continue on strong],

Other inscriptions also suggest this, as with this mention of the linkage of Romula to her beloved Staphylo, left on the atrium of a house32: Romula hic cum Staphylo moratur (CIL, IV, 2060) [Romula, here, with Staphylo, calmly].

her

(H)ic (h)abitamus: felices nos dii faciant (CIL, IV, 8670) [Here we live. May the gods make us happy]39, and yet another, registered by Lucilius and Lucida, written in two places on different columns: Lucilius Lucilius Lucidae suae Ubique sal(utem) (CIL, IV, 8627/76)

beloved

Inscription CIL, IV, 1928 shows the inspiration received from Cupid, the god of love and son of the city’s protector, Venus, in the writing of these verses: Scribenti mi dictat amor monstratque cupido. Ad peream sine te si deus esse velim

[Lucilius, Lucilius to his beloved Lucida. Greeting you everywhere].

[Love dictates when I write and Cupid shows me what to write. I would die if I wished to be a god without you!] 33.

The calls for happiness and peaceful coexistence are also presented for other couples: Daphnicus cum Felicula sua hac Bene Felicule bene Daphnico Vtriuque bene eueniat (CIL, IV, 4477) [Daphnicus, with his beloved Felicula, wants this: Blessings to Daphnicus, blessings to Felicula. May they both be successful]40, Methe Cominiaes Atellana amat Chrestum Corde (si)t utreis que Venus Pompeiana Propitia et sem(per) concordes veivant (CIL, IV, 2457)

One interesting aspect of these last verses is the condition of similarity presented between the lovers: those who write put themselves in a position equivalent to that of their lover. This is a feature found commonly in elegies, and Zangemeister, the editor of CIL IV, supplement I, mentions its variations in Ovid, Plauto, Propercious, and Virgil34. In other graffiti as well, written in simple and direct language, we can find a variety of references to affective partnerships, consensual relationships based on agreement. The following was registered by Segundo, or even perhaps by Primigenia herself, in accordance with the tradition of putting the name of the man at the beginning of a phrase, as seen throughout the examples below: Secundus cum Primigenia conveniunt (CIL, IV, 5358)

[Methe Atellana, of Cominio, loves Chrestus. May the Venus of Pompeii be propitious in the hearts of them both, and may they forever live in harmony!]41. This symmetrical affection also involved a sexual aspect, as this mention suggests, left in a room: Eulale bene ualeas cum Vera tua coniuge et bene futue eam (CIL, IV, 1574)

[Segundus with Primigenia, in common accord]35, [Ba]lbus et Fortunata duo coiuges (CIL, IV, 4933) [Balbus and spouses]36,

Fortunata,

the

two

L. Clodius Varus Pelagia coniunx (CIL, IV, 2321)   On a wall of the Strada Stabiana.   On the column of a bedroom, Reg. I, ins. 4. 39   Proposed by Cartelle1981: 119. 40   Entrance to n. 19, Reg. VI, ins. 13. 41   Written in the hallway of the Theater. In this inscription, it is uncertain whether Methe was the daughter or slave of Cominius, although the possibilities for interpretation show that she was under his authority. Here, I follow the interpretation that she was his daughter, suggested by Cartelle 1971: 112, in contrast to the interpretation of her as a slave, as presented by Varone 1994: 154. 37 38

  On one of the walls of the Basilica.   Street of Abundance. 33   Inscription of the Tablua no. 29 of the Naples Museum. 34   Observation presented below the inscription, in the CIL. 35   On one of the entrances to the city, Reg. IX, ins. quae primae et secundae ab oriente adiacet. 36   House from n. 9, Reg. VIII, ins. 5. 6. 31 32

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Conclusion

[Goodbye, Eulale, may you go in peace with Vera, your wife, and may you fuck well]42,

By way of an analysis of the graffiti from Pompeii, it is possible to question the depreciative image attributed to the sexual and social behaviors of the popular classes by contemporary historiographical works, which tend to present popular behavior as ‘liberal in custom’, consisting of ‘sexual promiscuity’ and ‘emotional and social maladjustment’. These representations seem to have been based on notions of common sense which do not escape their underlying implications of class and judgments of moral inferiority, directed towards the popular sectors of Ancient Rome, as continues to be the case today. These demeaning representations also serve as affirmations for that which the elites present in the literary record as legitimate behavior for the diverse groups in Roman society.

or in as in this one, written on the peristyle of a house: Dapnus asiaticus cum sua dApna ionicii hic et ubique (CIL, IV, 2393) [Asian Dapnus with his Jonian Apna, here and everywhere]43. Through these messages we can catch a glimpse of the construction of other parameters for the sexual-affective field, as lived and experienced by these women and men, who traded their opinions through interactions in their workplaces, in their sites of leisure, and through the city walls themselves! Their experiences and values differed sharply from those that were idealized by and for aristocrats.

We must also recognize and dispute the generalized use of the concept ‘Romans’, since this idea hides the social differences and the discursive conflicts present among many social groups, with their variety of cultural and regional particularities. The deployment of such a generalized concept works to establish a deceptively homogenous image of culture, in which the value and criteria of the dominant classes always prevail.

Can the idea of ‘sexual promiscuity’ be attributed to these people due to the fact that their relationships were not regulated by Roman matrimonial legislation? Cantarella’s argument that passionate love was lived outside of marriage can be applied to the popular classes (Cantarella 1999: 52-40). However, if we take into consideration the observations of Treggiari, who contends that only a small portion of the population had their unions prescribed by this legislation: ‘most of the empire’s population until the early third century AD were noncitizens, who married according to their own laws but could not contract Roman marriages’ (Treggiari, s/d: 91), it is possible to question the assumption that ‘liberalness of behavior’ is applicable to unions without the supervision of Roman law.

With the development of this study, I have tried to shed some light on the forms and concepts of amorous behavior among the popular classes at Pompeii. Such an analysis is made possible by the preservation of important and consistent material documentation in this city. The manifestations of love in poetry, the declarations and supplications, together the practice of cunnilingus, show us the possibility of a different relationship between popular masculinity and femininity of Pompeii. These relationships characterize a dynamic very different from what was prescript for elites, in which masculinity is gained through imposition on females and not through symmetry within a couple.

The several inscriptions registered on the walls of Pompeii permit us to suggest that the satisfaction of feminine desire and the necessity to be loved by a woman would be part of masculine perspective. Also, it was natural for the relations among these Pompeian people to dispute a heart and to live in accordance with a partner. The graffiti from Pompeii that exhibit the theme of love make it possible to assert that the division between emotion and reason proposed by many authors is not sustainable for these people. In these graffiti, love is presented as intrinsic to life, as fundamental as eating or sleeping, and, as such, immanently present in the daily lives of the popular classes. Love thus integrates affection and passion (united as well in the Latin word ‘amor’), where passion is taken as indicating both sexual union and satisfying practices, as much the feminine as the masculine. It is through this set of inscriptions that speak of both aspects that I have considered these relationships and the roles established between the partners therein.

From an analysis of inscriptions referring to the theme of love, I was able to infer that the concept of masculinity, as an insignia of authority and power, gives way to a profile of the masculine that is constructed in accordance with the feminine: as an agreement established between those who shared their work, luck, misfortunes, and explorations. This was indeed a reality distinct from that of the aristocracy and the values and judgments it espoused, demonstrating that hegemonic conceptions ought not be uncritically accepted and automatically transposed as legitimate onto the rest of society.

  House from n. 11 of Fortune Street   There is a small variation in Cartelle: Asian Dafnus with his Jonian Apna (fucks) here and everywhere. See Cartelle 1981: 134. 42 43

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Acknowledgements: I am grateful to Karen Faulk, Antonio Varone, Pedro Paulo A. Funari, Renata S. Garraffoni, Bethany Letalien and Hercules A. Feitosa. The ideas are my own and therefore I am solely responsible.

References: Primary Sources Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, uolumen quartum (CIL, IV): Della Corte, M., 1952, 1955, 1963 and 1970, Inscriptiones Pompeianae parietariae et vasorum fictilium, supp. pars III, fasc. 1- 4. (Berlin: Akademie Verlag). Mau, A., Zangemeister, C., 1909, Inscriptionum parietariarum pompeianarum, supp. pars II. (Berlim: Akademie Verlag). Zangemeister, C., 1898, Tabulae ceratae Pompeis repertae, supp. pars I. (Berlin: Akademie Verlag). Zangemeister, C., Schoene, R., 1871, Inscriptiones parietariae Pompeianae, Herculanenses, Stabianae, (Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften). Suetonius, 1998, De vita duodecim Caesarum libri VIII, (Milano: Bur). Epigraphic Texts Adams, J. N., 1996, Il vocabolario del sesso a Roma. Analisi del linguaggio sessuale nella latinità. (Roma: Argo). Bodel, J., 2001, Epigraphic Evidence. Ancient history from inscriptions, (London/ New York: Routledge). Cartelle, E. M., 1981, Priapeos; grafitos amatorios Pompeyanos; la valada de la fiesta de Venus; el concúbito de Marte y Venus; centón nupcial. s. l., (Madrid: Gredos). Della Corte, M., 1954, Case ed abitanti di Pompei, (Roma: L’Erma). Magaldi, E., 1931, Le iscrizioni parietali pompeiane, (Napoli: Achille Cimmaruta). Väänänen, V., 1937, Le latin vulgaire des inscriptions pompéienes, (Helsinki: Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae). Varone, A., 1994, Erotica pompeiana. Iscrizioni d’amore sui muri di Pompei, (Roma: L’Erma di Bretschneider). General Cantarella, E., 1999, Pompei. I volti dell’amore, (Milano: Mondadori). Cantarella, E., 1991, Según la natura, La bisexualidad en el mundo antiguo, (Madrid: Akal). Feitosa, L. C.; Faversani, F., 2003, ‘Sobre o feminino e a cidadania em Pompéia’, in: Pyrenae, pp. 253-259. Feitosa, L. C., 2003, ‘Amor y sexualidad en el universo popular pompeyano’, in: Habis, pp. 285-290. Feitosa, L. C., 2005, Amor e sexualidade: o masculino e o feminino em grafites de Pompéia. (São Paulo: Annablume/ Fapesp). Foucault, M., 1990, História da sexualidade. O uso dos prazeres, (Rio de Janeiro: Graal). Funari, P. P A., 1995, ‘Apotropaic symbolism at Pompeii: a reading of the graffiti evidence’, Revista de História, 132, pp. 9-17. Funari, P. P. A., 1989, Cultura popular na Antigüidade clássica, (São Paulo: Contexto). Funari, P. P. A., 2003, ‘Falos e relações sexuais: representações para além da ‘natureza’’, in: P. P. A. Funari, L.C. Feitosa and G.J. Silva (eds.) Amor, desejo e poder na Antigüidade: relações de gênero e representações do feminino, 202

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(Campinas: Ed. Unicamp). Galán, J. E., 1996, La vida amorosa en Roma, (Madrid: Temas de Hoy). Jacobelli, L., 1995, Le pitture erotiche delle Terme Suburbane di Pompei, (Roma: L’Erma). Laurence, R., 1994, Roman Pompeii. Space and society, (London: Routledge). Parker, H. N., 1997, ‘The teratogenic grid’, in: J.P. Hallett, and M. B. Skinner (eds.) Roman sexualities, (New Jersey: Princeton). Quignard, P., 1994, Le sexe et l’effroi, (Paris: Gallimard). Robert, J. N., 1983/1994, I piacere a Roma, (Milano: Rizzoli). Sousa, E. R., 2000, ‘Diálogos entre corpo, gênero e sexualidade’, Entretextos Entresexos, no 4, pp. 53-68. Treggiari, S., s/d, ‘Ideals and practicalities in matchmaking in Ancient Rome’, in: D.I. Kertzer and R.P. Saller (Eds.) The family in Italy, (New Haven/London: Yale University Press). Varone, A., 2000, L’erotismo a Pompei, (Roma: L’ Erma).

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The Representation of Age: Towards a Life Course Approach Mary Harlow and Ray Laurence University of Birmingham, UK

‘Those satisfied with the conventional themes of classical history are never likely to be dislodged from their reclusive positions of serene superiority’ (Keith Bradley Slavery and Society at Rome, 1994, CUP, p.180).

From the Roman Family to the Life Course In recent decades historians of the Roman family have become much more aware of issues of gender but often continue to overlook or under-emphasise the role of age in the constitution of the Roman social systems. To a certain extent, the origin of the problem can be found in the interpretation of legal texts. For example, a secondcentury legal definition of persons divides individuals by legal status: the free from the unfree; the freeborn from the freed - and this last category by their type of citizenship (Gaius Institutes 1.3.9-12). As Treggiari (1996, 873-4) observes, these divisions of society need further subdivision by age and gender. Male children gained the public rights of citizenship when they were deemed to be of a suitable age by their father or guardian. It is unclear when girls gained a similar position but we might suggest this was attained at marriage (Dixon 2001, 69). In private law majority was gained at the age of fourteen by boys and twelve by females, which was also the age at which they could legally be married. This blindness to age in the source material has led modern historians to construct social history around issues of status, wealth, and birth with little reference to age (categories utilised by Treggiari 1996, 875-82). The ability to construct Roman social history depends upon the availability of the evidence which we then use to gain an overview of how an individual experienced Roman social institutions (Treggiari 2002, 10-13). The Roman family as a social institution fell outside the scope of straightforward legal definitions of the person but it has recently become the institution at the very centre of Roman social history, largely through the efforts of Beryl Rawson (Dixon 2003). The approach by several key proponents, who have made vast strides in the development of the history of the Roman family, has been based on their classical training combined with references to cross-cultural parallels (Rawson 2003, 3; Dixon 2001, 3-15; Treggiari 2002, 10-13). Intriguingly, the history of the Roman family developed in

relation to a series of works that sought to write histories of families in other periods, particularly the early modern (see Harlow, Laurence, and Vuolanto forthcoming for discussion). What is becoming clear to proponents of this new history of the Roman family is that all the texts and images with which they have worked are representations of particular versions of particular realities. The relationship of texts and images to historical reality needs to be far more carefully nuanced. However, from these representations it is still thought that ‘a certain amount of generally applicable ‘real life’ can be deduced to produce a picture of the life course of children’ (Rawson 2003, 12-13). Here, we see a historian evaluating the limits of the possible drawing on the methodologies of the traditional study of classics. Some ten years earlier, Keith Bradley (1994, 174-82), in relationship to slavery, suggested that as historians we must go further than our source material to begin to understand the psychological experience of the social institutions of antiquity. We could go back further to Keith Hopkins’ 1978 call for a different type of ancient history that pushed models and evidence together to form a different discourse based on human experience. It seems strange, more than a quarter century later, to see the methodology of those who have worked on the Roman family still entrenched in the traditional methodologies that Hopkins was so critical of. Textual references from antiquity continue to be privileged over all other forms of evidence. However, we should note the inclusion of a much wider range of material, such as texts on dreams and medicine (Bradley 2001; 2005). Nonetheless, even in these examples, the approach frequently continues to pursue the traditional formula of the classicist. The degree of specialisation in the study of the Roman family has produced volumes on the Roman mother (Dixon 1988), adults and children (Wiedemann 1989), fathers and daughters (Hallett 1984) and brothers (Bannon 1997). The focus is on adults intersecting with other kin relations within the family in such works, often using a strong combination of Roman law and literary examples

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to elucidate the particular relationship under discussion. More recently, Beryl Rawson’s 2003 volume, Children and Childhood in Roman Italy, sought to account for the ‘life course’ of the child with chapters on: Welcoming the New Child, Rearing, Ages and Stages, Education, Relationships, Public Life, and Death, Burial, and Commemoration. Here, we see a move towards an approach that places the child in a central position in way that earlier studies may not have succeeded in doing. Also, as Rawson cogently observes, there is ‘a flexibility in the observing of age distinctions’ (Rawson 2003, 136).

same country). One is Tim Parkin, whose methodology is consciously rooted in the study of demography and a wider focus on the experience of old age, and the other is Karen Cokayne (2003), who has sought to account for the experience of old age through the elucidation of the mental, physical and emotional experience from textual sources. This relatively neglected field of ancient experience has proven to have rather more material to study than was originally anticipated. This has allowed these two scholars to develop quite different approaches in their monographs. The absence of a strong historiographical tradition in this area has, in effect, made possible a paradigm shift. The difficulty of studying any of these groups – the old, young men, women (of any age), or children - in antiquity is that the reference point is always the male adult – who we assume we understand from the texts of adult male writers. However, there is an obvious variation in the nature of adult males from, say, the age of twenty-two to sixty that needs to be represented. This is where a life course approach can be of benefit. Rather than looking at an individual stage of life, such as childhood, youth or old age, the life course approach views the whole system of inter-related ages with a view to problematizing even the most stable category - the adult male. In the following discussion, we will be concerned with the beginning and end of life – but will also focus on the transition that would be termed today in the west as middle-age. What we are looking at, when we view a child, a youth, a man or an old man is a series of related categories that only have meaning in relationship to each other. At the same time, there is a consciousness of change through the life span of any human being.

Not surprisingly, age-related behaviour was a subject of discussion in antiquity and there was considerable variation in antiquity’s views of age and age related behaviours. These principles of age-related behaviour can be seen to have underpinned the acculturation of the child, via education, and influenced parental understanding of the constitution of the child as an entity distinguished from adults. If we follow this approach it permits us to move to a more dynamic understanding of Roman childhood that progresses from categorising or defining the child according to its chronological or biological age, towards an understanding of the role of age in the determination of other features of Roman history. This might be a signal that we have moved on from the first wave of research that sought to establish a presence in ancient history for the study of the Roman family, which took it out of the antiquarianism of the ‘daily life’ tradition (see Rawson 1995, 1986). It is difficult to assess when this transition took place, but we might note that Suzanne Dixon (1992, 1-35) was ‘In Search of the Roman Family’ and Keith Bradley (1992) was Discovering the Roman Family in the early 1990s. There is a sense of movement in Dixon’s analysis of the historiography of the Roman family through the 1980s and she sees the focuses shifting in the 1990s. The 1997 publication of the Roman Family conference continued with the theme of status but expanded into new areas of discourse via the discussion of sentiment, as well as visual and archaeological evidence with a focus on space (Rawson and Weaver 1997). The most recent publication from the Roman family conferences (George 2005) extends the range of evidence to include the Roman provinces and to take the discussion beyond the family in Italy. What is striking is the contrast between Rawson (2003) on childhood and Dixon (2001) Reading Roman Women: Sources, Genres and Real Life. Both authors reflect on their academic journey, or life course in academic scholarship, in these two volumes. The study of women in antiquity, unlike that of children and childhood, has been an area of analysis for scholars working on Latin literature, as well as those primarily concerned with Roman history. As a result, there is a greater degree of deconstruction to be found in Dixon (2001) on women than is found in Rawson (2003) on childhood.

Age Systems in the Ancient World It is very difficult to unpick a society’s age systems. Often, these have built up over a long of period of time and some may be contradicted by contemporary practices. We see this strongly in modern western societies. For example, in the United Kingdom it is legally possible to have sex and marry at the age of sixteen but not possible to vote or buy alcohol until eighteen, whereas you may drive a car at seventeen or a low-grade motorcycle at sixteen. To see a cultural logic to the selection of these set chronological age points raises more questions than it answers. In the UK, the media makes us constantly aware of the breaking of these legal boundaries – for instance, the birth of children by those who are children themselves, at the age of eleven or twelve. Both law and society have not caught up with changes in the nature of teen and pre-teen sexuality over the last hundred years. There continues to be a cultural expectation of children to be pre-sexual until their midto late teens, in the face of examples demonstrating exactly the opposite. Young mothers (i.e. pre-teens) whose physiological maturity is evidenced by the biological birth of children are still perceived to be at an age in their cultural and educational development when it is too early for motherhood. These modern contradictions from the UK in the description and proscription of age-related behaviour are not unique to the modern world. It is a contradiction

A similar comparison can be made with the study of old age, a topic that was the province of two scholars on different sides of the globe (now united in residing in the 206

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the toga virilis; by thirty office holding would have begun; from forty-six citizens were classed as seniores by the army; and from sixty citizens no longer needed to serve in the army if called to do so. Hence, we might see this system of age as being rooted in social practices of the Republic.

also evident in the ancient world. Ancient texts by a single author can depict a young teenage bride both as a rounded mature woman and as a child who needs to learn: ‘She behaves worthy of her father, her grandfather and yourself (her aunt). She is incomparably discerning, incomparably thrifty, while her love for her husband betokens a chaste nature.’ (Pliny Letters 4.19).

Drawing on astronomical and astrological principles, Ptolemy (Tetr.4.10.203-7) in the second century AD developed a seven-age system, mapping the movement of the planets on to the stages of the life span. This is quite different to the system of Varro, but can be seen as having much in common with his system of five ages:

‘Being young and inexperienced she did not realise that she was pregnant, failed to take proper precautions, and did several things that were better left undone. She has had a severe lesson, and paid for her mistake by seriously endangering her life.’ (Pliny Letters 8.10).

Infancy from birth to four Childhood from four to fourteen Youth from fourteen to twenty-two Young manhood from twenty-two to forty-one Manhood from forty-one to fifty-six Elderly age from fifty-six to sixty-eight Old age from sixty eight to the end of the life span

The contrast between the biologically unknowing child and the wife who supports the gloria of her husband in public life, revelling in his public speeches and actions, underlines the fact that age was a cultural construction associated with certain behaviours and explanations of those behaviours. Pliny’s wife culturally becomes as old as he is, but then biologically returns to her original age after a miscarriage. From this setback, she is expected to learn and return to her place as Pliny’s wife, presumably in the future, to have a pregnancy that leads to a successful birth. What we see here is a flexibility over the categorisation of the age of the young wife.

Each of these stages was associated with a planet and the chronological span of the stage was determined from the movement of the associated planet: Infancy ruled by the moon, ‘following the number which belongs to the quadrennium’, Childhood ruled by Mercury, ‘for the period which is half the space of twenty years’ Youth ruled by Venus, ‘for the next eight years corresponding to her own period’ Young manhood ruled by the Sun, ‘for the period of nineteen years’ Manhood ruled by Mars, ‘for the space of fifteen years equal to his own period’ Elderly age ruled by Jupiter, ‘again for the space of his own period’ Old age ruled by Saturn, the latest period, ‘which lasts for the rest of life’

Underlying the possibility of overturning age conventions is the very existence of the conventions themselves. These tend to be articulated with reference to men rather than women. What is interesting about the schema of chronological age developed in antiquity is that they evolve from the simple binary division of youth and old man found in Aristotle (Rhetoric2.12-14), with the adult male taking on the positive aspects of each of these two categories of age. Other system of age stages such as the boy, unbearded youth, adult and old man of Horace (Ars Poetica 156-8) or systems that combined these traditional stages of life with numerical systems of chronological age rarely offer a life course framework for women. Age systems also sought to categorise other elements, such as language and geography, into clearly delimited systems of thought which are framed within age categories. Varro (ap. Censor 14), writing in the first century BC, developed a five-age system with stages of fifteen years:

Only three of these temporal periods fit into a pattern of planetary movement: Youth, manhood, old age. In relation to Varro’s system, we find that childhood now has an additional stage called infancy and that youth has contracted down to an eight-year period from fourteen to the age of twenty-two. Varro’s next category, iuventus, is expanded to a nineteen-year period from twenty-two to forty-one. It does not seem that changes in cultural practice have determined the formulation of Ptolemy, although by the second century there had been a lowering of the age of office holding in the Roman Empire. Instead, what Ptolemy is building is in part a mathematical system based around the number seven or the seven planets: the second stage ends at fourteen; the third stage is over after the twenty-first year; the fourth stage is complete by the forty-second year; the fifth stage ends at the age of fiftysix. All of these numbers are divisible by the number seven.

Boyhood from birth to fifteen Adulescentia from fifteen until thirty Iuventus from thirty to forty-five Seniores from forty-five to sixty Senectus from sixty until the end of the lifespan It is relatively easy to map these phases of life back onto key moments of transition within the life course of the traditional Republican constitution and its socio-political practices: by fifteen, most boys would have changed into 207

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What is odd is that the first stage of life does not continue to seven years and the last stage does not begin at sixtythree years. The latter can be explained with reference to the need to construct the sixth stage of life with the same number of years as the period of Jupiter and hence flouts the convention that sixty-three was a time from which a person could see themselves as old (Parkin 2003, 17). The former would seem to reflect some form of cultural practice or determination of the nature of the infant as opposed to the child. Again, cultural practice expressed in other texts points to the number seven as a significant determinant of the moments of transition, which could be confirmed via biological observations. For example a child had lost its milk teeth by the age of seven (rejected by Ptolemy, but accepted by other authors). What we see here is that the systems of age written by Varro and by Ptolemy are not divorced from each other; rather, they are determined by different criteria in making their division of the life span. What they share is an odd number of stages, five and seven, with the middle stage broadly ending at a similar point - forty-one or forty-six but beginning respectively at twenty-two or thirty.

admonishes, deliberates and consoles others; he attempts to influence others to value honour, praise and independence, whilst appearing modest and dignified himself; An old man is defined by negatives, his body has been cooled and impeded in his impulses, joys, desires and speed; his life has become worn down by age, dispirited, easily offended and hard to please. In broad outline these characteristics of old and young can also be found in the earliest surviving works that discuss age - such Aristotle. The old and young still exist in juxtaposition as polar opposites. Where Ptolemy differs is in the central fourth and fifth stages (those of an adult man) with a sense of change within adulthood prior to old age. Being an old man is anticipated in the middle years of the life span. There is, also, a sense in which life is passing the person by and that there is a loss of joy; in other words, the characteristics of old age are beginning to impinge on those later adults who are in transition and have passed well beyond childhood and youth. The approach of old age, not surprisingly maybe, encroaches on the mentality of those who might be described as no longer young, but not yet old. This highlights the transitional nature of the man in middle age, at exactly the time of life in which he might be seen to have been at his most stable and at the height of his powers (cf. Dio Cassius 68.6).

The actual numbers or chronological age may not be the crucial factor in understanding how age systems were constructed. The overlying symptoms of age as set out by Aristotle, centuries earlier, continue to exist: it is the younger men who have passed from youth into the adult world who, in this single phase of their lives, seem unaffected by the detrimental effects of being either a youth or an old man. This is made clear in Ptolemy’s discussion of the individual stages in relation to age related behaviours. Each of Ptolemy’s stages of life has its own behaviour:

These are the only surviving articulations of the stages of the life span from antiquity. We need now to look at the markers of the stages of life found within the writing on politics at Rome (we give only a brief account here; see Harlow and Laurence 2002 for further details). The law and the lives or careers of the law-makers, the elite, provide us with a view of age and ageing as a lived experience. We cannot discuss all of the evidence here but wish to highlight those associated with the legislative programmes of Augustus. The earliest age at which a young man could hold office was twenty-five, the same age at which he gained financial responsibility (Dio 52.20), but there was provision for a more junior magistracy known as the vigintivirate (Dio 54.26.5). Birley (1981, 4-12) considers this office to have been held by young men in their late teens and was followed by a military tribunate by the age of nineteen. Tacitus’ father-in-law, Agricola, broadly conforms to this pattern with a military tribunate in his early twenties and a quaestorship gained in an election at the age of twenty-three. He was permitted to stand early because of a privileging of candidates who were married and had children. We tend to find that the period of office holding is over by the age of forty-two, although such persons would continue to sit in the senate until the age of sixty or even beyond this, well into old age (Seneca De Brevitate Vitae 3.5). The period in which most magistracies were held lasted into their early forties. Cassius Dio (68.6) saw Trajan as an ideal emperor for numerous reasons, one of which was the fact that he was forty-two (a number divisible by seven) and thus at the height of his physical and mental

An infant is supple and lacks fixity, quick growing and in a condition of change and seen to be moist partly due to the moistness of his food; A child begins to be articulate and is undergoing a process by which he develops his intelligence and logical part of his brain; character is developed at this stage; instruction and exercise are also mentioned as associated with childhood; A youth was seen to be beyond puberty and in the stage when ‘a kind of frenzy’ enters the body to create incontinence, desire for any sexual gratification, burning passion, guile and ‘the blindness of an impetuous lover’; A young man, in contrast to a youth, has mastered his own actions, desires substance, glory and position, is no longer playful or subject to error but is serious, has a sense of decorum and is ambitious; A man in the middle of life develops a sense of time passing and the need to achieve something that is worthy of note; An elderly man gives up manual labour, as well as dangerous activities (war?) and instead 208

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abilities. The existence of a hereditary monarchy did not sit well with the age systems of political office: there were other emperors who were too young (e.g., Nero) or too old (e.g., Nerva). An optimus princeps was naturally a man at the pinnacle of the age system – forty-two. From here on, though, there was a perception of decline towards old age.

is presented via a logic that relates the ability of the ages to survive periods of hunger: the middle aged (mediae aetates) or adults are far better than either iuvenes or pueri (1.3.32; proemenium 71-2). This can be seen to be derived from Hippocrates’ Aphorisms (1.14), in which he states that growing creatures have an innate heat and for this reason need the most food, whereas an old man has little heat and so needs little fuel. Celsus extends the ideal of innate heat and applies it to bathing and wine drinking: the child and the old person take warm rather than hot baths; children drink diluted wine, whereas the old tend to drink undiluted wine (1.3.32; on bathing in Celsus see Fagan 2006). In the case of iuvenes, such considerations are seen to be irrelevant. It would appear from these initial passages that we are looking at a system of four ages in Celsus:

Greek Age Systems and Roman Culture The previous section discussed two age systems, Varro’s and Ptolemy’s – one Latin from the first century BC and one Alexandrian Greek from the second century AD. What we wish to discuss now is whether there is a crossover between the age systems of the Greek world into the Roman world of the familia. To do this we will look at the relationship between the age systems in Celsus’ De Medicina written in the first century AD in relation to one of his sources: Hippocrates’ Aphorisms written about half a millennium earlier. Bradley (2005) has used this material as a major piece of evidence in an article that seeks to produce ‘an imaginative picture’ of ‘the Roman child’s medical career’. As he points out, one of the main problems with the text is that large parts of it are translated sections of the Hippocratic corpus. This was very much the tradition of medical writers of the period and led, as Bradley states, ‘to a rather rigid conceptualisation of children’s illnesses’ (2005, 77). Bradley takes the view that this literature forms part of the Roman tradition of translating didactic material that has practical application for the Roman paterfamilias. We would like to examine the text further in terms of its integration of Greek age systems and age related behaviour, as expressed by the Hippocratic texts.

Pueri Iuvenes Adults/adulescentes Old This is a simplification of the age system found in Hippocrates (3.24-31): Babies and small children Children to dentition Older children Children approaching puberty Young men Adults Old In reproducing Hippocrates’ age system, we should note here how Celsus reverses the terminology of Varro and places iuvenes before adulescentes, rather than the other way round. Although the four stages of childhood from Hippocrates are shrunk to one, we do find the conception of two stages of childhood in the phrase pueri proximique (2.1.17-18). The relationship between youth and old age as periods associated with disease is clarified: the old suffer chronic illnesses, whereas the young suffer acute ones (2.1.5). What is clear here is that Celsus and his readers did not see the period immediately after childhood as one of particularly good health. Following Hippocrates (Aphorisms 3.28-29), he sees many of the diseases of childhood ending at puberty or menstruation, but if they do not end, these diseases become acute. There was also the appearance of new diseases after childhood. Change was seen by Hippocrates as a means of curing some diseases and that change could have been achieved by a person becoming older with the result that their state of health was recategorised (Aphorisms 2.45).

When reading Celsus, we are seeing the adaptation of age systems present in the Hippocratic writings. These are mapped onto the Roman cultural system to create a new form of knowledge that has currency in the empire of the first century AD. Thus, we need to understand how Celsus is utilizing the Hippocratic corpus and how he is adapting Greek knowledge so that it will make sense for the Roman paterfamilias. The question must be asked: how far is it simply the translation of a body of knowledge rather than the experience of illnesses? Celsus’ synthesis of medical thought begins by setting out the general precepts of health and he then moves onto the five factors that caused health and the application of cures to vary (1.3.1): surroundings varieties of constitution sex age seasons

The mapping of the terminology of age derived from Hippocrates was less than simple. Hippocrates’ (Aphorisms 3.18) claim that children and youths experienced the best health in spring or early summer becomes pueri proximique. The translation of the old as having the best health in summer and early autumn was less problematic. The

Unlike the legal texts at the heart of the study or definition of the Roman family, we find here in medical writing an awareness of both age and gender, as well as the context in which the patient exists (also found in the Hippocratic writings). His approach to age and understanding of age 209

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Hippocratic concept of the other age groups experiencing the best of health in late autumn and winter is culturally translated into inter iuventam senectutemque. Celsus then deduces the worst times of year for the old to have been winter and for the adulescentes, on the basis of opposites, to have been the summer (2.1.17-18).

These points may be related in part to dentition (see Hippocrates Dentition): by seven months teeth are present, by the seventh year the milk teeth have been shed. However, the presence of the influence of the number of visible planets of antiquity (seven) is apparent here. We find also that seven to fourteen-year-olds suffer from a particular bladder complaint (Celsus 2.8.21). Such principles revolving round the number seven are rejected as old-fashioned in other parts of the text in connection with the feeding of the patient (3.4.6-15). However, they are always present in Celsus, particularly in the discussion and definition of childhood. For example, surgery for ‘naval lesions’ is advised if the patient is ‘neither an infant nor a robust adult, nor an old man…but a child between seven and fourteen years of age’ (7.14.7). The differentiation of children under seven from those of seven to fourteen is striking, but its acceptance by Celsus points to what might be considered a normative division that was no longer associated with such a mathematical principle. The link with puberty or first sex for boys and menarche for girls altered the nature of the body, causing a new set of dangers. Epilepsy was seen by Celsus to have been present in childhood (following Hippocrates Aphorisms 5.7) and could also arise with puberty, yet he suggests elsewhere that it could be alleviated by puberty or menstruation (2.8.11, 2.8.29, 3.23). The Hippocratic doctrine held that if fits occurred after the age of twenty-five, they would continue until death (Aphorisms 5.7) is adjusted to include an additional transitional point at the age of forty (2.8.29). From that age onwards, there is no cure derived from medicine. First intercourse for men or menarche for women was synthesised into a single transition that could mark the onset of other diseases – but again, this is the age system of Hippocrates at work (4.31; Aph.6.28-30). For Celsus, the body is being altered through a change in its constitution around the fourteenth year and through the emission of blood or semen. Here, biology combines with mathematics neatly to create a childhood of fourteen years, which can be split in two at the point when the milk teeth are lost (seven). Later Celsus can turn to mathematical combinations to understand or point to stages in the development and cures of diseases: dysenteries are at their most dangerous prior to ten (2.8.30); fits arising after the twenty-fifth or even after the fortieth year that medicine will not cure (2.8.29). Elsewhere, the age of forty occurs in relation to numbness of the legs and absence of bowel movement leading to a year-long illness (2.8.38). Eighteen to thirty-five could be seen as another stage in relation to the particular disease known as phthisis (3.22.3-14). Even adulthood could be dissected by differing conceptions of age that may have been related to the observation of particular diseases.

The basic four-age system is adhered to, but in the very next section (2.1.18-22), Celsus introduces some additional divisions: infants, as well as pueri. Puberty, following Aphorisms 3.28, was seen to alter the nature of the body and was seen to mark an end of certain puerile illnesses. Alternatively, first sexual intercourse for men or first menstruation for women was seen as associated with this phase. However, puberty brought new symptoms, like nose bleeds, and the possibility that infantile illnesses, if still present, could become acute. At the same time, a number of puerile illnesses that did not cease with puberty, sex or menstruation were expected to disappear in time. Iuvenes also encountered new symptoms: chronic fever and the spitting of blood (follows Aphorisms 3.29). The firming of the body, seen to happen in youth, caused phyma or swellings associated with children to be difficult to treat (5.28.9). Just because puberty had been reached or the toga virilis worn did not mean that a person was suddenly seen to be in better health than he had been before as a child. Instead, the logic of health was determined by the nature of the body. Due to the ageing of the body and its hardening, a youth was in a different constitution and subject to a different set of diseases, or the intensification of surviving childhood diseases. Each of the four stages of life was subject to differing medical conditions. What we see here is an attempt to categorise disease according to a condition predicated on the changed nature of the body, in accordance with stages of life in Hippocratic thinking, or even the very basic Aristotelian observations on the cultural difference between youth and old age. Not surprisingly, cures are seen to be different according to the stage of life of the patient. The action of rubbing the patient varied according to their strength, but also according to their stage of life: fewer times for an old man or a child than for a iuvenes (2.14). A boy or an adulescens has the general ability to recover from wounds more easily than an old person (5.26.6). Mathematical danger points were derived straight from Hippocrates (Aphorisms 3.28) and inserted into the schema: in childhood: the fortieth day of life, the seventh month, and the seventh year were seen as particularly dangerous, as was puberty (often considered to be the fourteenth year; 2.1.18-22). In Hippocrates, we find the set points defined as times at which a disease reached ‘crisis’ that might cause its disappearance or cause it to become chronic.

Celsus’ discussion of surgery in book seven contains details of medical practices that were not dependent on Hippocrates. Yet, we can still find the system of ages to have been loosely based on that author. The surgeon should be an adulescens or at least close to adulescentia (Prooemium 4). The old should not be treated for eye conditions due to

40th day 7th month 7th year 14th year/ Puberty

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the general deterioration of eyesight in old age (7.7.14). Children of certain ages should be put under the knife for certain diseases at certain ages: as noted above, naval lesions should only be surgically treated if they appear in a child between seven and fourteen (7.14); whereas in the discussion of calculus, surgery is only advised for children aged between nine and fourteen (7.26.2) or that of children approaching puberty (Aphorisms 3.27). Such types of surgery were not seen as suitable outside these age groups that were pre-pubescent. Cosmetic surgery of the penis occurred amongst both boys and men (a subject discussed by Jackson 2005), Celsus recommended, if necessary, that it be performed in boyhood rather than in adulthood (7.25.1). Interestingly, it was the adulescentes in the middle of life who were piercing their foreskins of their penises ‘for the sake of the voice or health’, a practice seen as in most cases unnecessary by Celsus (7.25.2). However, for it to receive such censure, it demonstrates a ‘medical’ practice on the part of adult males, which was seen to adjust the nature of the voice. This can be found elsewhere in the Epigrams of Martial (7.82.1; 11.75; 14.215) and the Satires of Juvenal (6.379). Generally, these texts identify the operation with singers or those who utilised their voice as adults. It is difficult to divine what quality in the voice was to be achieved. Did piercing make the voice younger or older, in Horace’s terminology (Ars Poetica 153-78)? Clearly, it was at least thought to make some adjustment. To find both iuvenes and adulescentes having the operation performed makes it difficult to define, no doubt just as the poet needed to represent the words of a character at an appropriate age, so did men in their public roles as speakers – even if the origin of their good voice was visible for all to see at the public baths.

of the structure of Roman society into which individuals were born. Unlike status or gender, a person’s age was not fixed and changed according to their age or position within the age structure. What we see, within age categories, is a tendency to amplify the negative aspects of youth or old age and the only time of life when these did not affect a person’s judgements was in middle age. The changing nature of the individual, according to age, creates a change in her/his effectiveness as an agent. Age can be included into a theory of structuration (Giddens 1984), but it needs to recognise that the agent is actually changing biologically, whilst the structure of his life is changing in relation to his categorisation via chronological age. This complication can be described via the term ‘the life course’, which implies that a person is in transition within culturally-determined age structures. The very structure of age at Rome, as we have seen, was related to ideas from the Greek world that may have been of considerable antiquity or developed in Alexandria to create new mathematical forms of knowledge. What is clear about such systems is that they could be mapped onto the Roman system of age categories as expressed in Varro. People and their actions were categorised by broadly similar systems of age that divided up the life span. The points of transition were derived in different ways to produce some variations, but broadly all such systems are similar. These forms of knowledge caused an individual’s actions to be measured against men of a similar age or relative to men of different ages in a similar situation. Hence, for example, Trajan was optimus princeps relative to other principes – a structural reason for this was his age: forty-two, with ‘neither the recklessness of youth, nor the sluggishness of old age’ (Dio Cassius 68.6). The structure of the life course can also create exceptional figures, who via their agency can override expectations. Octavian’s transformation into the first emperor Augustus is a case in point, but there are also young boys who died young and who were seen to have some of the wisdom of the old (Laes 2004a, 2004b). The collision of these two stages of life created the perfect individual. Just as the middle-aged emperor combined the best of youth and old age, the puer senex expressed the same combination in epitaphs of those who died young. It also created an image of a full life course, when in fact their lives had been curtailed via an early death.

From Stages of Life to the Life Course What is clear from the discussion of age systems in antiquity is that age was a fundamental constituent of identity. It was, perhaps, as significant as gender in the categorisation of individuals and created a series of expected behaviours for individuals at certain ages. This is not to deny individuals’ agency or an ability to show themselves more mature or younger than their years. However, age constituted part

References Bannon, C.J., 1997, The Brothers Romulus: Fraternal Pietas in Roman Law, Literature and Society, (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press). Birley, A.R., 1981, The Fasti of Roman Britain, (Oxford: Clarendon). Bradley, K.R., 1992, Discovering the Roman Family, (Oxford: OUP). Bradley, K.R., 1994, Slavery and Society at Rome, (Cambridge: CUP). Bradley, K.R., 2001, ‘Children and Dreams’ in S. Dixon (ed) Childhood, Class and Kin in the Roman World, (London: Routledge). Bradley, K.R., 2005, ‘The Roman Child in Sickness and in Health’, in M. George (ed) The Roman Family in the Roman Empire: Rome, Italy and Beyond, (Oxford: OUP). 211

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Cokayne, K., 2003, Experiencing Old Age in Ancient Rome, (London: Routledge). Dixon, S. 1988, The Roman Mother, (London: Croom Helm). Dixon, S., 1992, The Roman Family, (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press). Dixon, S., 2001, Reading Roman Women: Sources, Genres and Real Life, (London: Duckworth). Eyben, E., 1993, Restless Youth in Ancient Rome, (London: Routledge). Fagan, G.G., 2006, ‘Bathing for health with Celsus and Pliny the Elder’, Classical Quarterly, 56: 190-207. George, M., 2005, The Roman Family in the Roman Empire: Rome, Italy and Beyond, (Oxford: OUP). Giddens, A., 1984, The Constitution of Society: Outline of a Theory of Structuration (Cambridge: CUP). Hallett, J., 1984, Fathers and Daughters in Elite Roman Society, (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press). Harlow, M. and Laurence, R., 2002, Growing Up and Growing Old in Ancient Rome, (London: Routledge). Harlow, M., Laurence, R. and Vuolanto, V. forthcoming. ‘Past, Present and Future in the Study of Roman Childhood’, in S. Crawford and G. Shepherd Hopkins, K., 1978, ‘Rules of Evidence’, Journal of Roman Studies 68: 178-86. Jackson, R., 2005, ‘Circumcision and Self-Image: Celsus’s ‘Operation on the Penis’’, in A. Hopkins and M. Wyke (eds) Roman Bodies: Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century, (London: British School at Rome). Laes, C., 2004a, ‘Children and Office Holding in Roman Antiquity’, Epigraphica 66: 145-84. Laes, C., 2004b, ‘High Hopes, Bitter Grief: Children and their Virtues in Latin Literary Inscriptions’, in G. Partoens, G. Roskam, and T. van Houdt (eds) Virtutis Imago: Studies on the Conceptualisation and Transformation of an Ancient Ideal, (Louvain). Palmer, R.E.A., 1998, ‘Bullae Insignia Ingenuitatis’, American Journal of Ancient History 14: 1-69. Parkin, T., 2003, Old Age in the Roman World, (London: Baltimore). Rawson, B., 1986, ‘The Roman Family’, in B. Rawson (ed.) The Family in Ancient Rome: New Perspectives, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press). Rawson, B., 1991, Marriage, Divorce, and Children in Ancient Rome, (Oxford: Clarendon). Rawson, B., 1995, ‘From ‘Daily Life’ to Demography’, in R. Hawley & B. Levick Women in Antiquity: New Assessments, (London: Routledge). Rawson, B., 2003, Children and Childhood in Roman Italy, (Oxford: OUP). Rawson, B. & Weaver, P. (eds) The Roman Family in Italy: Status, Sentiment, Space, (Oxford: Clarendon). Treggiari, S., 1996, ‘Social Status and Social Legislation’, in A.K. Bowman, E. Champlin and A. Lintott (eds) The Cambridge Ancient History X: The Augustan Empire 43 BC – AD 69, (Cambridge: CUP). Treggiari, S., 2002, Roman Social History, (London: Routledge). Wiedemann, T., 1989, Adults and Children in the Roman Empire, (London: Routledge).

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Ethnicity and Ancient Judaism: Jewish Identities in 1st Century Alexandria and Antioch Monica Selvatici

Pelotas Federal University, Brazil

Introduction* The goal of this paper is to present a comparative study of Jewish identity as expressed by the Jewish community of Alexandria, in Egypt, and as expressed by the Jewish community of Antioch, in Syria, in the first half of the 1st century CE. One of the premises shared by recent social studies related to the question of ethnic identity is that identity as manifested by ethnic groups is changing and relational, no longer believed to be static and essential in character. Identity is relational because it depends on the relations between the group into focus and surrounding groups; and it is dynamic because these relations are themselves changeable and dependent on the interplay of many different cultural and socio-historical features. I justify my choice of analyzing the Jewish communities of Antioch and Alexandria, rather than others inside the Roman Empire in the first half of the 1st century CE, with two arguments. First, both communities shared similar features: they were both large and had grown in major Hellenistic cities. Second, the communities held very different positions at the time in the larger context of the cities they were located in. By different positions, I mean the (radically, I will seek to argue) different social relations between Jews and non-Jews in Alexandria and Antioch, as attested by the evidence from the writings of Josephus, Philo of Alexandria, the apostle Paul and the author of the Acts of the Apostles. I will try to demonstrate that these very different social relations between Jews and non-Jews in both cities engendered very different manifestations of Jewish identity. Once stated the purpose of this paper, it is necessary to present the notion that will guide the analysis of both Jewish communities and take into consideration their own social and cultural settings. The concept of ethnicity as defined by Siân Jones is a very useful tool for this sort of analysis.1 Ethnicity is, according to Jones (1997, xiii), * PhD in Ancient History from Campinas State University (São Paulo, Brazil). This article is a revised version of the final paper written for the course “Crafting Early Christian Identities” taught by Professor Diana Swancutt at Yale Divinity School during the spring term in 2004. My attendance in this course, and others, at Yale University was made possible thanks to the Brazilian governmental CAPES foundation that

‘all those social and psychological phenomena associated with a culturally constructed group identity. The concept of ethnicity focuses on the ways in which social and cultural processes intersect with one another in the identification of, and interaction between, ethnic groups’. The idea that group identity is a culturally constructed entity, as put forward by the notion of ethnicity, comes to improve enormously the study of Jewish and early Christian identities. When I was first introduced to the study of early Christianity history, Martin Hengel’s thesis of an encounter between Jewish tradition and Hellenistic culture as the background for the development of Christianity was too established as true to be questioned or not to be followed. The focus on the cultural dimension of the interaction between Greeks and Jews led the research work, not coincidently, to Martin Hengel’s book, Judaism and Hellenism (1974), considered to be a landmark study on Hellenistic Judaism. It is necessary to admit that for the study of cultural interactions, Hengel’s approach has its value and is still a fruitful one. Otherwise, how are the similarities between some theological formulations by the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria2 and the apostle Paul to be explained? These similarities are: 1. first and foremost, the idea of a circumcision of the heart for Paul in Romans 2:29 and granted me, as part of my Ph.D. studies, a scholarship for study abroad from September 2003 to August 2004. 1   Jones’s definition of ethnicity is only one amidst several similar conceptions of the term. The collection of essays Ethnicity in Hellenistic Egypt, for instance, follows the concept of ethnicity as developed by the Norwegian anthropologist Fredrik Barth. According to U. Østergaard (1992, 9), Barth understands ethnicity to be “a social interaction model of ethnic identity that does not posit a fixed ‘character’ or ‘essence’ for the group, but examines the perceptions of its members which distinguish them from other groups.” 2   Theologians are usually understood to be Christians: Paul would have been the first one and theology as such would have developed with the Church fathers. However, I employ the term ‘theological formulations’ when referring to Philo because his reading of the Jewish scriptures by way of Greek philosophy is very similar to the method later adopted by Christians.

Monica Selvatici

Philo’s notion of circumcision of the heart / mind in The Special Laws I, 6/9 or, closely, his circumcision of the soul by the proselyte in Questions and Answers on Exodus II, 2; 2. Paul’s formulation of the body of his Christian disciples as an earthly tent and their resurrected body as a heavenly house in 2Corinthians 5 and Philo’s idea of the Jerusalem temple as an allegory of spiritual worship (a heavenly shrine or the whole universe) in The Special Laws I, 66; 3. Paul’s notion that Christ is the son of God in Romans 1:3-4 and Philo’s idea of wisdom as the daughter of God in On Flight and Finding3 50ff; On the Virtues 62; Questions on Genesis IV, 97 (Hengel 1976, 50).

to follow the path not taken by Hengel regarding the question of ethnicity in the Jewish communities that mostly influenced the lives of those two Hellenistic Jews: while Philo was from Alexandria, Paul developed his Christian faith at the Christian ekklēsia in Antioch, which began as a branch of the Jewish community there. Ethnicity and the Egyptian Jewish community of Alexandria in the first half of the 1st century CE From the early third century BCE onwards, Jews in Alexandria saw their community life develop and prosper under the Ptolemaic rulers. There is evidence from epigraphic and papyrological findings of this period that they were absorbed in the army and administrative services. It was during this time that the Torah was translated into Greek and that the organization of the Jewish community developed into what, in Ptolemaic terms, was called a políteuma.

These similarities constitute a topic very explored by scholarship. For a long time, they were emphasized by more traditional scholars (such as Hengel himself) to the point of making the two 1st century CE Jews “representative figures of Hellenistic Judaism”. However, this strong parallel has been questioned more recently by scholars who employ different theoretical categories from the ones of encounter or blending of cultures. John Barclay, for instance, borrows his analytical categories from anthropological studies - acculturation, assimilation and (particularly) accommodation.4 While these works have correctly highlighted important differences in term of social behavior between Paul and Philo, the striking similarities between some of their theological formulations continue to exist and, so far, have been best explained by way of Hengel’s thesis of a blending of Jewish tradition and Hellenistic culture.

The word políteuma meant several different things in Antiquity: it could refer to festival associations of women, a cult society and, among other things, an ethnic community (Collins 2000, 115). As a separate ethnic community or a políteuma, the Jewish community had its own assembly responsible for the administrative and judicial power over the members of the congregation. The políteuma assembly was separate from the city authorities but, it should be noted, it was not the ultimate judicial authority. Ultimate authority remained with the Ptolemaic king and, later on, with the Roman prefect. The Jews of the políteuma considered themselves citizens and, very often, used the term politai in a non-technical sense in their epitaphs5. However, they did not possess the polis citizenship since it had different requirements for admission. For the polis citizenship to be bestowed on a foreigner, it was necessary that he be approved on the basis of specific criteria: habitation, property ownership, religious rite and, first of all, the local benefactions he could provide. Most Jews in Alexandria lived as foreigners with the right of residence.

In sum, Hengel’s analytical framework presents both positive and negative features. On the one hand, his notion of cultural/intellectual encounter, although very general, is still a useful approach to the similarities of thought between Philo and Paul as presented above. On the other hand, his very essentialist analysis of both Jewish tradition and Hellenistic culture as more or less uniform entities that are blended together so as create Hellenistic Judaism – a forerunner of Christianity – is too simplistic for it does not take into account many different factors. For instance, the specific socio-historical situation of different Jewish communities in the Roman Mediterranean at the time of the first spread of the Christian movement was particularly neglected by Hengel. The present study, although not focusing directly on the figures of Philo and Paul, intends

It is necessary to remember, however, that Jewish separatism (the most visible aspect of Jewish life to outsiders) fostered an anti-Jew feeling in many cities of the Diaspora. When the Romans conquered territories in the Eastern Mediterranean, they were necessarily involved in that issue. This situation urged a specific policy for Jews inside the Roman territory. According to E. M. Smallwood (1999, 169), ‘There was no need for suppression of the Jewish religion, since as a cult it attended all the Roman requirements for its survival: morally it did not create objections and in the Diaspora it was politically innocuous’.

  Also known as A Treatise on Fugitives. 4   John Barclay (1996) classifies the many Jewish texts from the Diaspora in terms of their level of accommodation to Hellenistic culture. I believe it is correct to place Barclay’s categories - acculturation, assimilation and accommodation - and his idea of ethnicity as the combination of kinship and custom (the reproduction of ancestral practices), “reflecting both shared genealogy and common behavior” (1996, 402), halfway from Hengel’s very essentialist notion of culture and S. Jones’s concept of ethnicity as related to a culturally constructed group identity. Other works by Barclay in which he uses the categories above are: Barclay 1995; 1998. 3

5   W. Horbury and D. Noy (1992, 194-5) note the loose employment of ‘politais’ on a funerary stele from Demerdash, in Egypt (1st century BCE or CE) that reads: “… I too, who loved my brothers and was a friend to all the citizens...” The authors believe that the phrase “a friend to all the citizens” was conventional at that time.

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thinks differently. Although he believes that there were some Jews who were laographia-paying subjects, he claims that

Thus, Rome’s solution was to adopt, at the end of the Republican period, the policy of tolerance and also protection measures towards the Jews against gentile hostility. Caesar’s legislation, confirmed by that of Augustus, classified Judaism a religio licita6. Judaism would keep that status through more than three centuries, except for a short period of restriction under Hadrian.

‘there is good reason to think that the members of the Jewish políteuma in Alexandria enjoyed isoteleia [equality regarding taxes] with the citizens of the polis, a privilege apparently extended to anyone entitled to be called an ‘Alexandrian’.’

Roman tolerance towards the Jews was put into practice in various ways: Jews were allowed to collect the temple tax, to build new synagogues, to gather for the cult on the Sabbath and for the Jewish calendar festivities. Most importantly, Romans declared the holiness of their scriptures. They also exempted Jews from the obligatory army service. According to Smallwood, all of these measures were imposed by the legislation of 44 BCE, which was to be established throughout the Empire.7 Other authors, however, such as Miriam Pucci Ben Zeev, believe, more plausibly, that some Jewish rights, like the exemption from the army service, had, instead, only a local and temporary application (Pucci Ben Zeen 1998, 440-1).

From Kasher’s hypothesis, we must conclude that the laographia-paying Jews lived in other areas, outside Alexandria, since he thinks all Jews from Alexandria enjoyed isoteleia. He finds support to this idea in Josephus’ Against Apion. In Ag. Ap. II, 38, Josephus claims that the Jews of Alexandria were called ‘Alexandrians’ and attributes this statement to an edict of the emperor Claudius in Jewish Antiquities (XIX, 280-285). However, Claudius’ authentic document known as the Letter of Claudius8 (CPJ II: 43) contradicts Josephus’ information. The Jews in Alexandria were simply Jews of Alexandria, not Alexandrian citizens.

With the advent of Roman hegemony – in 30 BCE Egypt was turned into a Roman province – there were no major changes in status for the Jewish community in Alexandria, where the relations between Jews and Ptolemaic rulers had been so cordial. Jews kept their prosperous life and their rights of separate cult. Philo (Flaccus 55) states that their community grew up to the point of occupying two of the five districts of the city. Scholars have estimated that this proportion suggests there were 180,000 Jews in Alexandria at the beginning of the 1st century CE (Sterling 2001, 268).

Most scholars believe that the new tax brought not only an additional expense but also, in fact, a lowering of status for Alexandrian Jews because of its sharp distinction between citizens of the polis and common Egyptians (Collins 2000, 116-7; Tcherikover 1950; Modrzejewski, 1995). This reduction of status motivated Jews in Alexandria to press to be accorded equal rights with Greeks. By equal rights we do not mean, as it might be inferred, polis citizenship. The reason is that Jewish religious restrictions could not be reconciled with some of the citizenship requirements: the participation in the polis religious rites, for instance. There must have been, of course, some Jews who knew how to accommodate their Jewish particularities to Greek standards. And there were others, like Dositheus, son of Drimylus (in the Ptolemaic period), and Philo’s nephew, Tiberius Julius Alexander (in the Roman period), who went a step further and abandoned their religious beliefs in order to attend to the demands of the polis institutions and receive Alexandrian citizenship (Collins 2000, 121). However, these were few cases. Most Jews would probably not want to go that far. As a response, they felt the hostile reaction of the Greek population that did not consent to sharing the same civic rights with a group that kept peculiar habits and had been given special exemptions.

However, in 24/3 BCE, Augustus imposed the laographia (a poll tax) on the Egyptians and exempted the Greek citizens of Alexandria and, most probably, of the other Egyptian poleis (Ptolemais and Naucratis) as well. An intermediate class was created in the very beginning of the 1st century CE to consider the Greeks who lived outside the poleis and who were descendants of people of statused position, like military settlers and graduates of the gymnasia. Those who fit into this intermediate category had to pay only half of the total amount. This political and economic move by the Romans in order to collect more money from the provinces had social consequences as well. It seems that, in Alexandria, the Jewish community, for not being part of the exempted social and ethnic group, started pressing for Jews to be accorded equal rights as Greeks. Aryeh Kasher (1985, 19)

Josephus narrates the episode (Jewish Antiquities XVIII, 257-60) in Alexandria, in 38 CE, in which Flaccus, the prefect of Egypt, supports the local inhabitants and declares that the Jews of the city are ‘foreigners and aliens’ since they do not participate in the imperial cult. Because the prefect takes the side of the Greeks, the social tension is transformed into violence against the Jewish community and the first known “pogrom” in history takes place. Although Josephus does not present, in his

6   It is necessary to observe, as does Smallwood (1999, 172, note 89), that the use of the term religio licita for this period is anachronistic (despite the fact that it describes the real status of Judaism at this moment) because it only appears for the first time in Roman texts in the 3rd century CE. 7   For more information on the legal status of the Jewish communities in the Roman Empire, see: Applebaum 1974; Rabello 1979.

 

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Part of the letter is reproduced below.

Monica Selvatici

account, the reason for the conflict, this seems to have been related to the question of citizenship/equal rights. Josephus, obviously, skips these previous circumstances and describes only the subsequent facts. He narrates the departure of two delegations to Rome willing to find a solution in the presence of the emperor. One of them is in defense of the Greek position and the other, having Philo as leader, in defense of the Jewish side. Apion, defender of the Alexandrians, argues that the Jews are the only subject peoples of the Empire who do not honor the emperor with the building of temples and altars and who do not swear by his name. They disrespect him instead of trying to equal him to a god as do all other peoples inside the Roman territory. Philo does not have the opportunity to speak because Gaius (Caligula) prevents him from doing so. The emperor, very angry with the episode, decides, then, to erect a statue of himself in the Jewish temple, a decision that leads to more conflicts with the Jewish people.

education. V. Tcherikover (1960, II: 53) chooses, then, the first reading. He believes that the Jewish motivation for the intrusion into the gymnasium was the desire to gain Alexandrian citizenship by trying to fulfill its primary requirement. A. Kasher questions this hypothesis and argues that the Greek word in the letter is epispaírein so as render the meaning of some kind of harassment of the pagan custom that Jews mostly opposed. The author presents evidence in Philo (Flaccus 74ff) that the members of the Jewish gerousia were dragged into the theatre and flogged in front of the audience. He thus argues that the theatre and the gymnasium were centers of anti-Jewish activity. For him, in the letter, Claudius is warning the Jews not to avenge themselves by disturbing the public performances organized by the gymnasiarchs and kosmetes (Kasher 1985, 312-21). G. Sterling, on the other hand, seems to take for granted Tcherikover’s hypothesis when he affirms that “when Claudius closed the doors of the gymnasium to Jews, he cut off their access to citizenship, its privileges, and its status” (2001, 270). However, as we argued earlier, Jews were, most probably, not seeking Alexandrian citizenship but, rather, rights equal to those of citizens. In any case, Sterling’s remark concluding the idea of his previous sentence (above) remains a good one: “The result was predictable: Jewish nationalism began to rise”. The author lists four Jewish works from this period that reemphasize Jewish values: Jannes and Jambres, 3Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon and Sibylline Oracle 3. The anti-Roman feeling is explicit in the last work. Sterling explains: “Rome cut off the right of the Jews to enter the world [of Hellenism] and its privileges (…) The great Alexandrian effort to create a symbiosis between Hellenism and Judaism was over” (2001, 270-1).

After Gaius’ death, another conflict erupts between Jews and Greeks in Alexandria. The former wanted to avenge themselves for the abuse of power of the latter during Gaius’ rule. A solution and a way of repressing the civil war are to be found by Gaius’ successor, Claudius (41-54 CE). He returns all the privileges abolished by Gaius to the Jews after a request of kings Agrippa and Herod. Josephus paints Claudius in the Jewish Antiquities as a hero, someone who has an extremely positive attitude toward the Jews. In fact, the emperor’s decision is to send a letter to Alexandria and all other cities of the Empire where there were Jewish communities, reaffirming the Jewish rights of distinguished cult. However, the letter continues with Claudius’ warning the Alexandrian Jews not to use those privileges improperly in order not to disturb the public order. Claudius demands the following:

In sum, both interpretations of the Greek word in the Letter of Claudius lead to the same conclusion: the unfortunate events of 38 CE and Claudius’ denial of the Jewish pleas for more rights enacted a strong nationalist wave among Alexandrian Jews that had not been part of their life in the city due to their history of good relations with previous rulers. The manifestation of their Jewish identity changed significantly over the course of those years, from a construction of Jewish culture based on its similar features with the broader Hellenistic environment to one of complete opposition to both Hellenism and Roman rule itself.

‘The Jews, on the other hand, I order not to aim at more than they have previously had and not in future to send two embassies as if they lived in two cities, a thing which has never been done before, and not to intrude themselves into the games presided over by the gymnasiarchoi and the kosmetai, since they enjoy what is their own, and in a city which is not their own they possess an abundance of all good things. (…) If they disobey, I shall proceed against them in every way as fomenting a common plague for the whole world’. (Tcherikover & Fuks, CPJ II: 43, translation by the editors).

Ethnicity and the Syrian Jewish community of Antioch in the first half of the 1st century CE According to Josephus (Jewish Antiquities XII, 119), Antioch was founded in 301 BCE by Seleucus Nicator. Its geographical position made it an important area for commerce and trade by land and sea. The city was transformed into the capital of the province of Syria by the Romans in 64 BCE. During the 1st century CE, it was already the third largest city in the Roman Empire, after Rome and Alexandria.

The mention by Claudius of the intrusion of the Jews into the gymnasium games has led modern scholars to interpret the passage in two different ways. Because there is a problem with the Greek word on the papyrus, the term is left open, with two possible readings: either epispaíein that means ‘to intrude’, ‘to infiltrate’, ‘to penetrate’, or epispaírein (with a ‘ρ’) signifying ‘to harass’, ‘to attack’. Since the Romans had come into power, the criterion for citizenship had changed from family descent to gymnasium

The Jewish community in Antioch was large. Josephus (Jewish War VII, 43) says that “it was at Antioch that 216

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they [the Jews] specially congregated”. The Jews did not constitute one assembled community there but, rather, were divided in three different groups: one west of the city near Daphne, one in the city and one north or northeast of the city, in the so-called “plain” of Antioch. According to C. H. Kraeling, in his classic article from 1932, during the early part of the 1st century CE, the Jews reached their greatest numerical strength in Antioch. The author estimates 45,000 Jews in the Syrian capital in the time of Augustus and 65,000 Jews in the capital during the 4th century CE. The number 45,000 Jews seems exaggerated to Wayne A. Meeks and Robert L. Wilken. Thus they reduce Kraeling’s number to 22,000 Jews in Antioch during the reign of Augustus (Meeks & Wilken 1978, 8; Meier 1983, 30). In all of Syria in the 1st century CE, Kraeling believes the Jewish population to have reached 1 million (Kraeling 1932, 136) just like Philo’s estimate of the Egyptian Jewish population in the same period. It should also be noted that Apamea, another Syrian city, was very populated at the turn of the era and the Jewish community there must have been large too.9 The ancient author Strabo says that both Alexandria and Antioch were roughly the same size in the 1st century BCE (Sterling 2001, 268, note 38). I believe that, if we take into account both Philo’s and Strabo’s information, we may reasonably disagree with Meeks/ Wilken’s reduced estimate and even increase Kraeling’s number of Jews in Antioch in the 1st century CE if its environs are to be counted as well.

for the Syrian army due to hostile feelings of the locals in Antioch. However, when the Romans conquered Syria and Palestine, the situation changed for Jews at the Syrian capital: as both territories had been submitted to the control of a third power, the reason for tension was, then, removed (Kraeling 1932, 147). Furthermore, during the reign of Herod the Great, there was a major improvement of the social situation for Antiochene Jews. The close relations of the “half-Jew” king, as Josephus characterizes him (Jewish Antiquities XIV, 403), with the Romans, his constant visits to Antioch and his costly gifts to the city eventually brought prestige and wealth to the local Jewish community. Kraeling puts forward the hypothesis that the building program of Herod the Great and Marcus Agrippa in the city and outside its boundaries, on the “plain” of Antioch, are directly related to the location of one of the three Jewish groups established in Antioch and its environs. “The object of the joint enterprise was that of improving and connecting with the city a Jewish settlement of the “plain” of Antioch”, proposes Kraeling (1932: 145). The wealth acquired by Jews during this period can be inferred by Josephus’ reference (Jewish War VII, 45) to the expensive votive offerings that Antiochene Jews sent to the temple in Jerusalem. This peaceful and advantageous context for Jews in Antioch would last until the outbreak of the Jewish war against Rome. Differently from the situation in other major urban centers like Alexandria and the Greek cities on the Palestinian coast, Jews in Antioch were regarded in a friendly way by local inhabitants during the first half of the 1st century CE. One of the reasons for this atmosphere of cordial relations was the multicultural environment of the city. Antioch had gathered people from very different regions inside and outside the Empire (most of them were Syrians, Greeks and, later on, Romans, but there were also Cretans, Cypriots, Arabs, Persians, Egyptians, and even Indians) (Downey 1967, 623-6). Josephus (Jewish War VII, 45) gladly depicts the Antiochene Jews as “constantly attracting to their religious ceremonies multitudes of Greeks, and these they hAD in some measure incorporated with themselves.”11 Among these gentiles willing to conform to Jewish practices, some, or, perhaps, many would go a step further and convert to Judaism by way of circumcision. This open attitude towards gentiles by the Jewish community in Syria is attested by Acts of the Apostles 6:5, in which Nicolaus, one of the seven Hellenists in Jerusalem, is presented as a proselyte of Antioch.

The Jewish community in Antioch was, by the mid-2nd century BCE, already recognized as a separate group within the city according to Josephus (Jewish War VII, 44; Jewish Antiquities XII, 119). He also states, “the successors of King Antiochus hAD enabled them [the Jews] to live there in security” (Jewish War VII, 43). In terms of organization, the community had a prostátēs, the head of the council of elders (presbúteroi). Some members of this council also held the position of árchōn, which imposed special obligations. Although there is no specific mention to the word políteuma to refer to the Antiochene Jewish community,10 it can be assumed that Jews in Antioch were organized, like in Alexandria, as a separate políteuma so as to follow their own laws. It is also plausible to think that some among the many resident Jews in the city held the privilege of the Antiochene citizenship. If, on the one hand, the Jews had received special protection from the Seleucid rulers in order to live in security, on the other, there was tension between them and the surrounding gentile population, mostly because of the proximity of Palestine under Hasmonean rule. Josephus (Jewish War I, 88) says that in the time of Alexander Jannaeus, it had become impossible to recruit Jewish mercenaries

W. A. Meeks and R. L. Wilken picture a different, much worse situation for Jews in Antioch in the first half of the 1st century CE. The authors believe that “the Jews of Antioch were inevitably drawn into the growing conflict between Jews and Romans in Palestine” (1978, 4), although they admit that Roman authorities usually worked to preserve the rights of the Jewish community. They base their conclusion on the exaggerated Chronicles of the ancient

  G. Sterling (2001, 268) shows that ancient census information indicates that Antioch had a free population of 250,000 in the 1st century BCE and Apamea of 117,000 in 6/7 CE. 10   J. J. Collins (2000, 114-5) points to the fact that the Alexandrian Jewish community is called a políteuma in the letter of Aristeas 310, and that the term políteuma is also found in inscriptions referring to the community of Berenice in Cyrenaica, and in the archive of a community in Heracleopolis. 9

11   Thackeray translation in Loeb. “aeí te prosagómenoi taîs thrēskeíais polù plēthos Hellēnōn, kakeínous trópōi tinì moîran hautōn pepoíēnto”.

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a-kind in Antioch during the first half of the 1st century CE because it was followed by another period of tranquility for the Jews of the city. In fact, even when the Jewish revolt against Rome broke out in 66 CE, the Syrian cities of Antioch, Apamea and Sidon spared their Jews and did not engage in killing or imprisoning them when violence against them became a widespread practice in the rest of Syria and the Hellenistic cities of Palestine (Jewish War II, 479).

author Malalas. Malalas reported that, in the same year (40 CE) that the governor of Syria went to Jerusalem to carry out the imperial order to erect a statue of Caligula in the Jerusalem temple, “mobs in Antioch attacked Jews killing many and burning synagogues” (Meeks & Wilken 1978, 4). Meeks and Wilken admit that the whole of Malalas’ story is fictional, for it includes strong retaliation of 30,000 Jews led by the high priest in Jerusalem, Phineas. Still, they find some kind of upheaval against the Jews at that moment in Antioch plausible, especially because Malalas depicts a later settlement of the conflict by the Roman emperor. Malalas identifies the emperor as Caligula but Meeks and Wilken believe the ancient author confused names and, instead of referring to Claudius - who, in fact, did the same in Alexandria after the 38 CE events -, named Caligula as the ruler. It is interesting to notice that Kasher also uses Malalas’ account of the supposed ‘war’ between Jews and Greeks in Antioch in 40 CE when constructing his argument that the city theatres and gymnasia were centers of anti-Jewish activity because Malalas reports that the war broke out after the clash in the city theatre. However, Kasher too doubts the historicity of the event (in a footnote). He points out, “it is hard to know the source of his [Malalas’] information, and he may have invented the episode on the basis of what happened in Alexandria” (1985, 318, note 40). Kraeling’s reconstruction of what might have been the referenced attack on the Antiochene Jews is a careful and plausible one, although it relies a lot on (logical) suppositions when the author does not encounter evidence to support the reconstruction. Because of the reported date (40 CE), Kraeling believes the ‘pogrom’ (as he describes the event narrated by Malalas) is directly related to Gaius’ decision to erect a statue in his image in the Jerusalem temple and to the decree he transmits to Petronius, the governor of Syria, in order to carry out the command. Philo (Embassy to Gaius, 207) reports that Petronius, before marching to Jerusalem with his troops, takes the precaution of warning the Jewish priests and archons of the emperor’s order and advises submission to it. He does that in Syrian territory or, more precisely, in his own residence, in Antioch. Kraeling relies, subsequently, on Josephus’ account of the episode. In Jewish Antiquities (XVIII, 262-72), the Jewish author tells of mobs of Jews protesting to Petronius at Ptolemais and Tiberias, on his way from Antioch to Jerusalem. From the evidence in Philo and Josephus, Kraeling then believes the disturbance is a continuation of a Jewish opposition to the imperial plan in the city of Antioch “where the plan first was revealed, and thus serves to substantiate Malalas’ statement about a disturbance there in this very third year of Caligula”, sums up Kraeling (1932, 149). It is very plausible to argue, in light of the circumstances described, that Petronius did use military force against protesting Jews and, if Malalas’ account is to be taken seriously, that this very situation propitiated mob actions against the Jews. The conflict described above seems to have been one-of218

Further strong evidence of the easy intermingling of Jews and non-Jews in Antioch can be found in Paul’s letter to the Galatians 2:1-10 and Acts 15:1-21. These New Testament texts mention the Christian community established in the city in the 30s of the 1st century and focus on an episode that took place there in the late 40s (or early 50s). Both texts report that some Jewish Christians from Judea went to Antioch in order to claim that gentile Christians there should be circumcised. It is usually supposed that they believed that gentiles, in order to share in the eschatological blessings, had to become Jews. Another incident related to the status of gentile disciples with regard to their fellow Jews within the Christian movement also took place at the Antiochene Christian community some time later. This episode is narrated by Paul in Galatians 2:11-14. Some Jewish Christians from Jerusalem showed up, once again, at Antioch in order to demand stricter observance of the Torah with regard to dietary laws both from Jewish and gentile disciples at that community. At this time, Peter, one of the Twelve Apostles, was in Antioch and his behavior after the arrival of the Jerusalem church emissaries made Paul very angry. According to Paul, Peter started withdrawing from table fellowship with the gentile Christians, although he had been practicing it very regularly before the arrival of the Jerusalemite Christians. Paul questions Peter’s consistency as a Christian in Galatians 2:14: “If you, though a Jew, live like a gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the gentiles to live like Jews/Judaize?” Paul’s position was a minority at the Antiochene community. He decided to leave the church there after the episode and definitively broke his ties with Barnabas, who had been responsible for bringing him to that ekklēsia in the 30s, some time after his conversion experience, and was his close companion of missionary work. Apparently, the practice of meal fellowship among Christians in Antioch was not very observant of the Torah but it had been established as the regular practice within that ekklēsia from its beginnings. It should be noted that this Christian ekklēsia developed as a branch of the Antiochene Jewish community, given that the Christian message had been first preached in the synagogues of the Jews. The evidence presented above shows that the easy intermingling of Jews and gentiles in Antioch facilitated the presence of many gentiles in the Christian community there and shaped the Jewish/gentile relations within it towards an approximation of the Jewish values to the larger environment of pagan Antioch.

Ethnicity and Ancient Judaism: Jewish Identities in 1st Century Alexandria and Antioch

studying the Torah by way of Greek philosophy. And, in terms of following the commandments of the Torah, he criticized both literalist readers, on the one hand, and allegorist readers who neglected their observance, on the other (Borgen 1992, 135).

Conclusion The difference between the social relations of Jews and non-Jews in Antioch and the ones between Jews and nonJews in Alexandria in the first half of the 1st century CE is not a small one. If, on the one hand, the political situation created by Seleucid and Ptolemaic rulers for Jews living both in Antioch and in Alexandria had been a secure one, on the other, with Romans in power, the social context for Jews in these two Hellenistic cities changed significantly in the course of those years.

In cities like mid-1st century Antioch, Jews followed the path of integration. Since the reign of Herod the Great in Palestine, Antiochene Jews had been experiencing a great improvement in their social and economic status. Furthermore, the cosmopolitan character of Antioch helped the easy intermingling of Jews and non-Jews in the city up to the point that many non-Jews, through their presence in the synagogues, were attracted to the new Christian community there. The apostle Paul received his Christian education in that very peculiar setting. When the time for resistance to the pagan world came for the Jerusalem church, with the growing tension between Jews and Roman rule in the late 40s/early 50s, the peculiar mixed character of the Antiochene church became a problem and the famous clash between Peter and Paul took place. Had that not been the case, Paul would probably not have abandoned Antioch and would probably not have demonstrated in his later missionary work a growing opposition to the observance of the Jewish law by gentiles and to the role played by it in the salvation of Israel.

In Alexandria, because of the issue concerning the payment of the laographia, local Jews were lowered to nearly the condition of Egyptians in terms of social status: they did not belong to the newly created class of exempted Alexandrian citizens. Especially after the 38 CE pogroms until Gaius’ death, they had their political rights completely abolished. When Claudius came into power in 41 CE, Jews regained their ancient rights but, at the same time, were strongly denied further privileges. Furthermore, they were never able to enjoy good relations with Rome again. In response, Alexandrian Jews began to oppose strongly and resist the dangerous world of Hellenism and Rome. A. Kasher, who defends the idea that Jews did not seek Alexandrian citizenship because they had a completely separate community in Alexandria, admits, however, that in places where the Jewish community maintained good relations with local inhabitants and authorities, Jews tended to reproduce cultural practices of the surrounding environment. For instance, the author does not exclude the possibility that in some Hellenistic cities, the Jews would go to the gymnasium to watch the competitions (Kasher 1985, 320). Philo is a good example of a Jew who was fairly familiar with gymnasium activities. Although he kept distinctive practices which belonged to Judaism at that time and, for that matter, never abandoned Jewish beliefs, he tried as much as possible to accommodate his Jewish life to the social requirements of Hellenistic Alexandria. In terms of thought, he adopted the peculiar method of

For Paul, after all those years of intense proclamation of the Good News both in Jewish communities that presented very diverse ethnic strategies towards the non-Jewish environment and in its gentile surroundings, it was certain that God had proved to him that ‘Israel’, actually, meant both Jews and gentiles in Christ. Acknowledgements I am grateful to John J. Collins for reading the text and suggesting that I sharpen my argument and, especially, to Pedro Paulo Funari for the helpful comments on the theoretical aspects presented in this paper. I must also thank Adela Yarbro Collins and André L. Chevitarese for their guidance in the broader research of which this paper

is a part. References Ancient texts Josephus, F., 1926. Against Apion, II. (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press - Loeb). Josephus, F., 1930-1969, Jewish Antiquities, with an English translation by H. St. J. Thackeray and Ralph Marcus, (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press - Loeb). Josephus, F., 1989, The Jewish War, I. (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press - Loeb). Josephus, F., 1990, The Jewish War, II, (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press - Loeb). Nestle-Aland, 1993, Novum Testamentum Graece, (Sttutgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft). Philo of Alexandria, 1953, Supplement II. Questions and answers on Exodus, translated from the ancient Armenian version of the original Greek, by Ralph Marcus, (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press). Philo of Alexandria, 1929-62, with an English translation by F.H. Colson and G.H. Whitaker, (London: Heinemann). 219

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Tcherikover, V. & Fuks, A. (eds.)., 1960, Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum, (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press). Modern texts Alcock, S.E., 1994, ‘Breaking up the Hellenistic World: Survey and Society’, in I. Morris (ed.), Classical Greece. Ancient Histories and Modern Archaeologies, (New York: Cambridge University Press). Applebaum, S., 1974, ‘The Legal Status of the Jewish Communities in the Diaspora’, in S. Safrai & M. Stern (eds.) The Jewish People in the First Century, 1: Historical Geography, Political History, Social, Cultural and Religious Life and Institutions, (Assen: Van Gorcum). Barclay, J.M.G., 1995, ‘Paul among Diaspora Jews: Anomaly or Apostate?’ Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 60, pp. 89-120. Barclay, J.M.G., 1996, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora: from Alexander to Trajan (323 BCE-117 CE), (Edinburgh: T&T Clark). Barclay, J.M.G., 1998, ‘Paul and Philo on Circumcision: Romans 2:25-9 in Social and Cultural Context’, New Testament Studies, 44/4, pp. 536-56. Bilde, P., Engberg-Pedersen, T., Hannestad, L. & Zahle, J. 1992. Ethnicity in Hellenistic Egypt, (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press). Borgen, P., 1992, ‘Philo and the Jews in Alexandria’, in P. Bilde et al. (eds.), Ethnicity in Hellenistic Egypt, (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press). Collins, J.J., 2000, Between Athens and Jerusalem, (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Pub). Collins, J.J., 2003, Anti-Semitism in Antiquity? The Case of Alexandria. Lecture given at Ohio State University on October 31, 2003 (unpublished). Downey, G., 1967, ‘Antioche’, in New Catholic Encyclopedia, (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co). Dunn, J., 1983, ‘The incident at Antioch (Gal. 2:11-18)’, Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 18, pp. 3-57. Goudriaan, K., 1992, ‘Ethnical Strategies in Graeco-Roman Egypt’, P. Bilde et al. (eds.), Ethnicity in Hellenistic Egypt, (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press). Hengel, M., 1976, The Son of God. The Origin of Christology and the History of Jewish-Hellenistic Religion, (Philadelphia: Fortress). Hengel, M., 1979, Acts and the History of Earliest Christianity, (London: SCM Press). Horbury, W. & Noy, D., 1992, Jewish Inscriptions of Graeco-Roman Egypt, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Jones, S., 1997. The archaeology of ethnicity: constructing identities in the past and present, (London & New York: Routledge). Kasher, A., 1985, The Jews in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck). Kraeling, C.H., 1932, ‘The Jewish community at Antioch’, Journal of Biblical Literature, 51/II, pp. 130-60. Meeks, W.A. & Wilken, R.L., 1978, Jews and Christians in Antioch in the First Four Centuries of the Common Era, (Missoula: Scholars Press, Society of Biblical Literature Sources for Biblical Studies). Meier, J.P., 1983, ‘The Antiochene Church of the First Christian Generation (AD 40-70 – Galatians 2; Acts 11-15)’, in R.E. Brown, & J.P. Meier (eds.), Antioch and Rome, (New York & Ramsey: Paulist Press). Modrzejewski, J.M., 1995, The Jews of Egypt: From Rameses II to Emperor Hadrian, 163 (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Pucci Ben Zeev, M., 1998, Jewish Rights in the Roman World. The Greek and Roman Documents Quoted by Josephus, 439-82, (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck). Rabello, A. M., 1979, ‘The Legal Condition of the Jews in the Roman Empire’, ANRW II, 7.1, pp. 662-762. Richard, P., 1998, ‘A Origem do Cristianismo em Antioquia’, Revista de Interpretação Bíblica Latino-Americana (29): Cristianismos Originários Extrapalestinos (35-138 dC), pp. 32-44. Smallwood, E.M., 1999, ‘The Diaspora in the Roman Period Before CE 70’, in W. Horbury, W.D. Davies, & J. Sturdy (eds.), The Cambridge History of Judaism, 3: The Early Roman Period, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Sterling, G.E., 2001, ‘Judaism between Jerusalem and Alexandria’, in J.J. Collins, & G.E. Sterling (eds.), Hellenism in the Land of Israel, (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press). Tcherikover, V. 1950, ‘Syntaxis and Laographia’, Journal of Juristic Papyrology, 4, pp. 179-207. Zetterholm, M., 2003, The Formation of Christianity in Antioch. A social-scientific approach to the separation between Judaism and Christianity, (London & New York: Routledge). 220

Themistius, the Emperor Julian and a Discussion of the Concept of Royalty in the Fourth Century AD Margarida Maria de Carvalho São Paulo State University (UNESP) Franca, Brazil

Introduction The historiography of the fourth century AD is extensive due to the great number of textual documents that have survived to this day. A great deal of discourses and letters of Christian and Pagan authors have been interpreted. Many German, American, British, French and Italian authors have been researching the conflicts between Christians and Pagans over the last centuries, and the number of interpretations of this subject has been increasing. In Brazil, few authors are engaged in research into Late Antiquity1 and most of such investigations are constrained to the analysis of Christian discourses, leaving room for the discussion of certain concepts of Pagan authors. Thus, this paper consists of an interpretation of the concept of royalty based on two authors, Themistius and the Emperor Julian. The range of the discussion herein is about political and cultural aspects related to the religious and philosophical issues in the fourth century AD. Hence, the idea of purely religious and/or philosophical conflicts, such as Christianism versus Paganism or the conflicts derived from the philosophical thoughts of Pagans, are not the focus of this work. The ideas of the discourses drawn from this period are imbued with a political aura because as these discourses are unveiled, in most of the cases, they refer to the figure of the emperor and to a latent concern about Roman imperial unity. In the scenario of that time there was a series of usurpations suffocated by successive imperial governments at an internal level, as well as a constant threat of Barbarian invasions along the frontiers of the empire at an external level. Consequently, the discussions of the monarchic character or the concept of royalty were inherent to scholars of that time. The Pagan philosopher Themistius and the neoplatonic emperor Julian are taken

as examples for the discussion of the concept of royalty. The discussions of that time are cultural in the sense that the term culture refers to a system of attitudes and ways of thinking according to the habits and institutions of a given society, and also its spiritual and material values. Thus, such discourses could indeed be considered cultural. Another aspect that supports the cultural focus of this paper is the fact that tolerance among Pagans and Christians was quite elastic in that time. Dragon (1968, 1-2) stated this fact in 1968. Later, the historiographer Polymnia Athanassiadi (1992, 28) expounds that there was an extensive no man’s land between Christianism and Paganism in the fourth century, when scholars could be surprised by the traps of vagueness. Some examples are Hecebolius, a contradictory character regarding his relationship with the emperor Julian; Pegasius, a Christian bishop during the government of Constantius II and later a member of the clergy of Prince Julian; Sinesius and his polemical and late conversion to Christianity; and, finally, Themistius himself, a philosopher advocate of Hellenism who had a permanent position in the imperial court of Constantius II until Theodosius. In addition, the Spanish historiographer Javier Arce (1976, 208-220) has presented some characters of the imperial administration who adhered to the apostasy of the emperor Julian but also others who remained Christian adepts and were not threatened by the emperor, which contradicts the ever-present hypothesis in the historiography of the Christian era that claimed Julian was a merciless persecutor of Christians2. Taking into consideration these preliminary observations, it is possible to understand the positions of Themistius and Julian better in relation to the concept of royalty and their mutual respect.

* Doctor in Ancient History from the University of São Paulo – USP.

1   Presently, there are only two researchers focusing on the fourth century AD: Dr. Gilvan Ventura da Silva, lecturer of Ancient History at UFES – Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo – Espírito Santo/Brazil, and I.

  See the inventiveness of Gregorio Nazianzeno entitled in the assemblage Against Julian. GRÉGOIRE DE NAZIANZE, 1983, Contre Julien. Discours 4 and 5, (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf). 2

Margarida Maria de Carvalho

Themistius and the Emperor Julian

the respect and consideration of Christian Emperors and of the emperor Julian. Themistius’ most urgent concerns were education and public administration of the State’s business, which was certainly related to the notion of the emperor’s role in late Roman society.

1. Themistius: Conceptions about Education and Royalty Among the various historical characters of the fourth century AD, Themistius stands out as a unique figure in the political process of that period. As mentioned before, this philosopher entered the imperial court of Constantius II (AD 337 – 361) and remained until Theodosius (AD 379 – 395). But the most intriguing fact, which is also a contributing datum for the analysis of the political and cultural representations of that time, is the relationship of Themistius and the emperor Julian. Themistius demonstrates more vehemently his Hellenic convictions as a representative of traditional Hellenism, although with appropriate ideas of his own context. Julian, very well-known by classicist historiographers due to the great amount of bibliography regarding him, is also a representative of the Pagans’ philosophical chains as an eminent advocate of Neoplatonism. Thus, the discussion about royalty between these two philosophers reflects a concern for better governmental conduct and also the political and cultural ideas of that time.

According to Downey (1955, 297), Themistius would never had drawn an acute criticism of Christians, since he was certainly aware of the competition between himself and the Christians regarding the obtainment of favors from the emperors. However, he worried about the survival of Hellenism above all else. In this way, he tried to show that Paganism could supply philosophically and politically whatever Christians could offer. Themistius gave himself the task of maintaining the educational and philosophical Pagan ideal through the development of concepts about the State and the Prince, as well as resurrecting the meaning of philanthropy. Thus, within the typical disputes among sophists, rhetoricians and philosophers of the fourth century AD, Themistius tried to shed light on the role of the participating philosopher in the imperial court, demonstrating its importance and conceptual innovations. His works had already begun to have importance in the court of Constantius II – Aryan Christian emperor – to whom he dedicated a panegyric with suggestions about the role of the sovereign. The philosopher did not create a direct political clash with Christianism, but rather presented the thinking that Hellenism is as important as Christianism.

According to Dragon (1968, 5) and Maisano (1995, 43), Themistius was born in Panflagonia around AD 317 and descended from a wealthy and influential family of the region. The main legacy of the family inherited by Themistius is Hellenism and the art of being a philosopher. Little is known about his life prior his arrival in Constantinople in AD 337. All data point to the hypothesis that his education was primarily constrained to the family circle: Themistius’ grandfather was a philosopher and acquaintance of the emperor Diocletian; Themistius’ father belonged to the group of advisers of the emperor Constantius II and taught Hellenic philosophy based on Plato’s and Aristotle’s thinking. This hypothesis explains in part the close relationship between Themistius and Constantius. Themistius would have become an important adviser of this emperor. At the age of 20 he arrived in Constantinople, and he began to teach philosophy in AD 340 It seems he had been in Nicomedia (from AD 340 to 342) when during an initial class he gave the polemic speech To the inhabitants of Nicomedia: Exhortation to the Study of Philosophy (my translation). Further, he would give other pedagogical speeches that would indicate the values he held about the idea of education and its connection to philosophy and the definition of royalty.

Downey (1957, 262) states that Themistius, the Hellenist politician, built up his thesis by showing many parallels between Hellenism and Christianism. Alternatively, it seems that Themistius would have found one of these parallels by demonstrating that the ideas drawn from Plato and Aristotle could be found in passages of the Bible. Thus, philosophy has a fundamental value in Themistius’s political system. The study of philosophy would be nothing less than the study of virtue, the maximum aspiration of men. According to Sayas (1972, 42), Themistius gets very close to the concepts of virtue and philosophy. Thus, the usefulness of philosophy as the proper instrument for overcoming political problems derives from this illustrative thought: a relationship established between philosophy and society in its several degrees and between philosophy and the State. This notion is directly related to the role of the sovereign.

Themistius was considered a well-known political philosopher during the reign of Constantius II, as he became a propagandist and official panegyrist of this emperor’s government. From this point on Themistius held a position in the governments of the successive emperors of the fourth century AD. In AD 350, he performed the Panegyric to Constantius II and became Senator by adlectio of Constantinople.

As a chief of state, the emperor should be imbued with a special education, filling himself up with philosophy - that is, with virtue, the maximum quality that distinguishes a king from a despot. The Prince endowed with philosophical knowledge or with a good education will know how to solve the internal and external administrative problems of the government, as well as how to deal with the Barbarians (Sayas 1972, 45; Downey 1957, 273 - 274).

Themistius’s career developed parallel to the political discussions between Christians and Pagans and the foundation of the Christian discourse in the fourth century. He was one of the few philosophers who gained

Gathering all these presumptions, there is another feeling that every sovereign should have: philanthropy, which is intimately linked to virtue and divinity. Thus, philanthropy would be a virtue that would summarize all the qualities of 222

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2. The Emperor Julian and a Discussion of the Concept of Royalty

a human being, especially the emperors’, and it should be a point of intersection between the emperor and the deity (Silva 2000, 109). In addition, according to Downey (1955, 199), the concept of philanthropy had been employed before by the Greeks to define compassion in relation to the gods and love among human beings. During the Roman Empire, such a concept of philanthropy was common among the Stoics and widely beneficial to the Christians.

In this topic there will be references to the letter addressed to Themistius, a document written by the Prince Julian in response to a panegyric Themistius dedicated to Julian that is no longer extant. The letter contains elements from which it is possible to deduce the thinking of Themistius in opposition to that of Julian. The political theology of Julian is considered. In order to understand Julian’s political theology, it is necessary to comprehend his Hellenism and, consequently, his Paideia or his education, or even his philosophical formation. Combined with this group of factors is his notion of royalty. Thus, it seems that the concept of royalty for Julian, closely linked to the concept of Paideia, should bear a political evaluation of Neoplatonic ideas. His notion is derived from the political and cultural context of that time and it is distinguished from the philosophical base of Christianism and Themistian theocracy. His Hellenism was the most complex that the Roman Empire had ever witnessed. Thus, Julian’s will was not exactly a recurrence of the Paganism of the time of Traianus and Marco Aurelius. In fact, the reading of a text of this Emperor - The Caesars (317 C - 338 D) - can lead us to this idea. In this text, Julian describes a dinner that the Roman emperors had with the gods. Julian makes innumerable criticisms of many emperors, basically of the Christian ones, such as Constantinus and Constantius. In the text, all the emperors were questioned by the gods, but only Marcus Aurelius succeeded and was lauded by Julian throughout the text.

Exposed by the Hellenist political philosopher as a sacred figure, the king endowed with philanthropy would be above the State. Such privilege may be deduced from the work Letter to Themistius – whose tone will be discussed below – written by the emperor Julian in response to a panegyric Themistius dedicated to him. According to Silva (2000, 109), from the four panegyric Themistius dedicated to Constantius II, between 347 and 357, it is possible to point out elements that totalize the characteristic political theology of philosophical thinking. These elements were: the emperor would possess a distinct nature from ordinary men; the emperor is the divine messenger sent to govern the Earth; due to his divine nature, the emperor is the incarnation of the law, the supernatural principle that rules the cosmos, he is the lex animata or the autonomos. In light of these considerations, it is possible to infer that Themistius considered the emperor the incarnation of the law and, thus, he was not under any legal law. The emperor is superior to laws. An extract from Themistius’s thinking to support this idea follows:

Julian expressed what he most prized in the figure of a ruler: the direct relationship of the emperor with the gods and the aim to reach the maximum state of perfection by having an almost divine conduct. The good ruler – that is, the special philosopher – should feel the divine essence within himself. Julian followed the teachings of Iamblichus when reporting that knowledge of God is not acquired by men through learning but rather is innate (Julian. Against the Galilaeans, 52 B).

‘The law (nomos) as an arrogant and impulsive man often provides the same answers to those who do not present the same questions. In such a case, the law is forced to address in an identical way diverse questions. Those who wish to punish with cruelty can cling to the words and rely strictly on its letter - and for this reason it is not rare that the one who could have been absolved by law find death, if he otherwise had taken the chance to speak more appropriately. In this case, I would dare to say that a legal illegality is being committed. The Prince who possesses philanthropy, however, at the very moment he forgives the written norm (granoma), he personally adds something external to it, because in my opinion the law is alive (auto nomus) and above ordinary laws.’ (Tehemistius, Oration, I, 21)3

According to this thinking, we can notice that the Pagan man of the late Roman society – the neoplatonic philosopher – considered himself superior in relation to others, especially Christians. Once more, in Against the Galilaeans4, Julian stated how useless it was to be subjected to the cult of a Christian God, because ‘... indeed he does not worry about our lives, neither about our good government, nor about our political institutions. Is it convenient however that he receive reverence from us? Absolutely not.’5 (Julian. Against the Galilaeans, 52 B). Only the ruler philosopher in harmony with the gods could provide a good government. The virtues conquered by

Now that Themistius’ ideas have been summarized, the notion of Royalty of Emperor Julian follows.

  It is worth remembering that Against the Galilaeans, or Against the Christians, was written soon after the conflict of Julian and the curials of Antioch. 5   My translation 4

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My translation.

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Neoplatonics were the most special ones. In this sense, according to Julian himself:

divine monarchy of Constantinus and Constantius and the reaction of Julian would be harsh indeed.

‘... Thanks to our studies, every man is able to overcome himself, even if lacking completely of natural qualities; however, a man dowered by nature and who has received a proper education from our teachings – a gift sensibly given by the gods – throws himself to the light of knowledge, becomes an interpreter of a kind of constitution and either makes enemies flee, or conquers a great extension of land or sea, and hence is an heroic man.’ (Against the Galilaeans, 229 B).

As we can observe, the figure of the emperor Julian is quite complex and his work was not only a failed attempt of restoration of Paganism, but also that one which launched the bases of a political philosophy combined with a theology that establishes the basis for the elaboration of a political theory about the basileia (Hidalgo de la Vega 1995, 227). As a political character bearer of philosophical culture, Julian creates a new relationship with Roman citizens within a political atmosphere in which the inhabitants of the empire should not be seen as servants. The Prince also prizes the roots of classic culture, reformulating and updating them, in that its values also receive additional concepts such as the influence of the oriental mysteries. It is an attempt at improving man, who is imbued with the philosophical values of Plotinus, Porfirius and Iamblichus, this last one being the character who most influenced the thinking of Julian. Therefore, his Neoplatonism, or his Hellenism typical of the fourth century AD, is not only imbued with the values of the classic philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, but also takes into account the practice of rituals of the occult and the mysteries. All these elements are intimately connected to the notion of civitas of Julian – an architecture of citizenship inserted in the cultural values of his time.

Julian’s fascination with the Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius is understandable: the philosopher of the fourth century AD looked for an earlier model, and Marcus Aurelius was a symbol that inspired him. In fact, there were some points in common between the Stoic theory of Marcus Aurelius and the Neoplatonic theory of Julian: the desire for perfection, the approaches to human relationships and some political points of view. One should nonetheless not forget the political and philosophical (or better, political and cultural) objectives and ideas of Princeps in Julian regarding his own reality. In this way, Julian’s Hellenism was much more complex and reached a strength that the Paganism of the former times of the empire did not have. His Hellenism comprised very heterogeneous elements. Undoubtedly influenced by Plato and Neoplatonism, Julian conceived Paideia as a long-term process in which men individually, or the empire generally, should be connected to an objective towards perfection, what he identified as episteme. Therefore, episteme meant to Julian the salvation of the soul. Regarding the political and cultural aspects, the episteme coincides with the acquisition of a precise knowledge that expresses the happiness of the State and only a governor with such characteristics could accomplish such deed.

It is interesting to point out that Julian was educated within Aryan Christianity. Strong evidence leads me to believe that his conversion had some connection to a previous preparation for his arrival at the imperial power. Practically all those who occupied high administrative positions in the empire, mainly the emperor, were prepared within a philosophy and a mystical thinking characteristic of late Roman society. Julian embraced his political cause as if he participated in a militant Hellenism against Christianity. In fact, such political evidence of his philosophy indicates that, at that time, there were two different views of the world under the integration of the Roman Empire.

The happiness of the State would only take place by strengthening the so-called imperial cells (the cities). The notion of individual and citizen should be restored and, according to the emperor, should be consolidated by its active practice in the city. In such a case, the municipal curias, following this aim, should initiate such work, respecting the diversities and individualities of the citizens. Collective welfare could only be built in such a way.

In his Letter to Themistius, Julian reflects on royalty and on royalty’s bond to a divine nature, and he attempts to define the perfect man for the government. The letter consists of a political manifesto in which Julian attributes to its content a precise and intellectual meaning of action. Therefore, Julian debates with Themistius (Julian, Letter to Themistius, 260 D, 261 A-B-C):

Based on this explanation, I disagree with Dvornik (1955, 73) when he states that the model of royalty in Julian is related to a reactionary movement. The emperor indeed took inspiration from the model of royalty of the Roman Princedom. My point of view is in accordance with the enlightenments of Isabela Labriolla (1984, 123) when she states Dvornik does not respect the abstraction of the image that Julian had drawn of royalty, for the emperor would never have been inspired by the sources of Hellenistic political theories: the cut Dvonik recognizes between the

‘The duty to reign is beyond human powers ... Aristotle stated: ‘It seems that he who professes the government of reason indeed prefers the government of God, but he who professes the government of man is adding a rudimentary element to the idea of government. Desire is a savage beast and passion corrupts even the best among men ... Law is reason without desire ... you can notice that the philosopher clearly seems to suspect and disapprove of human 224

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nature.’6 (Julian, Letter to Themistius, 260 D, 261 A-B-C)

What seems to make sense is that Julian clearly exposed his notion of royalty to Themistius through an argumentative process as a Hellenist polititian while he was Caesar, and in the end of the letter as Augustus, Julian presented the theoretical conclusion of his government program concerning the political unity of the Roman Empire, attempting to submit Themistius to his political theology. It seems that from this moment on there is no more argumentation (267 A-B):

In that case, the emperor shows he is entirely against the idea of a sovereign as a living law, that is, the idea of theocracy and supreme power proclaimed at the time of Constantinus. Thus, his discordance in relation to the ideas of Themistius is clearly apparent. Concluding Remarks

‘My God grants me the happiest fortune possible and wisdom to match my fortune! For now I think I need assistance from God above all, and also about you philosophers by all means in your power, since I have proved myself your leader and champion in danger. But should it be blessings greater than of my furnishing and than the opinion that I now have of myself should be granted to men by God through my instrumentalist you must not resent my words. For being conscious of no good thing, save this only, that I do not even think that I possess the highest talent, and indeed have naturally none, I cry aloud and testify that you must not expect great things of me, but must entrust everything to God. For thus I shall be free from responsibility for my shortcomings, and if everything turns out favorably I shall be discrete and moderate, not putting my name to the deeds of other men, but giving God the glory for all, as is right it is to Him that I shall myself feel gratitude and I urge all of you to feel the same’. (Julianus, Letter to Tehemistius, 267 A-B)

Considering the explanations above, it is possible to realize the differences between the thinking of the two authors. In order to complement the theme approached in this paper, it is necessary to mention some characteristics that are part of the document Letter to Themistius and other important characteristics of the relationship between the philosophers. One of the aspects that call attention in the relationship between Julian and Themistius is the fact that both dedicated themselves to the survival of Hellenism and the best way to manage such Hellenism. According to Brauch (1993, 80-81), Themistius would have had a quite cordial relationship with Julian during his youth and, mainly, when he was the Caesar after Constantius II. Moreover, Themistius would have advised Constantius to invite Julian to be his advisor. Concerning Julian, it appears he respected and admired the philosopher who was probably Prefect of Constantinople at the time he was emperor. In opposition to Dragon (1968, 20-25) and Daly (1983, 204), both sharing the idea that there was rupture between Julian and Themistius during his emperor phase due to their divergent notions of royalty, and because Themistius had been a man of trust to Constantius II, Brauch (1993, p.98) offers another thesis about the issue: when Julian became chief of the State, Themistius was already an influential figure within the imperial court, and because he was responsible for the link between Constantius and Julian, the last Prince would have granted him a prominent position in his governmental staff.

Maybe this is another way of interpreting the Letter to Themistius.

Acknowledgements:

Supporting this idea, I add the fact that Letter to Themistius would have been written between AD 355 and 356, a time when Julian was Caesar (Bradbury 1987, 250-251). Nonetheless, I agree with Barnes and Brauch (1981, 187-189) that the last paragraphs would have been written during the first year of his period as emperor, when Julian would have openly declared his Paganism and his political and philosophical proposal.

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I would like to thank Iulo Feliciano Afonso for the English editing of this paper.

My translation.

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References Documents Julian, 1982, Contra los Galileos. Cartas y Fragmentos. (Madrid: Editorial Gredos). Julian, 1924-1964, Oeuvres completes, (Paris: Les Belles Lettres). Julian, 1913-1949, The Works of the Emperor Julian, (Cambridge: the Loeb Classical Library). Julian, 1979, Discursos, (Madrid: Editorial Gredos). Themistius, 1995, Discorsi, (Torino: Unione Tipográfico Editrice Torinee). Modern Literature Alonso–Nuñez, J.M., 1974, ‘Política y Filosofia en los Cesares de Juliano’, Hispania Aniqua 4, pp. 315-320. Athanassadi, P., 1993, ‘Persecution and response in late paganism: the evidence of Damascius’, Journal of Roman Studies, 113, pp. 1-79. Athanassadi, P., 1992, Julian. An intellectual biography, (Routledge: London). Barnes, T.D. and Vander Spoel, J., 1981, ‘Julian and Themistius’, Greece, Rome and Byzantine Studies, 28, 2, pp. 187-189. Bidez, J., 1965, La vie de l’empereur Julien, (Paris: Les Belles Lettres). Bradbury, S., 1987, ‘The date of Julian’s letter to Themistius’, Greece, Rome and Byzantine Studies, 28, 2, PP. 235-251. Brauch, T., 1993, ‘The prefect of Constantinople for 362 AD: Themistius’, Byzantion, LXIII, pp. 37-78. Brauch, T., 1993, ‘Themistius and the emperor Julian’, Byzantion, LXIII, pp. 78-115. Candau, J. M. et al., 1988, ‘Teocracia y ley: la imagen de la realeza en juliano el apostata’, in J. M. Candau et al. La imagen de la realeza en la Antigüedad, (Madrid: Editorial Colóquio). Carvalho, M. M., 1996, ‘Política e cidade na filosofia mística do imperador Juliano’, História, 15, pp. 215-229. Criscuolo, U., 1986, ‘Giuliano e l’ellenismo. Conservazione e Riforma’, Orpheus, 7, pp. 220-236. Dayly, L.J., 1983, ‘Themistius refusal of magistracy’, Byzantion, 53, pp. 164-212. Downey, G., 1955, ‘Education and public problems as seen by Themistius’ Transactions and proceedings of the Philological American Association, 86, pp. 291-307. Downey, G., 1955, ‘Philantropia in religion and statecraft in the fourth century after Christ’, Historia, 4, pp. 198-208. Downey, G., 1957, ‘Themistius and the defense of Hellenism in the fourth century’, Harvard Theological Review, 50, pp. 259-274. Downey, G., 1957, Education in the Christian Roman Empire: Christian and pagan theories under Constantine and his successors’, Speculum, 32, pp. 48-61. Dragon, G., 1968, ‘L’empire romain d’orient au IVeme siècle et les traditions politiques de l’Hellénisme. Le temoignage de Thémistios’, Travaux et mémoires de centre de recherches de l’histoire et civilisation byzantines, 3, pp. 1-242. Dvornick, F., 1966, Early christian and byzantine political philosophy. Origins and background, (Washington: Harvard University Press). Dvornick, F., 1955, ‘The Emperor Julian’s reactionary ideas on kingship’, in: Late classical and medieval studies in honor of Alliert Mathias Friend Jr, (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Hidalgo de la Vega, M.J., 1995, El intelectual, la realeza y el poder político en el imperio Romano, (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca). Labriola, I., 1986, ‘In margine al secondo panegirico a Constanzo’, in B. Gentile (ed.), Giuliano imperatore. Atti del convengo della S.I.S.A.C, (Urbino: Edizioni Quatro Venti di Anna Veronesi). Sayas, J.J., 1972, ‘Aportaciones de Temístio a determinados problemas imperiales’, Hispania Antiqua, II, pp. 35-54. Silva, G.V., 2003, Reis, santos e feiticeiros. Constâncio II e os fundamentos místicos da basiléia: 337-361, (Vitória: Edufes). Vander Spoel, J., 1995, Themistius and the imperial court: oratory, civic duty and paidéia from constantius to Theodosius, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press).

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Religion, identity and conflict in the Later Roman Empire: Constantine and the struggle for the Dominium Mundi (312-324 AD) Gilvan Ventura da Silva

Espírito Santo Federal University, Brazil

Introduction Nowadays, one of the most interesting social phenomena that bring about curiosity and at the same time fear is, undoubtedly, the increase of religious intolerance in several countries throughout the world. Such increase is not only the outcome of a clash between rival believers who are ready to employ violence to defend their understandings about the sacred and the divinity, but implies, little by little, a steady religious interference in the political field. As Clifford Geertz (2001, 157) proposed a few years ago, what we can observe in the contemporary world is a ‘religious reconfiguration of politics’, that is, the recovery of ancient religious values in order to create the public agenda. On the whole, this process takes place by means of a literal understanding of the commandments transmitted by some sacred texts, for instance, the Koran and the Talmud. As we know, the bonds between politics and religion used to be very tight before the French Revolution, which was responsible for halting the influence of religion on government, at least in the West. Nevertheless, after some centuries of dissociation, politics and religion are blended once more, and this situation is complex enough to lead us to investigate the relationship between them in the Later Roman Empire. The option for focusing our attention on this specific period of Roman history is not by chance. Actually, it was at the end of the Ancient World, in the context of a whole change of Roman society, that the increase of religious intolerance and the deflagration of authentic religious wars took place. Bearing this in mind, we aim to explore in this chapter a rather important feature regarding the political action of Constantine, the first emperor who publicly embraced the Christian faith: the construction of his image as a divine envoy entrusted with the mission of defeating the enemies of God, such as Maxentius and Licinius. In this connection, we intend to analyze how the Fourth Century Christian writers interpreted Constantine’s struggle for dominium mundi, sole control over the Roman Empire, as a military campaign in defense of the Church, showing us clearly how much in the Later Empire matters of faith were conceived as political ones. Victory on the Milvian Bridge Constantine’s victory over Maxentius in the battle of the Milvian Bridge on 28 October AD 312 and his triumphant

arrival in Rome the day after assuredly represent decisive events to the history of the Later Roman Empire. Maxentius’ defeat and the occupation of Rome must be seen as a very important step to the definitive consolidation of a sovereign who had begun his political career as a usurper. Constantine was elevated by the army to the rank of Augustus in AD 306, on the day after the death of his father, Constantius Chlorus, a fact that produced serious embarrassment for Galerius, the senior tetrarch then. Confronted with the pretensions of Constantius Chlorus’ heir, Galerius found no way but to include Constantine in the tetrarchs’ college, although in the condition of a Caesar, which meant only a provisional solution to the problem. During the six years elapsed between Constantine’s ascension and the battle of the Milvian Bridge, the West was divided between two emperors: Constantine and Maxentius, followed by the inopportune presence of Maximian, Maxentius’ father. Maximian, dissatisfied for having been compelled by Diocletian to retire in AD 305, decided to return to the political scene, making the situation even more complicated than it already was. The outcome of this process was, on the one hand, the death of Maximian, charged with conspiracy and executed by order of Constantine. On the other hand, it was the victory of Constantine in AD 312, when he started ruling the Italic Peninsula and North Africa, regions up to then ruled by Maxentius. Moreover, the winner was now settled in Rome, the core of the Empire, and therefore he was able to gain the support of the senatorial elite and the people of the city to fulfill his intention of emulating Diocletian as the leader of the imperial college. Indeed, we know that shortly before the battle of the Milvian Bridge, the population of the city, gathered in the Circus Maximus to celebrate Maxentius’ quinquennalia, had already offered support to Constantine by declaring him invictus (De mort. persec. 44, 7). Soon after the triumphant arrival of Constantine in Rome, the Senate paid homage to the new emperor, dedicating a gold crown and one statue to him, giving him the right of being called senior Augustus. Owing to this title, the authority of Constantine was greater compared to the authority of his colleagues, Maximin Daza and Licinius. As the senior Augustus, Constantine came to bear the primi nominis tituli, that is to say, the privilege of inscribing his name at

Gilvan Ventura da Silva

the top of public documents, a right that he did not delay in exploring (Barnes 198, 46). Since then, Constantine started strengthening his position as senior Augustus, which soon led him to erase the memory of Maxentius through an efficient operation of damnatio memoriae. Said operation included at least three important actions: a) the conversion of the monumental basilica erected by the deceased emperor into a building for Constantine; b) the dissolution of the Praetorian Guard; and c) the building of a church on the Caelian Hill, the meeting place of the eqüites singulares, Maxentius’ elite troops (Curran 2002, 76). At the same time, Constantine forged an alliance with Licinius to eliminate Maximin Daza, whose obstinacy in going ahead with the religious policy of the Tetrarchy represented then a point of evident instability inside the imperial political system. This effort to cease definitely the persecution of Christians shows us that the bonds between the emperor and the Christian community were consolidated, not only due to the religious belief of Constantine, but also due to the recognition of the political support the Church could offer him. In fact, the Church was then a precious ally for an emperor whose main purpose was to achieve dominium mundi.

emperors between AD 312 and AD 324, when the rise of Christianity definitively took place. In search of the dominium mundi In the West, Constantine began to show from AD 312 onwards an increasing kindness towards the Church. He was initially aided by Licinius, who followed in the East the proclamation of tolerance delivered by Galerius before his death in AD 311. The agreement between the two emperors about the official position to be held regarding the Christians is clearly expressed in the letters Licinius sent to the Eastern provinces’ governors in June AD 313, when he took possession of Nicomedia, soon after Maximin Daza’s death. In those letters Licinius mentioned a meeting with Constantine in Milan in February AD 312, when they set up the religious policy to be implemented henceforth (De mort. persec. 48, 1-2). Although Licinius himself was a heathen, the enlargement of his control over the Eastern regions was followed by a purge of everyone who, either direct or indirectly, had supported Maximin Daza’s religious persecution. In this purge were executed Valeria and Prisca (Diocletian’s daughter and wife, respectively); two men named Culcianus and Theoctenus, responsible for many cruelties against the Eastern Christians, and some sorcerers and prophets from Antioch (HE, IX, 11, 4-5). Licinius’ pro-Christian performance is recognized by Eusebius of Caesarea (HE, IX, 11, 9) who, celebrating Maximin Daza’s death, mentions that Constantine and Licinius, ‘having first of all cleansed the world of hostility to the Divine Being, conscious of the benefits which He had conferred upon them, showed their love of virtue and of God, and their piety and gratitude to the Deity, by their ordinance on behalf of the Christians’. From this point of view Licinius did not mean any apparent menace to the Church by the middle of AD 313. However, the way Constantine behaved in the West in relation to the Church would soon completely alter the situation, leading to the breakout of a new civil war.

The battle of the Milvian Bridge meant an unprecedented turning-point in the position occupied by Christianity inside the religion system of the Roman Empire. From a symbolic viewpoint, the resounding defeat of Maxentius was surrounded by several references extracted from the Jewish-Christian tradition. Maxentius’ fall occurred under the auspices of a very mighty apotropaic symbol, the Chi-Ro, set on the legions’ shields by command of Constantine after a supernatural vision so instructed him (De mort. persec. 44, 5, 6). Maxentius, like a Roman incarnation of the Egyptian pharaoh, was swallowed by the waters of the Tiber, drowned in his own stubbornness and arrogance, while Constantine, the new Moses, could now guide his people toward a better future, free from the yoke that oppressed them (HE, IX, 9, 5-8). When he came in the city, Constantine refused to pay reverence to Jupiter Capitolinus for the victory, doubtless recognizing his debt to the Christian god, in whose service he would henceforth be with growing fervor. Constantine’s engagement with the Church and his uncountable pro-Christian actions soon would enable him, by means of skillful and substantial propaganda, to present himself as the main defender of the Christian cause, within a binary logic that is an essential part of ideological and political conflicts. In this undertaking, Constantine first clashed with Maximin Daza, to whom he wrote, demanding the cessation of the persecution of Christians in the Eastern territories. Afterwards, he attacked Licinius, who was converted into the new scourge of God and mankind. For the sake of Christians, Constantine began a truly religious war. Eventually, the last hindrance to the reunification of the orbis romanorum by Constantine, that is to say, Licinius, was removed for the glory of God and His humble servant, the Emperor himself. In the light of such facts, it is necessary to understand the motives involved in the confrontation between the emperors. This leads us to reflect on the political actions adopted by both

The background of growing hostility that would soon put Licinius and Constantine irremediably in opposite sides was a religious one, for a good deal of Constantine’ authority was founded on Christianity. By this reason, the bishops and the Christian communities were an essential basis for Constantine’s policy. Licinius, despite having at first adhered to the policy of tolerance towards Christians defended by Constantine, followed such a course of action for being inclined to the concordia imperii. Liciniu’s behavior implied the end of the terror set in motion against Christians and not any adherence to Christianity, unlike in Constantine’s case. Licinius, it is true, prayed along with his troops to the Christian god before the decisive battle against Maximin Daza in AD 313. This fact, according to Lactantius (De mort. persec. 46, 3-7), occurred by the command of an angel that would have revealed the prayer to the emperor in a dream. Nevertheless, Licinius never made a public declaration of faith in favor of Christianity throughout his political life. In this context, he rid himself of adopting in his territories the measures in favor of the Church taken by Constantine (Pietri 1995, 202). Licinius’ 228

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religious option was always paganism, despite what one could conclude through the reading of Lactantius. As a matter of fact, Lactantius published his De mortibus persecutorum soon after the meeting of AD 312 in Milan, thus before the beginning of the hostilities between the two emperors, which led the author to assume a respectful tone toward Licinius (Drake 2002, 196). However, Eusebius of Caesarea, writing after Constantine’s triumph over Licinius, does not hesitate to describe Licinius as a renegade of Christianity, one who was honored by God with the rule of the empire but who unfortunately did not know how to keep his faith in Him, how to resist the influence of demons (HE, X, 1-2). In any case, it is also possible that Licinius had agreed with the end of the persecution against the Christians in view of the treaty he kept with Constantine aiming at defeating Maximin Daza, who refused to follow in his territories Galerius’ edict of tolerance. Thus, Licinius’ benevolence towards the Christians could represent a new policy, completely different from the political action adopted by Maximin Daza.

the iconographic repertoire. In a series of gold and silver coins minted by Ticinum’s atelier and destined to celebrate the decenallia, the emperor is shown wearing a helmet on which is inscribed the Chi-Ro, Christ’s monogram (Bruun 1996, 36). The association of Constantine with Christianity is equally expressed through the churches he built with public money, especially those erected in Rome, such as the Lateran basilica, raised in the surroundings of Caelian Hill, the church of San Lorenzo Fuori Le Mura and St. Peter’s basilica, the most spectacular example of Christian architecture in Rome (Curran 2002, 93). All of these measures allowed Constantine to exploit his image as the defender of the Christians when the hostilities with Licinius began. Constantine’s inclination to maintain at any cost his preeminence over his Eastern colleague was strengthened in AD 315, when Constantia, his sister, gave birth to Licinius’ son, named Licinianus, an event that made dynastic succession even more complicated. Attempting to keep the situation under control, Constantine proposed to nominate as Caesars Bassianus, his brother-in-law, along with Crispus, a son from his first marriage to Minervina. Taking as reference the tetrarchic system, Constantine in so doing could keep Licinius out of the dispute for room in the imperial college (Barnes 1991, 66). The proposal, however, was declined by Licinius. Thenceforth the relations between the emperors became tense, so that Constantine’s numismatics soon abandoned any reference to Licinius (Pietri 1995, 201). The Origo Constantini, a pro-Constantine source of the Fourth century, informs us that Licinius would have approached Bassianus intending to convince him to murder Constantine. Once the plot is uncovered, Bassianus is executed, while Senecius, his brother and accomplice in the cabal, seeks sanctuary in the East, where he is sheltered by Licinius, who refuses to hand him over to Constantine. In the same passage, the Origo mentions that Licinius would have ordered the destruction of the Constantine’s statues in Emona, a small city close to the frontier between West and East, an act that would have been equivalent to an authentic declaration of war (Or. Const. V, 15).

Constantine became a Roman emperor already as a Christian, taking in a few years a series of important legislative measures in favor of Christianity. In AD 313, in a letter sent to the proconsul of Africa, the emperor decreed the restitution of the Christians’ properties, which had been confiscated by the fiscus. At this point, he announced to Caecilian, the bishop of Carthage, the donation of one hundred and twenty folles to be given away to the Church’s beneficiaries, an unprecedented fact in the history of the relationship between Christianity and the imperial government (Pietri 1995,198). In the same year, Constantine transferred to the churches the public donations conceded to the pagan temples and released the Christian priests from the munera, a privilege commonly reserved for some specific categories of people, such as athletes, physicians and professors. Before the Christian clergymen, the only religious category that had enjoyed such prerogative was the Egyptian pagan priests, due to a local tradition (Beard 2004, 367). Through a law of either AD 318 or AD 321, the secular judges were obliged to recognize the Episcopal jurisdiction. In AD 321 Constantine decided that the dies Solis, Sunday, would be an official holiday, so that the bishops could gather the entirety of their flocks. At the same time, he determined that the arrangements of a devisor in favor of the Church would be valid, even if the devisor did not follow customary legal practices (Pietri 1995, 212).

On 8 October AD 316 Constantine invades Licinius’ territories and attacks him at Cibalae, on the way to Sirmium. Afterwards, he confronts Valens, dux nominated Caesar by Licinius with the intention of helping him in the war effort. Unfortunately, the Licinius’ strategy fails and Valens falls before Constantine at Adrianople. However, Licinius is skillful enough to prevent Constantine from progressing towards Byzantium and then to Nicomedia, which obliges the aggressor to accept peace. The pact included the annexation by Constantine of all of Europe except Thrace, Moesia and Scythia Minor, the overthrow of Valens and the appointment of Crispus and Constantinus, Constantine’s sons, as Caesars together with Licinianus. On 1 March AD 317, at Serdica, the Caesars’ investiture took place and the truce between the Augusti was celebrated, but not for long (Barnes 1981, 67).

Alongside those measures, very important for the Church’s configuration as an organization provided with full juridical competence, Constantine carried on with his actions to build his image as an emperor supported by the divinity. This divine aid is well represented by the huge statue erected in his homage in Maxentius’ basilica, holding in its right hand the ‘salutary sign of the cross’ (VC, I, 40, 1), identified by Barnes (1981, 46) as the labarum, the Christian banner employed by Constantine to defeat Maxentius in AD 312, at the gates of Rome. Already in AD 315 the Christian themes had been undeniably included in 229

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Licinius, afraid that the Eastern Christians would prefer to be ruled by Constantine (Soz. I, 7, 1), decided to adopt a set of restrictive measures against Christianity, of which Eusebius (VC I, 51-54) tells us. The emperor began expelling Christians from the palace. After that, he forbade the displacement of the bishops and councils, as well as the celebration of cults by men and women together. The bishops were allowed to teach only men, and women should be taught by members of the same sex. Licinius also determined that the Christian cults must be performed only outside the city walls, in order not to desecrate the urban space, and those Roman officials had to make sacrifices to the imperial gods. Next Licinius suppressed the clergy’s privileges, enrolling priests in the urban curia and forcing them to perform public works (Barnes 1981, 71). Furthermore, he restored the power of provincial governors to punish Christians, although nothing comparable to the time of Diocletian, Galerius and Maximin Daza. Among the martyrdoms under Licinius, we found the execution of Basil, bishop of Amaseia, in Pontus and the forty martyrs of Sebaste. The reason for such executions may be Licinius’ fear of the disloyalty of the church of Armenia, whose Christianization had begun in AD 314. In AD 321 a Persian embassy had visited Constantine, a fact that, from Licinius’ point of view, could mean a solution of commitment with the Eastern Church and, consequently, the possibility that all Christian communities in Armenia would come to declare their loyalty to Constantine in the case of a new war (Barnes 1981, 72). The martyrs’ execution certainly made the situation between the emperors even more tense. In his domain, Licinius prepared himself for war, devising heavy measurements against taxpayers on the occasion of the census of 321 (VC, I, 55, 1-2). The Moesia invasion by the Sarmatians in AD 323 provided Constantine the excuse to cross Licinius’ territories. Licinius responded by forbidding in the Eastern provinces the circulation of coins commemorating the victory over the Sarmatians. The hostilities were thus officially open once again. The denouement of the war was Constantine’s victory at the battle of Chrysopolis, on 18 September AD 324. Defeated, Licinius was compelled to resign from the imperial government. Owing to an intercession of Constantia and Eusebius of Nicomedia, Constantine decided to spare the life of Licinius, who nevertheless was killed the following year.

allow us to understand in greater detail Constantine’s effort to make the war against Licinius a campaign in defense of the reestablishment of Christianity, bringing about an unfavorable image of Licinius that would be later shared by the pagans. Such is the case of Aurelius Victor (41.5), who imputes to Licinius atrocities committed against innocent slaves and philosophers. In turn, the anonymous author of the Epithome (XLI) states that Licinius was of an execrable avarice and a fractious spirit, especially against welleducated people. The most scathing attack against Licinius would be carried on by Eusebius of Caesarea, the ‘prince’ of the Christian intellectuals, on behalf of Constantine. The opposition between the emperors is described by Eusebius (VC I, 49, 1-2) in the following terms: ‘[Constantine] was informed that a certain savage beast was besetting both the church of God and the other inhabitants of the provinces, owing, as it were, to the efforts of the evil spirit to produce effects quite contrary to the deeds of the pious emperor: so that the Roman empire, divided into two parts, seemed to all men to resemble night and day; since darkness overspread the provinces of the East, while the brightest day illumined the inhabitants of the other portion. And whereas the latter were receiving manifold blessings at the hand of God, the sight of these blessings proved intolerable to that envy which hates all good, as well as to the tyrant who afflicted the other division of the empire’. The polarization that is created here is between light and darkness, spread over two distinct territories. On the one hand, there is the East, governed by a sovereign who incarnates the image of evil, which approximates him to Satan, with his attacks against human beings in an attempt to affront God. For this reason, Eusebius describes Licinius in another passage of VC (II, 1, 2) as a ‘twisting snake’ [...] ‘breathing wrath and menace of war with God’. On the other hand, there is the West, where light shines through the action of an emperor who, resembling the sun, illuminates the entire surface of the orbis romanorum, thus being able to gather, from a central position, the complete set of imperial territories (VC, II, 19, 1). This is a result of the straightforward intercession of God, who acts to aid the Eastern people, sending them Constantine, the great lantern that suppresses the darkness of the night (VC, II, 2, 3). In this way, Constantine presents himself as a divine envoy with the task of freeing the Eastern population, subdued by Licinius, the incarnation of evil. To accomplish this Constantine makes use of a powerful saving and apotropaic symbol, the labarum, set in front of his whole force of cavalry and infantry (VC, II, 3, 2).

Fighting for faith The interpretation of the anonymous author of the Origo of the steps that led to the irreversible opposition between the emperors is frankly favorable to Constantine. However, we cannot forget the testimony of Zosimus (II, XVIII, 1), who frees Licinius from any responsibility for the civil war, ascribing it to Constantine’s desire to take possession of his rival’s territory. In addition, in early AD 321, Constantine decided, along with Crispus, to seize the consulate, an openly unilateral attitude that demanded from Licinius a similar response. Of course the eruption of hostilities between the emperors resulted from mutual offenses, but we have no way of determining if one deserves more blame than the other. Yet the remaining contemporary accounts

The labarum is the Christian standard that in the Fourth and Fifth centuries tends to substitute the vexillum, one of the oldest pagan military emblems, in the official iconography of the Later Empire (Grabar 1936, 156). The origin of the labarum is highly controversial, beginning with the very terminology. According to Grégoire (1964), the term 230

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labarum (sometimes spelled laborum) is a neologism established after Constantine, whose etymology must go back to laureum, an incorrect term from the Latin of the barracks employed as a synonym of signum or vexillum, that is, the banners with the imperial symbols that were displayed at the forefront of the legions. The labarum would thus be a specific kind of military banner displayed by Christian emperors from Constantine onwards. The insignia was made according to the traditional patterns of the Roman vexilla. Over a crosslike frame was stretched a piece made with purple tissue (suparum) to which an image of the reigning emperor or emperors was affixed. However, two features distinguished the labarum from the previous Roman insignias. First was the presence of the Chi-Ro, Christ’s monogram, on the top, substituting the image of a god or that of an animal (e.g., the eagle) or a wreath. In the second place is its extreme wealth, since the Constantinian labarum was covered with precious stones and bore gold medallions with the image of the emperor and his family. The oldest surviving literary description of the labarum is provided by Eusebius of Caesarea (VC, I, 31). According to him, the banner would have been revealed to Constantine in a dream by Christ himself, at nightfall on the day when the emperor and his troops witnessed a splendid vision in the sky of a cross-shaped trophy, accompanied by the expression Hoc signo victor eris. In the same dream, Christ would have commanded Constantine to take the standard as a protection against his enemies exactly when the emperor came to expel Maxentius from Rome.

it, and he had withdrawn, and resigned all charge of the standard, he was struck in the belly by a dart, which took his life. Thus he paid the penalty of his cowardice and unfaithfulness, and lay dead on the spot: but the other, who had taken his place as the bearer of the salutary standard, found it to be the safeguard of his life. For though he was assailed by a continual shower of darts, the bearer remained unhurt, the staff of the standard receiving every weapon. It was indeed a truly marvelous circumstance, that the enemies’ darts all fell within and remained in the slender circumference of this spear, and thus saved the standard-bearer from death; so that none of those engaged in this service ever received a wound.’ Protected by the miraculous powers of the labarum, Constantine invaded Licinius’ territories with the certainty of victory. The same had taken place in AD 312, during the battle of the Milvian Bridge. The labarum, a symbol revealed by the very divinity, is thus converted to a magical tool managed by the emperor in his campaign against Licinius. As a typical apotropaic symbol, the labarum represents the conjunction of heaven and earth, the relationship established between the emperor and the Logos. In this connection, the labarum is an important symbolic resource at Constantine’s disposal to achieve his sole control over the empire. Because of it, the magical powers of the labarum receive special attention in Eusebius’ account of the campaign of AD 324. Blandishing the labarum, Constantine is able to defeat Licinius, who is described not only as an unfaithful insane man, but also as a wild beast (VC II, 2) responsible for the adoption of illegal and ‘barbarous laws’ against the Eastern Romans (HE, X, VIII, 12), which brings us to a new polarization, this time between nature and culture.

The first iconographic representation of the labarum we possess is found in a series of brass coins minted by the atelier of Constantinople in AD 327in order to celebrate the victory of Constantine in Chrysopolis. On these coins the labarum, as described by Eusebius, appears piercing a dragon, a clear allusion to the Liciniu’s fall (Bruun 1966, 64). In such a context the labarum is employed as a symbol of victory over the last persecutor of the Church. Eusebius’ description of the final campaign against Licinius in AD 324, included in the Vita Constantini, contains several references to the magical powers ascribed to the labarum. According to the author (VC II, 7-9), Constantine would have beaten Licinius with this magical trophy in this way:

Conclusion From this association of binary elements which is the basis of social representations (Tadeu da Silva 2000, 82), the Christian image of a providential emperor was forged. Through this representation, Constantine became a guardian of the true faith who surpassed the anguish of the present and brought comfort to the people of God. In fact, he was viewed by his contemporaries as an ‘instrument of communion and an agent of social integration’ that settled the basis of a new authority, as generally occurs with heroes (Girardet 1987, 95). From this point of view, the possibility of consolidation of a political order suitable to the worldwide Christian message depended a great deal upon the full Christianization of the imperial role. In this regard, Christianity, as an intolerant creed, always defended the annihilation of paganism and heresy, and to accomplish this task imperial support was indispensable. Adopting an excluding behavior in the face of other beliefs that did not fit their religious doctrine, the Christians could no longer tolerate the existence of an admittedly pagan emperor in the East, at least not while in the West ruled an Augustus who had already embraced the Christian cause.

‘Indeed, wherever this appeared, the enemy soon fled before his victorious troops. And the emperor perceiving this, whenever he saw any part of his forces hard pressed, gave orders that the salutary trophy should be moved in that direction, like some triumphant charm against disasters: at which the combatants were divinely inspired, as it were, with fresh strength and courage, and immediate victory was the result. For he [Constantine] said that once, during the very heat of an engagement, a sudden tumult and panic attacked his army, which threw the soldier who then bore the standard into an agony of fear, so that he handed it over to another, in order to secure his own escape from the battle. As soon, however, as his comrade had received 231

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Moreover, from a political point of view, the countless Christian communities scattered from West to East and the hierarchical structure of the Church, led by the bishops, ecclesiastical leaders more and more committed to the imperial power, implied a remarkable support for an emperor who coveted the dominium mundi, as was the case with Constantine. Although Licinius’ actions after Cibalae caused effective torment to Eastern Christians, what matters is not to determine whether Licinius was then

a real menace to Christianity, but rather to understand the features of the imperial image that was created. Through this image, Constantine, the winner in Chrysopolis, could not only justify his victory over his opponent, but also establish the basis of a new political authority associated with the redefinition of Roman identity. As Girardet (1987, 95) suggests, to recognize the authority that a providential hero comes to hold is, at the same time, to ‘reencounter yourself and reencounter the others’.

References Sources Aurelius Victor, 1975, Livre des Césars. Texte établi et traduit par Pierre Dufraigne. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres). Bruun, P., 1966, The Roman imperial coinage, V. VII. (London: Spink & Son). Épitome, 1846, Traduction nouvelle par M.N.A. Dubois. (Paris: Panckoucke). Eusebius, 1999, Life of Constantine. Translated with introduction and commentary by Averil Cameron and Stuart G. Hall. (New York: Clarendon Ancient History Series). Eusebius, 1932, Ecclesiastical History. Books VI-X. Translated into English by J. E. L. Oulton, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). Lactancius, 1982, Sobre la muerte de los perseguidores. Introducción, traducción y notas de Ramón Teja. (Madrid: Gredos). Origo Constantini, 1996, In: N.C. Lieu, & T. D. Montserrat From Constantine to Julian; Pagan and Byzantine views, (London: Routledge). Sozomène, 1983, Histoire ecclésiastique. Livres I-II. Traduction par A. J. Festugière. (Paris: Du Cerf). Zosime, 1971, Histoire Nouvelle. T. I. Texte établi et traduit para François Paschoud. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres). General works Barnes, T. D., 1981, Constantine and Eusebius, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). Beard, M. et al., 2004, Religions of Rome, V. 1. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Curran, J., 2002, Pagan city and Christian capital; Rome in the fourth century, (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Drake, H. A., 1989, ‘ Policy and belief in Constantine’s ‘Oration to the saints’’. Studia Patristica, V. XIX, pp. 43-51. Drake, H. A, 2002, Constantine and the bishops, (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press). Geertz, C., 2001, Nova luz sobre a Antrolopologia, (Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar). Girardet, R., 1987, Mitos e mitologias políticas, (São Paulo: Cia das Letras). Grabar, A., 1936, L’empereur dans l’art Byzantine, (Paris: Les Belles Lettres). Grégoire, H., 1964., ‘L’étymologie de ‘Labarum’’. Byzantion, t. IV, pp. 477-82. Pietri, Ch., 1995, ‘La conversion: propagande et réalités de la loi et de l’évergétisme’, in: J. M. Mayeur, (ed.) Histoire du christianisme. T. 2. Desclée, p. 189-227. Tadeu Da Silva, T. (ed.), 2000, Identidade e diferença; a perspectiva dos estudos culturais, (Petrópolis: Vozes).

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The literary existence of Polygnotus of Thasos and its problematic utilization in painted pottery studies Pedro Luis Machado Sanches* Doctoral candidate, MAE/USP, Brazil

Introduction The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. The creative or inventive character of art critics is widely recognized. There is little doubt that a critical or epidictic text concerning a picture or a statue is unable to inform us directly about this object because the text informs us about the point of view of the author; it is a report that is partial and inseparable from phantasia1. Even though they attempt to be ‘descriptive’, texts concerning images are always determined by their authors’ judgments. Every writer chooses what to describe, ordering the presentation of the images, showing what is more important or beautiful and what is secondary or inferior. Among many theories that recognize the active posture of the observer can be found, for instance, the connoisseurship of Friedländer (19692), who suggested that the observation of a painting is necessarily intermediated by the temperament of he who observes it and that a painted picture is a fragment of nature seen through the artist’s temperament. Another example is the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty (19843), who recognized that there is no causality or a filial sense between a painting and its interpretations, and, as he affirmed: All the modern history of the painting (...) has a metaphysical meaning’ and ‘in fact, there is no recipe for the visible (Merleau-Ponty 1984, IV). Many unknown factors interfere in the process of formation of speech. These factors are by and large peculiarities of the public and private contexts in which the text was produced, in other words, peculiarities of the *

E-mail address: pedro [email protected].

  Not exactly ‘mental image’ as the concept of phantasia was presented by Aristotle (Treatise of the Soul: 427 b 15 apud Rouveret 1989, 386), but ‘almost-presence’ or ‘imminent visibility’ that resulted in the current concept of imaginary (Merleau-Ponty 1984, ch. II). 2   The original publication appeared in 1946. 3   The original publication appeared in 1963. 1

author’s life. Since it does not seem possible to separate ‘autobiographical’ aspects from the ‘purely descriptive’, and thus to constitute an imponderable ‘ideal description’, for all practical purposes, we can not treat the written word as a simple, unmediated copy of an image, nor can we elevate textual documents to the status of image. Perhaps because of the disappearance of the Greek major wall- or panel-paintings of the century V BC4, still during Antiquity, or perhaps because of the primacy that texts were given over images in the tradition of the Classical Studies (Dugas 19605, 59-72; Sarian 1999), a close relationship between unseen mural paintings and material remains was established by the classical archeologists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries AD. This relationship evidently depends on a great valorization of the ‘art critics’ that bloomed before the total material disappearance of those monumental paintings. Owing to their authors’ having hypothetically been in front of the images, such texts came to play the part of ‘written sources for Greek art’. The ‘written sources’ certainly indicate the doctrines of the arts in Greco-Roman Antiquity, but they do not necessarily present secure knowledge of the paintings. Some of the ancient texts that now are recognized as ‘varieties of art criticism’ (Pollit 1990), or simply as ‘literary criticism’ (Rouveret 1989, 8; Boardman 2001, 190), preserve reasonably detailed descriptions of great paintings. Frequently, these images are attributed to famous artists considered innovators, responsible for ‘significant changes in painting’. Polygnotus of Thasos is one of these famous names and it would not be an exaggeration to say that, in the last 125 years of studies, the ‘great paintings’ of Polygnotus came to represent the most important model for the interpretation of another figurative format that is greatly different from the extensive panels: the Attic redfigured pottery6. 4   Disappearance documented in the text of Sinesius (Epist., 135), approximately betweed AD 370 and 413 and reaffirmed in the modern studies of Pottier (1923?) and Villard (1969), among others. 5   The original publication is from 1937. 6   The main publications include: Robert 1882, 273-289; Buschor 1925, 179-229; Pottier 1926; Löwy 1929; Dugas 1930, ch. I; Christos 1957, 168-226; Arias 1962; Simon 1963, 43-62; Villard 1969; Robertson 1975; Bandinelli 1980; Arias 1984, 145-179; Robertson 1992; Boardman 2001.

Pedro Luis Machado Sanches

The choice of the vases

notion of style. Sometimes, the ‘style’ is understood in a quite wide sense, as a pictorial expression of the ‘Greek spirit’ (Devambez 1944, 104-105); at other times, it is specifically defined as what was ‘peculiar to an individual painter’ (Beazley 1956, apud Whitley 1997, 40). In all cases, the term ‘style’, as well as the terms ‘reflex’ and ‘influence’, does not seem to correspond to any of the categories in which the painting is thought in the ancient texts: those terms are a convention of the modern historiography of art and archaeology.

The vases that are most closely related to Polygnotus are apparently dated from the period in which he would have been active in the Hellenic World. Politically, this period corresponds to the government of Kimon of Athens, a kind of patron of Polygnotus and of other panel painters7, according to the literature. For the modern history of the figurative styles, this period was conventionally called early-classical (Pfuhl 1955, 54; Beazley 1963, 483-984; Pollitt 1976, 49-54, among others). Approximately dated from 479 to 450 BC, the early-classical period is interpreted as one of ‘formation of the classical style’ (Villard 1969, 229) and would have found in Polygnotus of Thasos its ‘dominant personality’ (Dugas 1930, 7).

However, what was attributed to the name Polygnotus of Thasos in the ancient literature seems to help the specialists not only to justify uncommon cases, such as the Niobid Krater or the Penthesilea’s Cup of Antiker Kleinkunst Museum of Munich (inventory: 2688)13, another recurring example, but also to document an individual origin of the rupture with the old mode to figure scenes. Dugas, when affirming the figurative changes of the second quarter of the fifth century BC, recognizes that ‘without a doubt the free-style that breaks out abruptly in the images of the ceramic is originating from the Polygnotan painting’ (Dugas 196014, 52).

In general, the vases related to Polygnotus are Kraters and Cups, among which are some with paintings of ‘Greeks fighting Amazons’8, ‘Greeks against Centaurus’9, and even less frequent scenes such as ‘the Dioskouroi carry off the daughters of Leukippos’10. These scenes were privileged for their iconographies’ coinciding with those that the ancient literature attributed to the paintings of Polygnotus and to his colleagues in the Athenian buildings11.

Just as a ‘Polygnotan painting’ reappears discursively in modern studies, so too appears a ‘Polygnotan style’ (Buschor 1925, 179-213; Arias 1970-1971, 293-6) that determines said kind of painting. The ‘Polygnotan style’ is developed entirely by modern specialists to accomplish the function of ‘delimiting a unit’ of style among the others in successive periods of time15. The precepts of this ‘Polygnotan style’, however, could only be learned in the ‘textual sources,’ properly chosen and interpreted, given that the pictorial works were not preserved. The writings came in first plane; the vases would help in understanding the writings and to accomplish the general objective of ‘supplying a more real image of the great pictorial compositions of the second quarter of the V century [BC]’ (Villard 1969, 240).

However, the theme is not a decisive criterion to associate the descriptions of paintings on walls or panels with the vase-paintings. Among the vases more frequently associated with Polygnotus is the famous Niobid Krater of Louvre (inventory: G341) whose iconography in much of its figures creates doubt and does not correspond precisely to any of the descriptions of murals (McNiven 1989, 192). At least three well-based hypotheses for the same group of figures persist to this day (Denoyelle 1997). In spite of the doubt regarding iconography, the Niobid Krater resulted in a great number of publications that, with greater or lesser enthusiasm, introduce it as a pioneer and exceptional example of the connection with the painted walls. This connection was considered undeniable (Simon 1963) or just a possibility (Boardman 1993), but, effectively, it was constantly reaffirmed since the discovery of this krater in 1880 (Denoyelle 1997).

define such a relationship is influence (French) in Villard (1969) and Prost (1997); influence (English) in Arias 1962 and Robertson 1992. The term reflect (reflet in French) is present in Pottier (1923?), Baron (1972) and Robertson (1992). Villard also presents the notion of ‘echo of the great painting’ (‘un écho de la grande peinture’). In no case does it seem to correspond to any ancient terminology. 13   Francis Prost (1997) synthesizes clearly enough the importance of the anonymous painters to who these vases are attributed (Beazley 1963) to the study of the wall-paintings: ‘Such painters like Penthesilea Painter or Niobid Painter testify this influence of the wall-painting in the way of organizing their battle scenes, of disposing their characters on their mounts, in the overlap or in the daring and suggestive displacements of a general confusion, when creating a pictorial field of many floors that give the impression of successive planes and of depth levels’.

A ‘Polygnotan style’ What seems to matter in determining that a vase like this one is considered a ‘reflex’ of the wall painting or believed to represent the ‘influence’12 of this other art is a certain 7   According to Prost (1997, 28- 29), Kimon was not associated with architects and sculptors in the same way that he was associated with the painters.

  Inventory numbers: Palermo G1283 (Christ 1957, 205; Arias 1962, 356-7; Villard 1969, 240-2), New York 07.286.84 (Arias 1984, p.153; Robertson 1975, 259 & 281), N. York 07.286.86 (Löwy 1929, 10-28; Richter 1958, 90). 8

9   Idem: Florence 3997 (Villard 1969, 273-7; Castriota 1992, 36-7), N. York 07.286.84 (‘neck’ in Baron 1972, 20-45, pl. II, a-b). 10   Idem: London E224 (Boardman, 2001, 98-99), Hope collection 116, now at the Gulbenkian Foundation of Lisbon (Tylliard 1923, 66-68; Rocha-Pereira 1962, 23). 11   See Reinach 1985, ch. I.

 

12

  The original publication is from 1937.   As the function of artistic styles was described and criticized by Kossovitch (2002).

14 15

The most frequently-used term by modern authors to

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The opposite, although less declared, happened at almost the same time: in the presence of an exceptional vase, appeal to the ‘influence of Polygnotus’ evidently aids the interpretation. In this way, the appearance and the quick disappearance of the technique of polychrome figures on white ground vases could be interpreted as an influence of the mural painting (Arias 1962, 17-18; Boardman 1995, 129-133; Robertson 1959, 127-129 and 1982, 81-82), although the colors of the ground and the figures are insufficient to associate this technique directly with the great mural compositions and the way to compose most of these vases is more committed to the previous tradition than to the ‘changes’. (Robertson 1959, 128).

for the establishment of a relationship between vases and texts regarding the mural painting, to try to understand how it is possible to suggest similarity between a painted vase and an absent painting, in other words, a painting not ‘viewed’ but ‘read’ in descriptions and analogies with other painters and other arts. In short, is important to reconsider this archeological project of glimpsing the ‘lost art’ of Polygnotus of Thasos. The painter of ethos The works of Xenophon (approximately 430 to 355 BC) and of Aristotle (384 to 322 BC), for instance, are mentioned in the Polygnotan studies to identify the painter of Thasos as a ‘painter of character’ or a ‘painter of éthos’ (η̉θογράφος). This ancient adjective presents difficulties because we do not have in modern languages an appropriate word for éthos (Pfuhl 1955, 57). Interpretations thus proliferated: some consider éthos the character in a general sense (Pollitt 1976, 49), others, as a ‘noble character’ or ‘ethic character’ (Pfuhl 1955, 57; Arias 1962, 17; Rouveret 1989, 129-135), and there are those who prefer to designate for this term all and any permanent characteristic of the figured personages (Christos 1957, 205), thus differentiating éthos from páthos (‘emotion’), other type of attribute of the soul (psykhé) 19.

The emergence of changes in vascular painting just after the Persian Wars is easily observed but does not seem to have happened in abruptly: it was not a complete rupture with the archaic mode of sketching and painting. In the first place, many vases dated from this period only present a few characteristics that can be recognized as having the ‘influence of the great painting’ (Villard 1969, 232). They are vases that came to be classified as ‘mannerists’16 in analogy to more recent stylistic periods (Boardman 1975, 179). The figurative differences between ‘free-style vases’ and ‘mannerists vases’ were interpreted by Prost (1997) as resulting from the preference of the person who commissioned the vases: those ‘adapted to the new realities and the acquisitions of the democracy’ acquired the free-style vases, the ‘lovers of the traditions and less inclined to concessions’ preferred a style that cultivated respect for the past and opted for the mannerist vases (Prost 1997, 42).

Although it derives from late works from a single century (little time if compared to the great majority of the texts about Polygnotus), the concept of ethographia had limited use in the modern interpretations of the Greek painted ceramic of the fifth century BC It simply resulted in a ‘psychological’ reading of some vases20 performed with ‘greater or lesser lyricism’ by generations of art historians based on details such as ‘the way to figure the eyes’ (Prost 1997, 37). This may be partly due to the absence of references to the painter of Thasos in the text of Xenophon (Memorabilia, III, x, 1-5) and to the brevity of the analogies concerning Polygnotus in the texts of Aristotle (Politics, 1340 to 33; Poetic, 1448 to 1 and 1450 to 23). In fact, to define the painter of Thasos as ethographos it was necessary to associate the two privileged sources: Xenophon brings a clearer notion of ethographia, and Aristote attributes this quality to the Thacian painter21.

Secondly, we see the permanence of traditional or ‘archaic’ manners of representing garments, weapons and countless details in the vases engaged in the ‘new style’ (Boardman 1989, 12-14). The Niobid Krater of the Louvre was considered the best example (Boardman 1989, 12; Denoyelle 1997, 4-6) but cannot be considered a copy of wall-paintings specifically because of these ‘archaic’ manners, since the Greek artists seem to have always enjoyed freedom on their models (Pottier 1926, 3; Devambez 1944, 97) or even because the greatness of a mural would never be summarized in the curved surface of a Krater (Villard 1969, 249)17. Many times the specialists do not indicate the written source that preserved this or that characteristic of the mural painting precisely, just as archaeologists often do not formulate their suppositions and categories explicitly (Childe 196918). It is important, therefore, to review characteristics that allowed

  Some studies do not appear to utilize any of these interpretations. Erika Simon (1963), for example, suggested an ingenious association between the éthos of Polygnotus and the descriptions of the paintings of the Delphic léskhe in Pausanias (GD, X, 25.7-30.9). According to this author, certain figures would form pairs of antithetic character, like of characters’of Homer and Aeschylus (Simon 1963, 48). 20   Ufford (1950, 188-189), Pfuhl (1955, 58-61), Richter (1958, 98) and Villard (196, 244) indicated ‘Penthesilea’s cup’ (Munich 2688) and ‘Tityos’ cup’ (Munich 2689) as good examples of this psychological interpretation. Prost (1997, 37) also indicated a fragmented white ground cup of the National Museum of Athena (15.190, before: 2.439 and Acr. 439). 21   Evidently, this association presents problems. It is not possible to be sure of a correspondence between the éthos of Xenophon and Aristotle’s éthos. In passages of the Poetics (II, 1448 a 1) and of the Politics (1340 a 33), the éthos seems to have a sense of ‘high character’, less inclusive than the general sense of ‘character of the soul’ in Xenophon (Memorabilia, III, x, 1-5). 19

  According to Villard (1969) and Boardman (1975), among the best examples are a Krater of the Museum of Fine Arts of Boston (inventory: 10.185) and a skýphos of Staatliches Museum of Schwerin (lacking an inventory number). 16

  Analogously to the hypothesis of copies in ceramic of reliefs of the Parthenon, John Boardman (2001, 273) concludes: ‘all the evidence is against close copying of major art by vase painters’. 17

18

  The original publication is emerged in 1956.

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A ‘portrait’ painter

to exhaustion in the thousand years that followed the construction of the Portico (textual fonts in Reinach, 1985; on the portico, see Merritt 1970).

Beginning with writings of later authors such as Plutarch (approximately AD 46-120), the painter Polygnotus of Thasos is considered the author of figures that are recognizable just by the lines of the face22. The Plutarchan example is the description of a figure in the ‘Painted Portico’ (Stoá Poikíle) of Athens: the Laodike painted among the prisoners of the Trojan War with the lines of Kimon’s sister (Plutarch, Life of Kimon, 4.5-6).

Secondly, there is another controversial passage of Plutarch that has not always been well received by modern specialists: the accusation that Phidias would have figured himself and Perikles in Atena Parthenos’s shield (Life of Perikles, 31. 2-5). Because of its unusual character, this comment was treated with suspicion by Pollitt (1990, 54, no. 2) and also by Rocha Pereira (1994, 96-97). The Portuguese researcher questions the validity of the ‘prejudices that Plutarch disseminates’ as a source of knowledge of the classical period (Rocha Pereira 1994, 97).

Aeschines (approximately 390 to 315 BC) and Cornelius Nepos (approximately 100 to 25 BC) had claimed that the figure of Miltiades in the Painted Portico could be recognized without the mark identifying the name (respectively in Against Ctesifon, 186 and Miltiades, 6, 3). According to these sources, the Demos forbade the mark identifying the name of Miltiades in the painting, a reward denied because greater homage would thus be paid to the general than to the city (Prost 1997, 33). However, these passages do not allow us to consider the figure of Miltiades as a recognizable figure by the traces of the face, since that which identifies the general seems to be the place that his figure occupied in the composition:

We can, without great adaptations, direct this same question to the description of the image of Kimon’s sister in the text Kimon’s Life: it does not seem pertinent to authorize a text written centuries later to inform us of the similarity between the painting and the physiognomy of the model. This fact does not reduce the importance of Plutarch’s text, since his interpretation shows the appropriation of these painted scenes by men of other eras as documents for learning about the famous personages of their past, which, by itself, increases the importance of the paintings as textual subject.

(...) Who then is the general? To this question you will all answer that is Miltiades. However, his name is not written there. What do you mean? It was not requested them this rewards? Yes, but the people refused it, and instead of his name they permitted that he should be painted in the first plane (protos), exhorting the soldiers. (Against Ctesifon 186).

The first to contribute many improvements to the art of painting The most important literary documents to establish the relationship of Polygnotus to the painted vases, judging by the overabundance of modern references, are Naturalis Historia (Natural History)23 of Pliny the Elder (AD 23-79), and the ‘Eλλάδος Περιηγήσις (Description of Greece)24 of Pausanias (approximately AD 170). We should not hide the fact that nearly 70 other textual citations about the painter of Thasos were collected (Reinach 1985 & Pollitt 1990): small histories, anecdotes, ekhphráseis, small poems and epigrams on the bases of statues. All these sources are short and most appeared centuries after the second quarter of the fifth century. There is a notorious recent effort on the part of some scholars to ‘throw light on the descriptions of Pausanias’ and on other late descriptions through ‘contemporary to Polygnotus’ poetry, as is the case with A. Rouveret (1989), J. P. Barron (1980 apud Rouveret 1989, 150) and D. Castriota (1992, 58-63), who appeal to the poems of Bakilide (odes XVII and XVIII) or to the epigrams of Simonide (Rouveret 1989, chap. III and VI). But these sources, whose legitimacy is in their chronology, do not present, however, the critical and descriptive features that have decisively been recognized in the texts of Pliny and Pausanias.

These passages motivated the interpretation that Polygnotus would have, in some way, also invented the art of the portrait (Robertson 1959, 122). In this point of view, the painter Polygnotus would not be a character painter, nor entirely a painter of physiognomies, but rather a precursor to the painting of physiognomies because he would rarely have created something similar to these figures. For the case of Plutarch and his portrait of Laodike with the lines of Elpinike (said sister of Kimon), some good reasons exist to doubt that the text has certain value for any type of recognition of lost masterpieces. In the first place, there is nothing similar to this commentary, late by about five centuries, in other descriptions of the paintings of the Athenian Portico; it is not part of the ‘interpretative tradition’ of these images, as happens with the attribution and iconography of the paintings, repeated   Francis Prost made a detailed survey of texts and material vestiges of this period that had been interpreted as a ‘similar picture of a real man’ or as a ‘physiognomic agreement between the historical personage and its pictorial representation’ (Prost 1999). In this text, the French archaeologist presented many reasons to doubt that many figures described as recognizable, in fact had this aspect. 22

The Polygnotus of the Natural History is essentially a pioneer. He abandoned the ‘old rigidity’ to paint in a new way, painting translucent garments and half-open mouths (NH, XXXV, 58-9). He also painted using a new technique, 23 24

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Hereafter, ‘NH.’ Hereafter, ‘GD.’

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the encaustic (NH, XXXIX, 122), although this indication, which could be interpreted as an approach between the wall-painting and the characteristic shine of the white ground and red figure vases, is frequently ignored by the specialists.

IX, 4.1) and, with uncommon detail, in Delphi (GD, X, 25-31). Greek painting subsequent to Polygnotus did not receive Pausanias’ attention and, in general, architecture and sculpture captured his attention more that did painting (Heer 1979, 112).

It is not, therefore, a simple biography of the painter but a history of painting as a high genre, where the artist is remembered through his legacy to art: Polygnotus introduced ‘variety to the lines of the face’; Apollodoros, master of Zeuxis, invented the ‘painting of shadows’ (NH, XXXV, 60-1); and Parrhasios was ‘the first to endow the painting of proportions’ (NH, XXXV, 67).

The topography of Pausanias finds in the monuments of his period some discontinuity with the masterpieces of the past. The arts would have declined since the Macedonian conquest in 338 BC, when the Greeks were subdued by foreigners (Heer 1979, 21-23). Pausanias will be shown as angry, for instance, with the Roman habit of suppressing the names on the bases of Greek statues to reuse them in the new local ruler’s cult (GD, I, 2.4 & 18.3). The decadence of the arts and the option of Pausanias of describing the works of the centuries VI, V and IV seem to have motivated the imputation of an interested gaze or a privileged point of view to this author, like the example of Pliny, although the gaze of Pausanias is centered, evidently, on the monuments of the past and the landscape, not the history of painting and painters.

This accumulation of innovations did not necessarily persist in the Roman Imperial period, and Pliny lamented that painting, a formerly illustrious art, was being supplanted by marbles and gold (NH, XXXV, 2-5). The decline of the arts, as well as the decadence of habits, is an important topic of these late texts about the paintings of the V century BC and may have motivated the specialists to believe that the manifested preference for the famous paintings of the past would value the Pliny the Elder’s point of view, in other words, the manifested interest would have made him an attentive observer.

In the Description of Greece, the presentation of the images that remain of a glorious past is aided by local guides (exegetes) and compared to the literature of this same past25. Similarly, Pausanias is inserted in a literary tradition based certainly in Homer and constituted by numerous texts that were not preserved. Poems called Minyad, The Returns (GD, X, 28) and Little Iliad (GD, X, 26.2) are known only through uncomfortable passages for modern readers, such as:

The pompous character of Pliny’s Natural History makes the text valuable also to the researcher who is devoted to establishing a distinction between ‘fine arts’ and ‘crafts.’ Declaredly, part of the classical archeologist’s work, and especially that of the researcher of iconography, seems to consist of establishing this distinction (Robertson 1985, 28-29).

On the river is the boat, with the ferryman at the oars. Polygnotus followed, I think, the poem called the Minyad (GD, X, 28, 1-2)26.

The place of the paintings The similarities between the paintings of Polygnotus described by Pausanias and the painted vases are established in a much more systematic way. One does not find in the Description of Greece a general view of scenes or special peculiarities of a figure, but rather varied aspects of how the scenes seem to be composed, how each figure was placed, and its place in relation to others. Broadly speaking, perhaps it is not inopportune to say that the Polignotus of Thasos of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries AD is, essentially, the artist of the paintings described by Pausanias in six long paragraphs of the description of a small building: the léskhe of Delphi (GD, X, 25-31). All the other texts, besides that of Pliny, operate as complements to this modern tradition of reading the descriptions of Pausanias and as complements to Polygnotus himself, his character.

The description that Pausanias provides of some figures in uncommon postures, with painful expressions or grief on the faces, allowed the interpretation that there would be a ‘pathetic’ of the images of Polygnotus, somehow coincident with the ‘varied lines of the face’ of Pliny (NH, XXXV, 58) and that it could be found in the exceptional vase paintings. The more evident example is once again that of the Niobid Krater, where a figure of a warrior placed below and to the right of Herakles seems to correspond to the description of Hector’s image in Nékyia of Delphi (GD, X, 31.5). The most frequently mentioned characteristic of the Hellados Periegesis by scholars was not, however, this ‘pathetic’ feature of the figures, but rather indications of the placement of each figure in relation to another figure or a group of figures. Pausanias seems to use the words ‘above’ and ‘below’ (GD, X, 29.9) or phrases such as ‘we see painted in the distance...’ (GD, I, 16.1) to indicate different planes or figurative levels (Arias 1962, 16). Some of Pausanias’ figures seem to be ‘interrupted’ or ‘partially hidden’ in accidents of relief, which can be read more appropriately if compared to a passage of the Proverbs of

Evidently, the detail of the descriptions, figure by figure, in the internal walls of the léskhe was decisive, so that the periegesis came to be privileged by specialists, but some details of the text might also have contributed in a decisive way to this choice and, necessarily, to the construction of the image that we have of the painting of the century of Kimon and Perikles.

  In the paragraph 28.7 of the book X (GD), for instance, Pausanias consults exegesis and poems to identify the demon Eurynomus. Without success, he described it just as it was painted. 26   English Translation by W. H. S. Jones. Loeb. 1955. 25

Pausanias attributed to Polygnotus the painting of scenes inside buildings in Attica (GD, I, 15-22), in Boeotia (GD, 237

Pedro Luis Machado Sanches

Zenobius (Reinach 1985, 164-165, no. 153), for a scene of the Painted Portico.

it is summarized, broadly speaking, in the form of complementary landscape (Bandinelli 1980, 184).

The ‘places of the figures’ were interpreted as the best evidence of the abandonment of the hieratic and processional figuration on horizontal lines, in the way of figurate recognized as ‘archaic’ (Arias 1962, 16; Dugas 1930, 20-23; Boardman 2001, 92; Denoyelle 1997, 10-17; Robertson 1982, 79 and 88; Villard 1969, 240 and 246; Pfuhl 1955, 58-60). In some pottery exemplars of the second quarter of the fifth century BC, of which the Niobid Krater27 is once again the best example, the line of the base of the scene, traditionally a straight line that coincided with the inferior limit of the figurative area, was unfolded in irregular curves and planes of several heights (Boardman 2001, 98; Dugas 1930, 20), making possible the association with the mural painting described by Pausanias (Boardman 1989, 14-15; Simon 1963, 52), full of notes about ‘mountainous landscapes’ (Denoyelle 1997, 11) and ‘land indications’ (Bandinelli 1980, 191-192).

The reconstructions The figurative modes described in book X of Pausanias produced, especially in the nineteenth century but also recently, a practice that is quite peculiar to the modern project of catching a glimpse of the lost art of Polygnotus: the reconstructions29. The hypothesis presented through reconstructions takes into consideration pottery exemplars in order not to be completely ‘blind’. However, the enormous and insurmountable ignorance of the originals should be enough to condemn these works, as Bandinelli argued convincingly: To follow the project to which the specialists initially put themselves, to reconstruct in any way the works of the great Greek painters, is considered a poorly put problem and an unattainable result (Bandinelli 1980, 8).

This feature of the descriptions received, in certain studies, the interpretation that Polygnotus would have composed his paintings starting from some depth type (Dugas 1930, 20-21; Richter 1958, 90), not easy to determine precisely because the descriptions are not exhaustive. Endowed or not of depth28, the painting of elevations and of varied planes of figuration was recognized as an ‘opening of space’, establishing a new ‘game of glances’ (Denoyelle 1997) that would be impossible if all the figures were rested on a horizontal line. This would be a flagrant sign of the ‘great change’ that Greek art would be experiencing (Robertson 1982, 87) and the change could then be understood through other characteristics that appeared in the compositions of the period.

The details of the descriptions of Pausanias must be in the origin of this enthusiasm to reconstruct and did not have important parallels. Pollitt (1990), for instance, presented reconstructions in drawings side by side with translations of Pausanias’ periegesis but did not take the risk of repeating the procedure for the works of Zeuxis or Apeles, painters whom we also know only through ancient texts, where they were very celebrated. Conclusion Reduced to a strictly literary existence from approximately the fifth century AD, the ‘great Greek paintings’ did not therefore cease to be taken up repeatedly, nor did their ‘greatness’ cease to be celebrated. The examples of Pliny the Elder were repeated by Leon Battista Alberti (fifteenth century) in his treatise De Pictura30; in the eighteenth century, the accumulation of the Greek painters’ inventions was retaken and reconsidered by the philosophers who thus gained a sense of progress (Kossovitch 2002, 309); and in the 1990s, J. J. Pollitt limited the ‘progress’ in Pliny the Elder’s text in ‘stages of perfection’ that came to constitute an ‘evolutionary system’ for the art of painting (Pollitt 1990).

Robertson, for instance, formulated the hypothesis that ‘the taste for static scenes instead of the action ones’ would be linked to the figuration in varied planes. In the scenes where the figures seem to be at repose, the direction of the glances can be shown to be ‘more emphatic’, since the figures are on different planes (Robertson 1982, 88). The irregular landscape lines were also understood as a distinctive characteristic of the pictorial technique, unlike what occurs with the lines of the face, with the postures and with other characteristics of the figures, also recognized in sculpture (Dugas 1930, 16). Bandinelli (1980) points out precisely the notion that the landscape is essentially painted:

The Polygnotus of Thasos that we knew was adapted to these interpretations of progress or evolution, supposedly based on ancient texts but evidently proceeding from a modern historicist decoupage-like reconstruction. The painter carries out in this interpretative tradition the role of a ‘pioneer’, of ‘celebrity’ and, with greater license, of ‘dominant personality’. Except for some notable comparisons with relief art (Picard 1937; Denoyelle 1997;

In sculpture, the landscape does not find expression, except through the mediation of the painting; it only appears in the relief, conditioned to be diffused firstly in painting and   Denoyelle (1997) comments on the specific case of the ‘Niobid Krater’ in both faces. It is necessary to note here that Charles Dugas, almost seventy years earlier, had refuted the possibility that ‘wavy lines’ of the Krater correspond to a mountainous landscape. According this author, the lines ‘indicate, as a type of perspective, the distances between the planes on which are the figures’ (Dugas 1930, 20). 28   In some cases, it is suggested that the painting would have had perspective (Bruno 1977, 64; Dugas 1930, 20).

  The reconstructions of the work of Polygnotus in the nineteenth century are due, mainly, to the German specialist Carl Robert (1892). Nekyia was ‘reconstituted’ in the volume Die Nekyia des Polygnot of 1892 (Halle A/S Max Niemeyer, Halle) and the reconstruction of Ilioupersis was published one year later. Recently, S. Woodford, (1974) and M. D. Stansbury-O’Donnell (1989; 1990) proposed reconstructions. 30   Although Alberti divided the text unlike Pliny did, but ‘like Horacio and the rhetorical treatises’ (Kossovitch 2002, 310).

27

29

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Boardman 2001), the relationship between the ‘unseen’ mural painting and the preserved vascular painting was not subjected to greater verifications since their initial formulations. This relationship constitutes a one-way street where the vase painters, although they do not copy, are influenced by their great mural models.

The project of ‘glimpsing the lost art’ is frustrated by reading difficulties and by a lack of a common vocabulary with ancient authors. Edmond Pottier is one of the first to boast that, when affirming that ‘[Pausanias] enumerate all of the figures of the two frescos of Polygnotus in Delphi (...) [but] the obscurity will not be less deep [than in other sources] regarding the disposition of the figures, their faces, their gestures, the technique of the colors, etc’ (Pottier, 1923?, 7).

We can even think that contingencies might have contributed to the establishment of the hypothesis that the ‘smaller art’ of the ceramic would reflect the ‘larger art’ of the murals. One example is the fact that the excavations of the necropolis of Vulci in 1828 and 1929 unearthed a great number of Greek vases (Rouet 2001, 26-27) exactly at a time in which the texts of Riepenhausen (Peinture de Polignote, 172631) and Goethe (Polignot’s Gemälde in der Lesche zu Delphi, 180332) about Polygnotus were still popular among men devoted to classical studies.

The difficult and undisciplined relationship between obscure descriptions and vase paintings also does not take into account that the horizontal line as base for the totality of the figures, a characteristic practically universalized before the Persian Wars, may have had other exceptional origins before the works of Polygnotus’ group of wall painters. There are notable Near-Eastern exceptions, among which are the famous stele of Naram-sin, oriental relief of the III millennium BC (Ducrey 1987, 205 and 210), and some exceptional Assyrian relieves (Robertson 1975, 240).

However, it was never convenient to suggest that things might have happened contrary to the way it is common to think: that a mural painter, honored for the city with the ‘subsidy of his needs’ (NH, XXXV, 59) and intimate with the ruler’s relatives (Plutarch, Kimon’s Life, 4. 5-6), had been inspired by anonymous and forgotten craft makers who painted small curved clay surfaces. I can see no good reason to think like this. But we can think that the present images and the late descriptions document the same slow process of changes33 and not a ‘revolution in painting’.

The figures of these reliefs are undeniably arranged on different levels, which does not seem enough to propose any relationship between these figures and the lost mural paintings of the fifth century in Athens, except for an undocumented contact with this ‘alternative convention’ through Egyptian and Etruscan paintings, as attests Martin Robertson in a brief comment (Robertson 1975, 240). For all effects, what we see in some vases of free style and what we read in the ancient descriptions of mural painting cannot be considered entirely new.

The murals of Theseion and Anakheion and the pictures of the Painted Portico and of the art gallery of Propileus must have been seen daily by the inhabitants of the Athens of Kimon and Perikles, but the small paintings on vases would also have been frequently viewed images, not because of any monumentality or of the prominent place that they would occupy in important public buildings, but because of their abundance: the vases were part of nuptials, symposia, funerals, trade and domestic domains, and it does not seem in good judgment to suggest that they had less visibility than the murals. Therefore, the relationships between mural painting and vascular painting can be understood as a complex and multifaceted phenomenon.

It seems inappropriate to propose the depreciation of Polygnotus of Thasos or of Pliny and Pausanias. Nonetheless, based on the above discussion, we can suggest a new place for the painter as a character in the Natural History and Description of Greece. The modern advent of a ‘Polygnotan style’ does not seem really attentive to the dating of the texts that reveal to us his principles or to the fact that the name Polygnotus of Thasos must have suffered the ‘effects of time’, as must have the paintings attributed to him (GD, I, 17, 2-4). In contrast to what it does to paintings, time revives the name of the artist, amplifies his or her qualities and perhaps increases the quantity of works attributed to the artist34.

To elevate to a high status the ‘great painting’ of the Kimonian period, convenient sources were selected. Having faith that they were guided by the point of view of Pliny and Pausanias, specialists could see in the past an Art that was not perpetuated but that should be rescued for the values that were attributed to this art, for its importance (whatever this importance might be), which had been the motivation for the critics and descriptions that we know.

The texts of the first and second centuries AD, from their particular point of view, can tell us not only ‘that which time did not erase’ (GD, I, 22, 6-7) but also that which time allowed to be added.

  Quoted by S. Reinach 1907, 93, number 70, 4.   Quoted by Charles Dugas (A la lesché des cnidiens, 1938, in Dugas 1960). 33   We should take into account, for instance, the presence of the names written on the paintings of Polygnotus or the Homeric themes of the scenes (GD, X, 25-31), traditional characteristics, and the weapons and garments of Niobid Krater (Boardman 1989), also following the previous tradition. 31 32

  The ‘battle of Oenoe’, which occurred between 395 and 386 BC, is indicated by Pausanias (GD I, 15,1) as one of the great compositions of the Stoá Poikíle of Athens, a building painted by Polygnotus and two other artists about a century earlier. This problem gained elegant interpretations, among the most notable of which are those of Jeffery (1965) and Francis & Vickers (1985), as well as the earlier Caspari (1911).

34

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Acknowledgements I would like to thank the organizers of this volume for the invitation to write this chapter. I want to express my deepest gratitude to the professsors who motivated and guided my studies: Dr. Léon Kossovitch and Dr. Haiganuch Sarian of the University of São Paulo, Brazil. I am also thankful to Dr. Luiz Américo de Souza Munari (University of São Paulo) and Dr. Fábio Vergara Cerqueira (Federal University of Pelotas, Brazil) for the suggested modifications during the evaluation of my master’s research. I am especially indebted to my brother, João Carlos Machado Sanches, the translator of this text. I also thank my daughter and my wife. I assume all responsibility for any errors and misunderstandings presented in this paper.

References Aristotle, 1984, Poética (trans. and notes by Eudoro de Souza) in Coleção Os Pensadores, (São Paulo: Abril Cultural). Pausanias, 1954, Pausanias – description of Greece. Bilingual. (English translation by W. H. S. Jones). Loeb Classical Library, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). Pausanias, 1992, Description de la Grèce. Bilíngual (texte établi par Michel Casevitz; traduit par Jean Pouilloux; commenté par François Chamoux), (Paris: Belles Lettres). Pliny (the Elder), 1997, Histoire Naturelle. Bilingual (translated to French by Jean‑Michel Croisille, introduction and notes by Pierre‑Emmanuel Dauzat), (Paris: Les Belles Lettres). Pliny (the Elder), 1896, The Elder Pliny’s chapters on the history of art (English translation by E. Sellers and K. JexBlake), (London). Xenophon, 1979, Memorabilia, Oeconomicus & Symposium, Apology. Bilingual (translated to English by E. C. Marchant), (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). Modern Bibliography Arias, P. E., 1962, A history of Greek vase painting, (London: Thames and Hudson). Arias, P. E., 1970-1971, ´Considerazione sullo stile polignoteo’, Studi Classici e Orientali, 19-20, pp. 293-296. Arias, P. E., 1984, ‘Problemi stilistici, iconologici e cronologici sul Pittore dei Niobidi’, Rendiconti della Pontifica Accademia Romana di Archeologia LV, pp. 145-179. Bandinelli, R. B., 1980, La pittura antica, (Roma: Editori Riuniti). Baron, J. P., 1972, ‘New Light on Old Walls: the Murals of the Theseion’, JHS, 92, pp. 20-45. Beazley, J. D., 1963, Attic red‑figure vase‑painters (ARV2). 3 vols, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Beazley, J. D., 1956, Attic black-figure vase-painters, Vol. 1, 1st ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Boardman, J., 1975, Athenian red figured vases – The archaic period, (London: Thames and Hudson). Boardman, J.,1989, Athenian red figured vases – The classical period, (London: Thames and Hudson). Boardman, J., 1993, The Oxford history of classical art, (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Boardman, J., 2001, The history of greek vases, (London: Thames and Hudson). Bruno, V., 1977, Form and colour in greek painting, (London: Thames and Hudson). Buschor, 1925, Griechische Vasenmalerei, (München: R. Piper and Verlag). Caspari, M. O. B., 1911, ‘Stray notes on the Persian Wars’, JHS, XXXI, pp.100-109. Castriota, D., 1992, ‘Myth, ethos, and actuality - Official art in fifth-century BC Athens’, (Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press). Childe, V. G., 1969 (1956), Para uma recuperação do passado – a interpretação dos dados arqueológicos, (São Paulo: Difel). Christos, C., 1957, ‘Ho Polygnotos kai mia angeiographia me episodion ek tis Homerikis Nekyias’, AEPH, pp. 168-226. 240

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Denoyelle, M., 1997, Le Cratère des Niobides, (Paris: Éditions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux). Devambez, P., 1944,

Le style grec, (Paris: Larousse & Paris VI).

Ducrey, P., 1987, ‘Victoire et Défaire, réflexions sur la représentation des vaincus dans l’art grec, Image et société en Grèce ancienne’, L’iconographie comme méthode d’analyse. Actes du Collaque de Lausanne, 8-11 février 1984, (Lausanne: Université de Lausanne). Dugas, C., 1930, Aison et la peinture céramique à Athènes à l’époque de Péricles, (Paris: Henri Laurens éditeur). Dugas, C., 1960, Recueil Charles Dugas, (Paris: De Boccard). Francis, E. D. & Vickers, M., 1985, ‘The Oenoe painting in the Stoa Poikile and Herodotus’ account of Marathon’, ABSA, 80, pp. 99-113. Friedländer, M. J., 1969 (1946), De l’Art et du connaiseur, (Paris: Librairie Général Française). Heer, J., 1979, La personalité de Pausanias, (Paris: Les Belles Lettres). Jeffery, L. H., 1965, ‘The battle of Oenoe in the Stoa Poikile: a problem in Greek Art and History’, ABSA, 60, pp. 41-57. Kossovitch, L., 2002, ‘La discontinuité et l’histoire de l’art’, in J. Galard (ed.) Ruptures – de la discontinuité dans la vie artistique, (Paris: École Natinale Supérieur des Beaux-Arts). Löwy, E., 1929, Polygnot: ein buch von griechischer malerei, (Wien: Verlag von Anton Schroli & Co). Meritt, L. C., 1970, ‘The Stoa Poikile’, Hesperia, XXXIX, pp. 233-264. Merleau-Ponty, M., 1984 (1963), O Olho e o Espírito (São Paulo: Abril Cultural). McNiven, T. J., 1989, ‘Odysseus in the Niobide Krater’, JHS, CIX, pp. 191-197. Pfulh, E., 1955, Masterpieces of greek drawing and painting, (Paris: Chatto and Windus). Picard, C., 1937, ‘De L’’Ilioupersis’ de la lesché delphique aux métopes nord du Parthénon’, REG, 50, pp. 175-205. Pollitt, J. J., 1976, ‘The ethos of Polygnotos and Aristeides’, in L. Bonfante & H. Heintze (eds.) Memoriam Otto J. Brendel: essays in archaeology and the humanities, (Mainz). Pollitt, J. J., 1990, The art of ancient Greece: sources and documents, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Pottier, E., 1923?, Douris et les peintres de vases grecs, (Paris: Henri Laurens). Pottier, E., 1926, Le dessin chez les grecs - d’après les vases peints, (Paris: Les Belles Lettres). Prost, F., 1997, ‘L’art pictural: une source pour l’Histoire de l’Athènes Pré-Classique’, AC, 66, pp. 25-43. Prost, F., 1999, ‘Miltiade et le lièvre’, in Lissarrague, Rouillard, Rouveret & Villanueva Puig (Eds.), Céramique et peinture grecques: modes d’emploi - Actes du colloque international, (Paris: La Documentation Française). Reinach, A. J., 1985, Recueil Milliet- textes grecs et latins relatifs à l’histoire de la peinture ancienne, (Paris: Les Belles Lettres). Reinach, S., 1907, Manuel de philologie classique, (Paris: Hachette). Richter, G. M. A., 1958, Attic red‑figured vases: a survey, (New Haven: Yale University). Robert, C., 1892, ‘Die Nekya des Polygnot’, Halle: Halle A/S Max Niemeyer (Hallisches Winckelmannprogramm, 16). Robertson, M., 1959, La Peinture Grecque, (Genève: Albert Skira). Robertson, M., 1975, A History of Greek Art, 2 vols, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Robertson, M., 1982, Uma breve história da arte grega, (Rio de Janeiro: Zahar Editores). Robertson, M., 1985, Beazley and Oxford, (Oxford: Oxford University Committee of Archaeology). Robertson, M., 1992, The art of vase‑painting in classical Athens, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Rocha-Pereira, M. H., 1962, Greek vases in Portugal, (Coimbra: Institute of Classical Studies - University of Coimbra). Rocha-Pereira, M. H., 1994, ‘Estatuto social dos artistas gregos’, Revista do M.A.E., 4, pp. 95-102. Rouet, Ph., 2001, Aproaches to the study of Attic vases: Beazley and Pottier, (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Rouveret, A., 1989, Histoire et imaginaire de la peinture ancienne (Ve. siècle av. J.-C.– Ier. siècle ap. J.-C.), (Rome: École Française de Rome). Sarian, H., 1999, ‘Arqueologia da Imagem: aspectos teóricos e metodológicos na iconografia de Héstia’, Revista do M.A.E., 3, p. 69-84. Simon, E., 1963, ‘Polygnotan painting and the Niobid Painter’, AJA 67, pp. 43-62. Stansbury-O’ Donnell, M. D., 1989, ‘Polygnotos’s Ilioupersis: a new reconstruction’, AJA, 93, pp. 203-215. Stansbury-O’ Donnell, M. D., 1990, ‘Polygnotos’s Nekyia: a reconstruction and analysis’, AJA, 94, pp. 213-235. 241

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Tillyard, E. M. W., 1923, The Hope Vases - a catalogue and a discussion of the Hope collection of greek vases with an introduction on the history of the collection and on late attic and south italian vases, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Ufford, L. B-Q., 1950, ‘La chronologie de L’art grec de 475-425 av. J. Chr.’, Mnemosyne, 4, III, pp. 183-214. Villard, F., 1969, ‘Peinture et Ceramique’, in Grèce Classique (480-330 avant J.-C.): l’Univers des Formes, (Paris: Gallimard). Whitley, J., 1997, ‘Beazley as theorist’, Antiquity, 271, pp. 40-47.

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Characteristics and Names of the Extreme Types of Speech according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus Marcos Martinho Dos Santos São Paulo State University, Brazil

Introduction In Dem. I, Comp. and Dem. II, Dionysius distinguishes three types of speech (Dem. I 33,3: eis treîs kharaktêras; ib.: en toîs trisì génesi; 34,1: toîs trisì plásmasin; 34,6: tôn triôn plasmáton; Dem. II 21,3: tàs méntoi genikàs autês diaphoràs taútas eînai peíthomai tàs treîs; 37,1: treîs [...] kharaktêres; 37,2: hai tês léxeos harmoníai, treîs oûsai tòn arithmón), to which he gives many and diverse names, both generic and specific (cf. Dem. II 37,2: onómatós te [...] kaì kharaktêros idíou). Now, the three types of speech do not differ from one another equally. Since, first, two of them differ from the others (Dem. I 2,8), in such a way that, in elocution, one departs from the other, as much as, in music, the néte departs from hypáte (Dem. I 2,4). Then, the third one differs from the other two, being a rhetorical genre that lays between each of the extremes (Dem. I 14,1); nevertheless, although in music the mése is equally distant from néte and from hypáte, in the speeches however the medium genre does not depart equally from each of the extremes (Comp. 21,5). In short, two types of speech are opposed to each other (cf. Comp. 23,6: tanantía; 26,8: tounantíon), and a third type is interposed between the other two. Thence come less generic names that Dionysius gives to each one: on one hand, those which he calls ákroi (Dem. I 2,7) or akrótatoi (Dem. I 2,4), that is, “extremes”; on the other hand, that which he calls mésos (Dem. I 14,3; Comp. 24,1; Dem. II 36,5; 42,2), that is, “medium”. Besides these names, however, Dionysius still gives other names which are more specific to the three types of speech. In a passage of Comp., he warns us that, for not having proper names, he will call the different types of speech − nameless, until then − with metaphorical names; however, he also warns that, after having heard the characters of the three types of speech, someone could then give them particular names (Comp. 21,3; cf. 24,1; Dem. II 37,2).1 Thus, I intend to examine the manner in which Dionysius characterizes and then names the extreme types of speech. However, since, as Dionysius himself notes, the exposition of the former depends on the exposition of the extreme types of speech, I will first examine the characterization and the names of the latter.

The extreme elocutions are opposed to each other in a way in Dem. I, and the extreme harmonies are opposed in another way in Comp. and Dem. II. As a matter of fact, in Dem. I, which comprehends elocution as a whole, Dionysius says that the entire arrangement of elocution revolves around and englobes two things: the necessary [anagkaîos] and the extraordinary [perittós] (Dem. I 24,8; cf. 24,6); in Comp., specialized in composition, he says that it has two general things as objective: the pleasurable [hedýs] and the beautiful [kalós] (Comp. 10,2; cf. 4,21; 10,1; 11,1-5). In Dem. I, it is opposed to the necessary [anagkaîos], most often, not only the extraordinary [perittós] (Dem. I 13,9; 24,8; 32,2), but also the additional [epíthetos] (Dem. I 3,2; 13,5.7.9; 24,6), and, once, the deviated [exellagménos] (Dem. I 13,9; cf. 9,7), and this, in its turn, is opposed to the customary [synéthes] (Dem. I 8,2; 9,5.8; 10,1.4; 15,1), if not also to the nature [phýsis] (Dem. I 9,3: exellákhthai kaì apestráphthai tèn diálekton ek tôn en éthei kaì katà phýsin eis tà mè synéthe toîs polloîs med’ hos phýsis apaiteî). In Comp. and Dem. II, to the pleasurable [hedýs] is subordinated joviality [hóra], grace [kháris], euphony [eustomía], sweetness [glykýtes], the persuasive [pithanós], and to the beautiful [kalós], grandiosity [megaloprépeia], the grave [báros], the venerable [semnología], dignity [axíoma], passion [páthos] (Comp. 11,2), in a way that, next to the opposition of pleasurable and beautiful (Comp. 4,18.21; 5,10; 6,1; 9,1; 10,1-5; 11,1-2.5; 13,1.3; 16,6; 18,14; 19,2.11; 20,23; Dem. II 47,2.3; 48,6; 51,6), are opposed either pleasurable and venerable (Comp. 1,8: tôi semnôi tò hedý), or beauty and grace (Comp. 22,35: kháritos [...] kállos), or even others (Comp. 7,5: he autè kháris è tò autò páthos; Dem. II 40,9: axiomatikoùs [...] khariestátous; 41,3: kaì axíoma kaì kháris).

Specific names of the extreme types of speech

In fact, on one hand, epíthetos, perittós, exellagménos, synéthes rarely occur in Comp. and Dem. II referring to an extreme type of speech and, when they do, as a rule, the extreme elocution of Dem. I, and not the extreme harmony of Comp. and Dem. II are referred to. As a matter of fact, epíthetos, applied to elocution or harmony, is absent from Comp. and Dem. II.2 Perittós and exellagménos, applied to an extreme type of speech, occur, the former, in two passages of Comp., and, both of them, in the same passage of Dem. II. However, in a passage of Comp.,

  Not only in Comp., but also in Dem. II, Dionysius intends to show what are the differences and what is the character of each type of speech (Comp. 1,12; 20,24; 21,3; Dem. II 42,2).

2   In Comp., it occurs only once, referring however to part of the sentence (Comp. 5,9; cf. 5,1: tà mória toû lógou).

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Dionysius distinguishes, exactly, between the election and the composition of Plato’s words (cf. Comp. 18,13: hoútos ekléxai tà onómata hos syntheînai; 18,14: perì tèn eklogèn [...] syntíthesi) and, in the other passage, between the election and composition of Herodotus’ words (cf. Comp. 3,16: anéklekta [...] hérmotten; 3,17-8),3 in such a way that, in one and the other passage, perittós is not applied to the composition and thence to extreme harmony, but to the election and thence to extreme elocution. In a passage of Dem. II, exellagménos and perittós occur side by side (Dem. II 56,2-5; cf. 56,2: perittèn ergasían kaì exellagménen), opposed however to synéthes (Dem. II 56,4: synéthe; cf. 56,2: en éthei) and thence referring not to the composition and thence the harmony, but to the election (cf. Dem. II 35,6.8) and thus to elocution (Dem. II 56,1: perì tês [...] léxeos).4 Perittós, referring to harmony, occurs in two passages of Dem. II; it refers, however, to the medium harmony, not to the extreme one (Dem. II 35,1; 36,1).5 On the other hand, the opposition of hedýs and kalós rarely occurs in Dem. I; three times, however, it refers not only to the extreme elocutions, but to the election of words (cf. Dem. I 4,2: hedeîa [...] kallilogían; 5,2-5: hedeîa [...] kallieipeîn; 18,1-2: kállista [...] hedeîa),6 being really different, thus, from what is seen in Comp. and Dem. II.

stranger [glottematiká], ornamental [kósmoi] (Dem. I 4,1; 5,5-6), and the second uses common words [koinà onómata], which follow the common usage [en têi koinêi khrései keímena] (Dem. I 5,3; 10,1; 13,1), namely: proper [kýria], specific [ídia], particular [oikeîa] (Dem. I 4,1; 5,5-6; 13,1). In short, the 1st elocution requires elevated words [hypselá], and the second admits humble words [tapeiná] (cf. Dem. I 28,3: tapeiné [...] hýpsos; 34,3: epì tês hypselês kaì xenoprepoûs onomasías), in such a way that the former is ornated [kosmetós], venerable [semnós], grandiose [megaloprepés],7 and the latter is pure [katharós], exact [akribés], clear [saphés].8 Concerning the composition of words, the first elocution avoids the customary use of cases and the coherent use of gender and number and insists upon the use of conjunctions (Dem. I 9,8; 27,2.5-6). Thus, the first elocution does not Hellenize (cf. Dem. I 5,4: hellenízousa), and it is laboured [períergos] (Dem. I 9,8). Further, the first elocution uses circumlocutions (Dem. I 5,5; 7,5; 29,4), that is, it fills the period with unnecessary words (Dem. I 19,4; 26,2; cf. Comp. 9,2) that extend for too long the sequence of the intellection (Dem. I 9,5.10; cf. 19,2; 27,2), in such a way that a minimum of intellection is delivered with too many words (Dem. I 5,4; 7,4; 19,2; cf. Dem. II 58,1: tò polloîs onómasi tò autò prâgma deloûn), and the second elocution is restricted to the necessary words (cf. Dem. II 39,4). Thus, the period of the first elocution is extended [hypagogikós], plain [platýs], and the one of the second elocution is concise [sýntomos], well-rounded [stroggýlos] (Dem. I 4,5; 13,1; 18,3-4; 19,5-7; 24,7), if not smooth [aphelés] and simple [haplóos].9 At last, the first elocution disposes the members in an indirect way (Dem. I 9,3.4.7.8), that is, in places contrary to necessity, to custom, to nature (Dem. I 9,3.5.7; 19,4), in such a way that the intellection extends itself for too long (Dem. I 27,2).10 Thus, the period of the first elocution is laboured [períergos] (Dem. I 9,5.7; 26,4) and more refined [kompsós] (Dem. I 19,4).

Thenceforth, on one hand, the extreme elocutions of Dem. I differ from each other in such a way that the first deviates from custom, since it needs extraordinary words, and the second follows the usual, since it is restricted to necessary words. On the other hand, the extreme harmonies of Comp. and Dem. II differ from each other in such a way that the first uses venerable rhythms, since it aims at the beautiful, and the second uses gracious rhythms, since it aims at the pleasurable. This characterization of the extreme types of speech is what I examine henceforth, seeking to verify next how the names are derived from them. Characterization of the extreme elocutions in Dem. I In Dem. I, concerning the election of words, the first elocution seeks extraordinary words [perittà onómata], which deviate from custom [exellagména toû synéthous] (Dem. I 9,3; 10,1), namely: metaphorical [metaphoraí], forged [pepoieména], ancient [arkhaîa], foreign [xéna],

7   Produced by customary words, clearness is opposed to those words that deviate from custom (cf. Dem. 10,2: he mèn ametría tês exallagês asaphê poieî tèn léxin autoû) and, thus, to the product of these words, that is, to the adornmented, venerable (Dem. I 4,3), grandiose (Dem. I 24,9-10; cf. 34,2-3). 8   Not rarely, the adjectives katharós, akribés and saphés are placed side by side (Dem. I 18,1; cf. 11,1; 27,1) and, further, are associated with common words (Dem. I 5,2-3; 13,1; cf. 4,1-3; 34,2), or, more particularly, katharós refers to words, akribés to language, saphés to other virtues (Dem. I 18,1; cf. Comp. 1,8). Further, the adjective leptós [elegant] is only used with akribés (Dem. I 5,2; 13,6; 27,1; 29,5). 9   From one and another passage of Dem. I and also of Comp. and Dem. II we can see that aphelés and also haplóos refer to the period of the 2nd elocution. Since, in Dem. I, showing how, in a passage of Thucydides, the intellection is uttered in an indirect way (Dem. I 9,3-8), Dionysius first says that it is not uttered in a simple and smooth way (Dem. I 9,3.7); later, he associates sýntomos, stroggýlos, aphelés (Dem. I 13,1). In Comp. and Dem. II, he associates aphelés and haplóos with the period that occurs by itself at random (Comp. 22,4-5: haplâ [...] aphelés; Dem. II 39,4-5). 10   Clearness and also purity are associated by Dionysius not only with common words, but also with circumlocution and concision (cf. n. 8-9). On one hand, however, he shows how the overextended argument is not clear (Dem. I 27,2; cf. 7,3-5); on the other hand, he shows how care with clearness is opposed to concision (Dem. I 18,3), or even, how pleonasm seeks clearness (Dem. II 58,3).

  In “Chapter 3” of Comp. as a whole, Dionysius confronts the election of words with the composition, in order to show that the study of the latter is more important and more thorough than that of the former (cf. Comp. 3,5). 4   Exalláttein [deviate] still occurs in passages of Comp. and Dem. II, referring however to something other than type of speech. Thus, in Comp., it refers to the variation of melodical modes, that is, of dorian, phrygian, lidian (Comp. 19,8); in Dem. II, beside poikíllein [vary], to the variation of melody and rhythm (Dem. II 48,4: oudèn exalláton oudè poikíllon; 48,5: exalláttein te kaì poikíllein; 48,10; 50,11: tò te exalláttein pantodapôs kaì tò skhematízein poikílos). 5   Perittós [extraordinary] still occurs in Dem. II 43,11; referring however not to a type of speech, but to the course of a certain type of period. 6   Still in Dem. I, hedýs [pleasurable] and kalós [beautiful] refer, respectively, to the urban figure [politikòn skhêma] and to the combative figure [enagónion skhêma] (Dem. I 32,2: kalòn [...] hedeías; cf. 30,3; Comp. 19,12). 3

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In short, each elocution has a specific arrangement [kataskeué] (Dem. I 2,7): that of the first elocution admits the extraordinary, that of the second is restricted to the necessary (Dem. I 24,8). In other words, the arrangement of the first elocution admits additional adornments [epíthetoi kósmoi] (Dem. I 1,3; 18,1), which are opposed to the necessary (Dem. I 24,6), and the arrangement of the second elocution is restricted to similarity with ordinary speech [idiótes lógos] (Dem. I 2,1; 6,2), which is divested of additional adornments (Dem. I 13,9); thus the former is called additional arrangement [epíthetos kataskeué] (Dem. I 3,2; 5,3; 13,5; 23,4; cf. 28,7; 34,3), and the latter, unadorned arrangement [akósmetos kataskeué] (Dem. I 4,3). However, as the additional adornments put in evidence the arrangement, and the similarity with ordinary speech dissimulates it, the adornment is identified with the arrangement (Dem. II 46,1), and thus the absence of the former is identified with the absence of the latter, in the way that the arrangement of the first elocution is called, by antonomasia, arrangement [kataskeué] (Dem. I 6,2.4) or ranged [kateskeuasménos] (Dem. I 4,3) or arranged [egkatáskeuos] (Dem. I 1,3; 6,1; 10,4; 15,4), and the one of the second elocution, by antithesis, unarranged [akatáskeuos] (Dem. I 13,1).11

[elegant], that, in Dem. I, are placed side by side (cf. n. 8), in Comp. and Dem. II, though, are placed separately. In fact, Leptós and katharós are absent from Dem. II. In Comp., leptós occurs only once, referring to the whistle that characterizes the pronunciation of the “s” (Comp. 14,17), and katharós occurs three times, thus: twice, referring to the election of words (Comp. 1,8: eklogêi te hrésasthai katharôn háma kaì gennaíon onomáton; 3,3-4: pròs tèn eklogén [...] léxin [...] katharàn), as in Dem. I, and once, referring to the value of letters (Comp. 22,39). Saphés, in turn, is never applied to the characterization of harmonies in Comp. and Dem. II; or rather, except in passages in which it is used as a generic and non-specialized term, it occurs only once in Dem. II, referring to pleonasm (Dem. II 58,3). Akribés, lastly, is never a name of harmony, even in the expression tôn harmoniôn akríbeia [exactitude of harmonies] (Comp. 20,20; cf. 9,9: tês akribeías tôn kólon; 19,10: autôn dè tôn kólon [...] tò dè akribéstaton; 26,4: tèn akríbeian toû métrou; 26,11), and even when this expression characterizes, particularly, the polished harmony (Comp. 22,35; 23,3; Dem. II 40,6; 48,10); 3. xénos [foreign] is absent from Dem. II and occurs three times in Comp., always referring to the election of words (Comp. 3,11; 25,8: he eklogè tôn onomáton [...] perì tês eklogês; 26,5), as in Dem. I.

These terms, which serve to characterize the extreme elocutions in Dem. I, can occur also in Comp. and Dem. II, at times to characterize the extreme harmonies, at times however to characterize elocutions, as in Dem. I. Thus, from the terms by which the election of words is characterized:

From the terms by which the composition of words is characterized: 1. períergos [laboured] is absent from Comp. but occurs in Dem. II, albeit in a passage in which he refutes Aeschines’ charge that befalls exactly upon Demosthenes’ election of words and not upon the composition (Dem. II 35,6; 55,1; 56,1);

1. hypselós [elevated] and megaloprepés [grandiose], in Comp. and Dem. II, refer, beforehand, to the rhythms, which can be tapeinoí [humble], malthakoí [effete], agenneîs [ignoble], or even, hypseloí [elevated], andródeis [virile], megaloprepeîs [grandiose] (Dem. II 39,1; cf. Comp. 17,3.8; 18,8; 22,4; Dem. II 48,7-8; cf. n. 14, 17), and thus megaloprepés refers to the composition of words (Comp. 17,1; 18,1.3.4; 19,13; Dem. II 45,6). Occasionally, however, they refer to the election (Comp. 4,12; 16,14.15.18; 18,14; Dem. II 35,7), such as in Dem. I;

2. stroggýlos [well-rounded] occurs once in Comp. (7,6) and once in Dem. II (43,11); períphrasis [circumlocution] and syntomía [concision], however, do not occur anywhere. Nevertheless, if he does not use the term períphrasis, Dionysius replaces it with the expression: “show the same case with many words” (Dem. II 58,1: tò polloîs onómasi tò autò prâgma deloûn), and, if he does not use the term syntomía, he replaces it with the term brakhylogía [brevity] (Dem. II 58,2-4);

2. akribés [exact], katharós [pure], saphés [clear], leptós 11   At times, Dionysius distinguishes from the epíthetos kataskeué the 2nd elocution, qualifying it of apoíetos (Dem. I 5,2-3; 6,2). Thus, if we believe that apoíetos is the antonym of poietós [forged], we conclude that the second elocution is akatáskeuos [unarranged]. If, however, we admit that apoíetos is the antonym of poietikós [poetic], we conclude that the second elocution is pezé [pedestrian, that is, prosaic]. Now, in Dem. II, the second elocution, extraordinary [peritté], deviated [exellagméne], on one hand, are opposed to the first, common [koiné], customary [synéthes], and, on the other hand, is identified with the poetic [poietiké] (Dem. II 56,4-5; cf. 18,9; 40,8.10). In Dem. I, to the passages in which Plato pursues the non-forged language [apoíetos diálektos] are opposed others in which the philosopher falls in love with the arrangement [kataskeué] of Gorgias (Dem. I 6,2-4), that is, in which he uses poetic figures and Gorgianisms (Dem. I 5,6; 25,4), in a way that approaches the poetic (Dem. I 7,3) and, in particular, the dithyrambs (Dem. I 6,4; 7,4-7). In Comp., Dionysius proposes to show, exactly, how the poetical [poietikón] can accompany the pedestrian elocution [pezè léxis] and how non-forged speech [apoíetos lógos] can imitate poetical arrangement [poietikè kataskeué] (Comp. 1,13; 25,1).

3. aphelés [smooth] and haplóos [simple], occur in Comp. and Dem. II, referring, however, to period (Comp. 22,4-5; Dem. II 39,4-5; cf. n. 9), as in Dem. I. Haplóos, further, refers, in Comp., to semi-vowels, which can be simple or double (Comp. 14,14-5), and to rhythms or feet of two or three syllables (Comp. 17,15). From the terms characterized:

by

which

the

arrangement

is

1. in Comp., the arrangement of letters (Comp. 16,6: apò tês [...] kataskeuês tôn grammáton; 16,12) and the arrangement of syllables (Comp. 15,15: tàs tôn syllabôn kataskeuás); in Dem. II, the junction of words, the arrangement and composition of members, the length 245

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and configuration of periods (Dem. II 43,10: ou mónon dè hai tôn onomáton syzygíai [...], allà kaì tôn kólon kataskeuaí te kaì synthéseis kaì tà tôn periódon méke te kaì skhémata);

harmony avoids, and the second one seeks to conclude the period with polished rhythms that make the cadence visible (Comp. 22,5; Dem. II 39,4). Concerning the rhythms, the 1st harmony elects the dignified [axiomatikoí], the grandiose [megaloprepeîs] (Comp. 22,4), or even, it doesn’t elect the humble [tapeinoí], nor the effete [malthakoí], nor the ignoble [agenneîs], but the elevated [hypseloí], the virile [andródeis], the grandiose [megaloprepeîs] (Dem. II 39,1; cf. 43,13), and the second, not the dignified [axiomatikoí], but the most gracious [khariéstatoi] (Dem. 40,9), or even, not the longest, but the medium and shortest (Comp. 23,6).14 Concerning the figures,15 the 1st harmony dissimulates the members and periods through asymmetry and anomaly (cf. Comp. 22,5.45), and the 2nd harmony seeks symmetrical members, that is, parisons and other figures,16 and welldesigned periods (cf. Comp. 22,42-3; 23,22), in such a way as to make their cadence visible [theatrikós] (Comp. 22,5; cf. Dem. I 5,4; 18,8).17

2. in Comp. and Dem. II, the adornment of the election of words and the adornment of composition (Comp. 3,4; Dem. II 45,3.5; cf. 39,5); in Dem. I, further, the adornment of delivery (cf. Dem. I 22,5: kosmoûntos [,,,] têi [...] hypokrísei); 3. egkatáskeuos [arranged], referring, however, to the election of words (cf. Comp. 18,14: perì tèn eklogèn). From the names that are not derived from the characterization of the extreme elocutions of Dem. I, iskhnós [spare] (Dem. I 5,1.2; 6,2.4; 11,1; 15,1; 33,3; 34,4) is absent from Comp. and Dem. II, and litós [flat] (Dem. I 2,1; 8,2; 34,4) is absent from Dem. II and occurs only once in Comp., referring, however, to the casuistic topic (cf. Comp. 3,7: pragmátia), that is, outside the elocutory topic with which the three booklets deal.

These terms, which serve to characterize the extreme harmonies in Comp. and Dem. II, can occur also in Dem. I, at times to characterize the extreme elocutions, at times though to characterize the harmonies, as in Comp. and Dem. II; thus:

Characterization of the extreme harmonies of Comp. and Dem. II

1. glaphyrós [polished] is absent from Dem. I, and austerós [austere] occurs only once, referring however not to the elocution of speech, but to the êthos of the orator, austere, and not amusing (Dem. I 8,2; cf. Dem. II 55,2);

In Comp. and in Dem. II, concerning the words, the first harmony is characterized by the encounter of conflicting letters that do not contract by synalepha, in such a way that they intercut the continuity of sounds, that is, they produce roughness (Comp. 22,1-4.29-33.37-44; Dem. II 38; 43,4-7), and the second harmony is characterized by the encounter of congenerous letters that are uttered in a single syllable, in such a way that they interweave the continuity of sounds, that is, they produce smoothness (Comp. 23,2-4.12-4.20-1; Dem. II 40,1-7; 43,8-9). Now, roughness makes the harmony austere [austerós] and grave [báros], and smoothness makes it polished [glaphyrós] (Comp. 22,12) and sharp [ligyrós] (Dem. II 40,6);12 or even, the discontinuity of sounds makes the harmony larger [mégas] and, for this reason, beautiful [kalós], and the continuity makes it more exact [akribés] (Comp. 23,3) and, for this reason, pleasurable [hedýs] (Dem. II 40,6); since the beautiful is the goal of the 1st harmony, and pleasure, the goal of the second (Dem. II 47,3; 51,6; cf. 40,1.2.4.6.7.9; 43,1).

2. ligyrós [sharp] kotílos [loquacious] stand out because they occur in Dem. II but not in Comp. (cf. n. 12), and ligyrós because, in the first place, it does not occur in Comp., as could be expected, but in Dem. I, which is a surprise. In the second place, in Dem. I, Dionysius [ancient] (Comp. 22,6; Dem. II 36,5; 38,1). 14   Dionysius affirms that rhythms contribute to a dignified and grandiose composition (Comp. 17,1; 18,1), or rather, he argues that some are dignified and venerable and others are humble and ignoble (Comp. 13,2; 18,9.11.22.24; Dem. II 43,13; 48,7-8), in such a manner that to that composition there must contribute rhythms that are grandiose, venerable, elevated, dignified, namely: the spondee, molossus, anapaest, dactyl, bacchius, hipobacchius, and can contribute rhythms that are not so ignoble, namely: the iambus, trochee, cretic, and cannot contribute rhythms that are ignoble, namely: the hegemon, tribrach, amphibrach (Comp. 17,3-14). 15   Dionysius divides into austere and polished as much the rhythms (Comp. 13,2; Dem. II 48,7) as the configurations (Dem. II 43,12; cf. 39,3) and also the melodies (Dem. II 48,7; cf. 48,8). 16   This point concerns the figures that produce the symmetry of members through the quantity of syllables, the accident of words, the propositions of reasoning, that is, it concerns gorgianisms, such as parisóseis, paromoióseis, antithéseis, paronomasména, antistréphonta, homoioárctoi, homoiotéleutoi (Dem. II 40,10; Comp. 23,23; 26,2; cf. Dem. I 1,1; 4,4; 5,6; 20,6-8; 21,1.3; 25,4 - 26,7). 17   Just as some rhythms are dignified [axiomatikoí] and venerable [semnoí], and others humble [tapeinoí] and ignoble [aggeneîs] (Comp. 13,2; 18,9.11.22.24; Dem. II 43,13; 48,8; cf. n. 14), so are some figures genuine [gennaîai], and others dignified [axiomatikaí] (Dem. II 39,3), or even, some are venerable [semnaí], austere [austeraí], ancient [arkhaîai], and others sharp [ligyraí], polished [glaphyraí], visible [theatrikaí] (Dem. 43,12; cf. Comp. 22,12.35; 23,7; 36,5; 38,1; 40,1), which are gorgianisms (cf. Dem. I 25,4: epì tà theatrikà tà Gorgíeia; n. 16). Cf. Dem. II 39,4: theatrikoì rhýthmoi.

Concerning the members and periods, the first harmony is characterized by asymmetry of the members and by the irregularity of the periods (Comp. 22,4-6.42-5; Dem. II 39,1-5; 43,10-3), and the second harmony, since it does not admit a lack of periods in elocution, nor a lack of members in periods, nor a lack of symmetry in members (Comp. 23,5-7.14.22-3; Dem. II 40,8-10; 43,10-3), in such a way that the period of the second harmony is unrefined [akópmseutos], and the one of the first, refined [kompsós] (cf. Comp. 22,6.45; Dem. I 19,4).13 Further, the first   In Dem. II, ligyrós [sharp] (Dem. II 36,5; 43,12) and also kotílos [loquacity] (Dem. II 45,4) characterize the second harmony; at times, side by side (Dem. II 44,2; cf. 40,6-8: ligyrán [...] kotílon). 13   In Comp. and Dem. II, kompsós [refined] is opposed to arkhaîos 12

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the second elocution: iskhnós, litós, synespasménos. From these, on one hand, iskhnós stands out because it is, in fact, the most frequent name of the second elocution (8 occurencies; cf. supra), and after it, litós (3 occurencies; cf. supra); on the other hand, the other ones stand out because, on the contrary, they occur only once.

says that the patina and the bloom of antiquity have loquacity [kotílos] and also refinement [kompsós] (Dem. I 5,4), but, in Dem. II, he opposes the latter to the former (Dem. II 36,5; 38,1; 43,12; 49,1; cf. n. 13); 3. in Dem. I, Dionysius says that the patina and the bloom of antiquity have refinement [kompsós] (Dem. I 5,4), in Comp. and Dem. II, however, he opposes ancient [arkhaîos] and refinement [kompsós] (cf. n. 13). Be this as it may, arkhaîos, in Dem. I, refers to the election of words, that is, to words no longer used (Dem. I 4,1; 5,3.5), and, in Comp. and Dem. II, to the composition of words, that is, to the roughness of the junction of letters, of the composition of members, of the configuration of periods (Comp. 22,6.12.35; 23,7; Dem. II 38,6; 43,12; cf. Dem. II 43,10);

From the characterization many names are derived that Dionysius gives to the two extreme harmonies of Comp. and Dem. II. Thus, from the characterization of words, names of the first harmony, namely: austerós, kalós, and names of the second, namely: glaphyrós, hedýs; from the characterization of members and periods, names of the first harmony, namely: akómpseutos, arkhaîos or philárkhaios or arkhaioprepés, and names of the second, namely: kompsós; from the characterization of rhythms, names of the first harmony, namely: semnós, megaloprepés or megalóphron, axiomatikós, gennikós, and a name of the second, namely: malakós; from the characterization of configurations, a name of the second harmony, namely: theatrikós. Next to these, there are other names that, nevertheless, are not derived from the characterization, but that are used only in naming, be it a name of the first harmony: eustathés, barýs, be it a name of the second: euprepés.

4. in Dem. I, by gennaîos [genuine] Dionysius qualifies not the rhythms, but the words (Dem. I 25,4); likewise, in a passage of Comp. in which he observes the election of words rather than the composition of rhythms (Comp. 1,8: eklogêi te [...] gennaíon onomáton kaì synthései [...] ekhoúsei tôi semnôi tò hedý). Specific names of the elocutions and extreme harmonies From the characterization many names are derived that Dionysius gives to the two extreme elocutions of Dem. I. Thus, from the election of words are derived names of the first elocution: exellagménos or diellagménos, perittós, hypselés, megaloprepés, xénos, and names of the second elocution: apérittos, synéthes, koinós, akribés, katharós, idiótes, saphés, leptós; likewise, from the composition of words, names of the second elocution: aphelés, haplóos; likewise, from the arrangement, names of the 1st elocution: egkatáskeuos or kateskeuasménos, epíthetos, kosmetós, and names of the second elocution: akósmetos, akatáskeuos, apoíetos. It is worth noting, however, that most names derive from the election of words. Besides these, there are other names that, nevertheless, do not derive from any characterization, that is, that are used only in naming, be it one of the first elocution: philánthropos,18 be it one of

Now, just as he distinguishes terms in which are characterized the extreme elocutions in Dem. I and those in which are characterized the extreme harmonies in Comp. and Dem. II, so too Dionysius distinguishes their names. In fact, in the same passage of Comp., when he characterizes the election of words, proper of Dem. I, and the composition, proper of Comp. and Dem. II, Dionysius distinguishes between the adjectives of one and of the other, qualifying the election as katharós [pure] and gennaîos [genuine], terms proper of Dem. I, and the composition, as semnós [venerable] and hedýs [pleasurable], terms proper of Comp. and Dem. II, thus: ‘all’ eklogêi te khrésasthai katharôn háma kaì gennaíon onomáton kaì synthései taûta kosmésein memigménon ekhoúsei tôi semnôi tò hedý’ (Comp. 1,8) but, rather, to use the election of pure and also genuine words, and embellish them with the composition that has the pleasurable mixed with the venerable.

  Next to philánthropos, Dionysius puts three other names to the 1st elocution, namely: báros [grave], stryphnós [acerb], pikrós [pungent]. The three serve to name the first elocution in the same passage of Dem. I (34,4). Thence, báros and stryphnós are absent from Dem. I; pikrós, however, not only occurs twice, but also serves to characterize the first elocution. Now, in Dem. II, pikrós refers to the election of words, next to períergos [laboured] (Dem. II 35,4.6; 55,1-4), in a passage in which Dionysius means to refute Aeschines’ charge, mentioned above, that befalls exactly upon Demosthenes’ election of words and not upon the composition. In another passage, however, in which Dionysius confines to harmony (cf. Dem. II 43,2: tàs harmonías), pikraínein [punch] refers to the listening (cf. Dem. II 43,2: tèn akoén), next to apotrakhýnein [harden] and also praúnei [calm down] and leaínein [smoothen], just as in Comp. (12,1: tèn akoén [...] pikraínousin, kaì trakhýnousi kaì leaínousi; 15,12: perì toùs ékhous [...] kaì leîai kaì trakheîai, [...] tèn akoèn kaì pikraínousai; 22,12: trakhýnei [...] kaì pikraínei tàs akoàs; 22,43-4: trakhýtetas [...] pikrôn). Now, in a passage of Dem. I, pikrós refers to the listening (cf. Dem. I 20,5: dià tês akoês [...] tèn akoén), next to leîos and trakhýs (cf. Dem. I 20,5: leîon [...] trakheîan [...] pikràn), and, in another passage, it is opposed to hedýs [pleasurable], which serves to characterize and name harmony of Comp. and Dem. II, and not elocution 18

Likewise, in the same passage of Comp., when he names the phrásis [phrase], proper of Dem. I, and the sýnthesis [composition], proper of Comp. and Dem. II, Dionysius distinguishes their names, qualifying the phrásis as hypselós [elevated], perittós [extraordinary] and egkatáskeuos of Dem. I. Actually, in Comp., stryphnós also refers to the listening (cf. Comp. 22,35: dià tês akoês), next to trakhýs (Comp. 22,35), and báros serves to characterize the accent of words (Comp. 11,12.15.16.17.20), just as barýs (Comp. 11,12.15.16.17.20; cf. Dem. 48,2; 52,3). For this reason, we should not take these names into accout in the number of names proper of the first elocution in Dem. I. Further, it is worth noting that these names, not only rare but improper, occur exactly in “Chapter 34” of Dem. I, in which, as I said, another unexpected name occurs, the generic name plásma [form].

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[arranged], and the sýnthesis, as hedýs [pleasurable] and kalós [beautiful], thus:

Of all the names mentioned, however, only one is common to the elocution of Dem. I and the harmony of Comp.: koinós [common]. In the former, though, it refers to the extreme elocution, and in the latter, to the medium harmony (Comp. 21,4; 24,1). Thus, in truth, the meaning of the name varies from one booklet to another, in that, in Dem. I, it means the elocution whose words are common and not extraordinary, that is, usual, and not unusual, and, in Comp., it means the harmony whose characterization is common to the characterization of the extreme harmonies and not exclusive, that is, that would be confused partially with these, and is not distinguished totally from one and the other.

‘Nûn dè perì tèn eklogèn éstin hà diamartánei, kaì málista en hoîs àn tèn hypselèn kaì perittèn kaì egkatáskeuon diókei phrásin [...]. Syntíthesi dè tà onómata kaì hedéos kaì kalôs nè Día’ (Comp. 18,14) Now, though, concerning the election [of words], he does make mistakes, and maximally in those [passages] in which he seeks the elevated, extraordinary, arranged phrase [...]. He composes, however, the words both pleasurably and beautifully, by Zeus!

References Denys d’Halicarnasse, 1978-1992. Opuscules rhétoriques. Texte établi et traduit par Germaine Aujac. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres). Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 1974-1985. The critical essays. Edited by E. H. Warmington, with an English translation by Stephen Usher. (Cambridge/London: Harvard University Press).

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