̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Ancient Rome

Roman ‘backwater’ bucked Empire’s decline, archaeologists reveal

ta385 — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 06:30:00 +0000

A rare roofed theatre, markets, warehouses, a river port and other startling discoveries made by a Cambridge-led team of archaeologists challenge major assumptions about the decline of Roman Italy.

Fitzwilliam Museum prepares to launch Islanders exhibition

ta385 — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 08:30:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��Fitzwilliam's major new exhibition, the culmination of a three-year research project, explores the evolution of island identity on Cyprus, Crete and Sardinia from the Neolithic to the Romans

Drought encouraged Attila’s Huns to attack the Roman empire, tree rings suggest

ta385 — Thu, 15 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Hungary has just experienced its driest summer since meteorological measurements began, devastating the country’s usually productive farmland. Archaeologists now suggest that similar conditions in the 5th century may have encouraged animal herders to become raiders, with devastating consequences for the Roman empire.

̽��ֱ��study, published in the Journal of Roman Archaeology, argues that extreme drought spells from the 430s – 450s CE disrupted ways of life in the Danube frontier provinces of the eastern Roman empire, forcing Hunnic peoples to adopt new strategies to ‘buffer against severe economic challenges’.

̽��ֱ��authors, Associate Professor Susanne Hakenbeck from Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology and Professor Ulf Büntgen from the ̽��ֱ��’s Department of Geography, came to their conclusions after assessing a new tree ring-based hydroclimate reconstruction, as well as archaeological and historical evidence.

̽��ֱ��Hunnic incursions into eastern and central Europe in the 4th and 5th centuries CE have long been viewed as the initial crisis that triggered the so-called ‘Great Migrations’ of ‘Barbarian Tribes’, leading to the fall of the Roman empire. But where the Huns came from and what their impact on the late Roman provinces actually was unclear.

New climate data reconstructed from tree rings by Prof Büntgen and colleagues provides information about yearly changes in climate over the last 2000 years. It shows that Hungary experienced episodes of unusually dry summers in the 4th and 5th centuries. Hakenbeck and Büntgen point out that climatic fluctuations, in particular drought spells from 420 to 450 CE, would have reduced crop yields and pasture for animals beyond the floodplains of the Danube and Tisza.

Büntgen said: “Tree ring data gives us an amazing opportunity to link climatic conditions to human activity on a year-by-year basis. We found that periods of drought recorded in biochemical signals in tree-rings coincided with an intensification of raiding activity in the region.”

Recent isotopic analysis of skeletons from the region, including by Dr Hakenbeck, suggests that Hunnic peoples responded to climate stress by migrating and by mixing agricultural and pastoral diets.

Hakenbeck said: “If resource scarcity became too extreme, settled populations may have been forced to move, diversify their subsistence practices and switch between farming and mobile animal herding. These could have been important insurance strategies during a climatic downturn.”

But the study also argues that some Hunnic peoples dramatically changed their social and political organization to become violent raiders.

From herders to raiders

Hunnic attacks on the Roman frontier intensified after Attila came to power in the late 430s. ̽��ֱ��Huns increasingly demanded gold payments and eventually a strip of Roman territory along the Danube. In 451 CE, the Huns invaded Gaul and a year later they invaded northern Italy.

Traditionally, the Huns have been cast as violent barbarians driven by an “infinite thirst for gold”. But, as this study points out, the historical sources documenting these events were primary written by elite Romans who had little direct experience of the peoples and events they described.

“Historical sources tell us that Roman and Hun diplomacy was extremely complex,” Dr Hakenbeck said. “Initially it involved mutually beneficial arrangements, resulting in Hun elites gaining access to vast amounts of gold. This system of collaboration broke down in the 440s, leading to regular raids of Roman lands and increasing demands for gold.”

̽��ֱ��study argues that if current dating of events is correct, the most devastating Hunnic incursions of 447, 451 and 452 CE coincided with extremely dry summers in the Carpathian Basin.

Hakenbeck said: “Climate-induced economic disruption may have required Attila and others of high rank to extract gold from the Roman provinces to keep war bands and maintain inter-elite loyalties. Former horse-riding animal herders appear to have become raiders.”

Historical sources describe the Huns at this time as a highly stratified group with a military organization that was difficult to counter, even for the Roman armies.

̽��ֱ��study suggests that one reason why the Huns attacked the provinces of Thrace and Illyricum in 422, 442, and 447 CE was to acquire food and livestock, rather than gold, but accepts that concrete evidence is needed to confirm this. ̽��ֱ��authors also suggest that Attila demanded a strip of land ‘five days’ journey wide’ along the Danube because this could have offered better grazing in a time of drought.

“Climate alters what environments can provide and this can lead people to make decisions that affect their economy, and their social and political organization," Hakenbeck said. "Such decisions are not straightforwardly rational, nor are their consequences necessarily successful in the long term.”

“This example from history shows that people respond to climate stress in complex and unpredictable ways, and that short-term solutions can have negative consequences in the long term.”

By the 450s CE, just a few decades of their appearance in central Europe, the Huns had disappeared. Attila himself died in 453 CE.

Reference

S.E. Hakenbeck & U. Büntgen, ‘ ̽��ֱ��role of drought during the Hunnic incursions into central-east Europe in the 4th and 5th centuries CE’, Journal of Roman Archaeology (2022). DOI: 10.1017/S1047759422000332

Hunnic peoples migrated westward across Eurasia, switched between farming and herding, and became violent raiders in response to severe drought in the Danube frontier provinces of the Roman empire, a new study argues.

People respond to climate stress in complex and unpredictable ways

Susanne Hakenbeck

Stefan Lefnaer

Devínska Kobyla Forest steppe in Slovakia

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution-ShareAlike

Justinianic Plague was nothing like flu and may have hit England before Constantinople

ta385 — Mon, 22 Nov 2021 08:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��Justinianic Plague is the first known outbreak of bubonic plague in west Eurasian history and struck the Mediterranean world at a pivotal moment in its historical development, when the Emperor Justinian was trying to restore Roman imperial power.

For decades, historians have argued about the lethality of the disease; its social and economic impact; and the routes by which it spread. In 2019-20, several studies, widely publicised in the media, argued that historians had massively exaggerated the impact of the Justinianic Plague and described it as an ‘inconsequential pandemic’. In a subsequent piece of journalism, written just before COVID-19 took hold in the West, two researchers suggested that the Justinianic Plague was ‘not unlike our flu outbreaks’.

In a new study, published in Past & Present, Cambridge historian Professor Peter Sarris argues that these studies ignored or downplayed new genetic findings, offered misleading statistical analysis and misrepresented the evidence provided by ancient texts.

Sarris says: “Some historians remain deeply hostile to regarding external factors such as disease as having a major impact on the development of human society, and ‘plague scepticism’ has had a lot of attention in recent years.”

Sarris, a Fellow of Trinity College, is critical of the way that some studies have used search engines to calculate that only a small percentage of ancient literature discusses the plague and then crudely argue that this proves the disease was considered insignificant at the time.

Sarris says: “Witnessing the plague first-hand obliged the contemporary historian Procopius to break away from his vast military narrative to write a harrowing account of the arrival of the plague in Constantinople that would leave a deep impression on subsequent generations of Byzantine readers. That is far more telling than the number of plague-related words he wrote. Different authors, writing different types of text, concentrated on different themes, and their works must be read accordingly.”

Sarris also refutes the suggestion that laws, coins and papyri provide little evidence that the plague had a significant impact on the early Byzantine state or society. He points to a major reduction in imperial law-making between the year 546, by which point the plague had taken hold, and the end of Justinian’s reign in 565. But he also argues that the flurry of significant legislation that was made between 542 and 545 reveals a series of crisis-driven measures issued in the face of plague-induced depopulation, and to limit the damage inflicted by the plague on landowning institutions.

In March 542, in a law that Justinian described as having been written amid the ‘encircling presence of death’, which had ‘spread to every region’, the emperor attempted to prop up the banking sector of the imperial economy.

In another law of 544, the emperor attempted to impose price and wage controls, as workers tried to take advantage of labour shortages. Alluding to the plague, Justinian declared that the ‘chastening which has been sent by God’s goodness’ should have made workers ‘better people’ but instead ‘they have turned to avarice’.

That bubonic plague exacerbated the East Roman Empire’s existing fiscal and administrative difficulties is also reflected in changes to coinage in this period, Sarris argues. A series of light-weight gold coins were issued, the first such reduction in the gold currency since its introduction in the 4th century and the weight of the heavy copper coinage of Constantinople was also reduced significantly around the same time as the emperor’s emergency banking legislation.

Sarris says: “ ̽��ֱ��significance of a historical pandemic should never be judged primarily on the basis of whether it leads to the ‘collapse’ of the societies concerned. Equally, the resilience of the East Roman state in the face of the plague does not signify that the challenge posed by the plague was not real.”

“What is most striking about the governmental response to the Justinianic Plague in the Byzantine or Roman world is how rational and carefully targeted it was, despite the bewilderingly unfamiliar circumstances in which the authorities found themselves.

“We have a lot to learn from how our forebears responded to epidemic disease, and how pandemics impacted on social structures, the distribution of wealth, and modes of thought.”

Bubonic plague in England

Until the early 2000s, the identification of the Justinianic Plague as ‘bubonic’ rested entirely upon ancient texts which described the appearance of buboes or swellings in the groins or armpits of victims. But then rapid advances in genomics enabled archaeologists and genetic scientists to discover traces of the ancient DNA of Yersinia pestis in Early Medieval skeletal remains. Such finds have been made in Germany, Spain, France and England.

In 2018, a study of DNA preserved in remains found in an early Anglo-Saxon burial site known as Edix Hill in Cambridgeshire revealed that many of the interred had died carrying the disease. Further analysis revealed that the strain of Y. pestis found was the earliest identified lineage of the bacterium involved in the 6th-century pandemic.

Sarris says: “We have tended to start with the literary sources, which describe the plague arriving at Pelusium in Egypt before spreading out from there, and then fitted the archaeological and genetic evidence into a framework and narrative based on those sources. That approach will no longer do. ̽��ֱ��arrival of bubonic plague in the Mediterranean around 541 and its initial arrival in England possibly somewhat earlier may have been the result of two separate but related routes, occurring some time apart.”

̽��ֱ��study suggests that the plague may have reached the Mediterranean via the Red Sea, and reached England perhaps via the Baltic and Scandanavia, and from there onto parts of the continent.

̽��ֱ��study emphasises that despite being called the ‘Justinianic Plague’, it was “never a purely or even primarily Roman phenomenon” and as recent genetic discoveries have proven, it reached remote and rural sites such as Edix Hill, as well as heavily populated cities.

It is widely accepted that the lethal and virulent strain of bubonic plague from which the Justinianic Plague and later the Black Death would descend had emerged in Central Asia by the Bronze Age before evolving further there in antiquity.

Sarris suggests that it may be significant that the advent of both the Justinianic Plague and the Black Death were preceded by the expansion of nomadic empires across Eurasia: the Huns in the 4th and 5th centuries, and the Mongols in the 13th.

Sarris says: “Increasing genetic evidence will lead in directions we can scarcely yet anticipate, and historians need to be able to respond positively and imaginatively, rather than with a defensive shrug.”

Reference
P Sarris, ‘New Approaches to the ‘Plague of Justinian’, Past & Present (2021); DOI: 10.1093/pastj/gtab024.

‘Plague sceptics’ are wrong to underestimate the devastating impact that bubonic plague had in the 6th–8th centuries CE, argues a new study based on ancient texts and recent genetic discoveries. ̽��ֱ��same study suggests that bubonic plague may have reached England before its first recorded case in the Mediterranean via a currently unknown route, possibly involving the Baltic and Scandinavia.

We have a lot to learn from how our forebears responded to epidemic disease

Peter Sarris

Petar Milošević

Detail of the mosaic of Justinianus I in the Basilica di San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution-ShareAlike

Ancient Greek ‘pop culture’ discovery rewrites history of poetry and song

ta385 — Wed, 08 Sep 2021 11:45:00 +0000

New research into a little-known text written in ancient Greek shows that ‘stressed poetry’, the ancestor of all modern poetry and song, was already in use in the 2nd Century CE, 300 years earlier than previously thought.

̽��ֱ��city rises: Cambridge archaeologists reveal an entire Roman city without digging

ta385 — Tue, 09 Jun 2020 05:30:00 +0000

For the first time, a team of archaeologists has succeeded in mapping a complete Roman city, Falerii Novi in Italy, using advanced ground penetrating radar. Their approach could revolutionise the study of ancient settlements.

Archaeologists uncover rare 2,000-year-old sundial during Roman theatre excavation

sjr81 — Wed, 08 Nov 2017 11:56:09 +0000

Not only has the sundial survived largely undamaged for more than two millennia, but the presence of two Latin texts means researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge have been able to glean precise information about the man who commissioned it.

̽��ֱ��sundial was found lying face down by students of the Faculty of Classics as they were excavating the front of one of the theatre’s entrances along a secondary street. It was probably left behind at a time when the theatre and town was being scavenged for building materials during the Medieval to post-Medieval period. In all likelihood it did not belong to the theatre, but was removed from a prominent spot, possibly on top of a pillar in the nearby forum.

“Less than a hundred examples of this specific type of sundial have survived and of those, only a handful bear any kind of inscription at all – so this really is a special find,” said Dr Alessandro Launaro, a lecturer at the Faculty of Classics at Cambridge and a Fellow of Gonville & Caius College.

“Not only have we been able to identify the individual who commissioned the sundial, we have also been able to determine the specific public office he held in relation to the likely date of the inscription.”

̽��ֱ��base prominently features the name of M(arcus) NOVIUS M(arci) F(ilius) TUBULA [Marcus Novius Tubula, son of Marcus], whilst the engraving on the curved rim of the dial surface records that he held the office of TR(ibunus) PL(ebis) [Plebeian Tribune] and paid for the sundial D(e) S(ua) PEC(unia) (with his own money).

̽��ֱ��nomen Novius was quite common in Central Italy. On the other hand, the cognomen Tubula (literally ‘small trumpet’) is only attested at Interamna Lirenas.

But even more striking is the specific public office Tubula held in relation to the likely date of the inscription. Various considerations about the name of the individual and the lettering style comfortably place the sundial’s inscription at a time (mid 1st c. BC onwards) by which the inhabitants of Interamna had already been granted full Roman citizenship.

“That being the case, Marcus Novius Tubula, hailing from Interamna Lirenas, would be a hitherto unknown Plebeian Tribune of Rome,” added Launaro. “ ̽��ֱ��sundial would have represented his way of celebrating his election in his own hometown.”

Carved out from a limestone block (54 x 35 x 25 cm), the sundial features a concave face, engraved with 11 hour lines (demarcating the twelve horae of daylight) intersecting three day curves (giving an indication of the season with respect to the time of the winter solstice, equinox and summer solstice). Although the iron gnomon (the needle casting the shadow) is essentially lost, part of it is still preserved under the surviving lead fixing. This type of ‘spherical’ sundial was relatively common in the Roman period and was known as hemicyclium.

“Even though the recent archaeological fieldwork has profoundly affected our understanding of Interamna Lirenas, dispelling long-held views about its precocious decline and considerable marginality, this was not a town of remarkable prestige or notable influence,” added Launaro. “It remained an average, middle-sized settlement, and this is exactly what makes it a potentially very informative case-study about conditions in the majority of Roman cities in Italy at the time”.

“In this sense, the discovery of the inscribed sundial not only casts new light on the place Interamna Lirenas occupied within a broader network of political relationships across Roman Italy, but it is also a more general indicator of the level of involvement in Rome’s own affairs that individuals hailing from this and other relatively secondary communities could aspire to.”

̽��ֱ��ongoing archaeological project at Interamna Lirenas continues to add new evidence about important aspects of the Roman civilization, stressing the high levels of connectivity and integration (political, social, economic and cultural) which it featured.

̽��ֱ��2017 excavation, directed by Dr Launaro (Gonville & Caius College) and Professor Martin Millett (Fitzwilliam College), both from the Faculty of Classics, in partnership with Dr Giovanna Rita Bellini of the Italian Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per le Province di Frosinone, Latina e Rieti, is part of a long-standing collaboration with the British School at Rome and the Comune of Pignataro Interamna and has benefitted from the generous support of the Isaac Newton Trust and Mr Antonio Silvestro Evangelista.

Inset image: ̽��ֱ��find spot near the former roofed theatre in Interamna Lirenas

A 2,000-year-old intact and inscribed sundial – one of only a handful known to have survived – has been recovered during the excavation of a roofed theatre in the Roman town of Interamna Lirenas, near Monte Cassino, in Italy.

Alessandro Launaro

̽��ֱ��sundial pictured after excavation

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Making Rome great again: fake views in the ancient world

Svh27 — Thu, 27 Jul 2017 13:00:42 +0000

̽��ֱ��elusive, glorious past has been a dominant theme of recent political slogans and soundbites. President Trump’s rallying call to “make America great again” was met with outpourings of support on his campaign trail and, in the wake of the EU referendum, British politicians have referred to our history as a great global nation, saying that Brexit offers the opportunity to retake our place as a great world power.

̽��ֱ��tactic of alluding to an idealised point in the past, embodying all of a country’s best values, while glossing over times of hardship, is nothing new. In fact it’s as old as the hills, and at least as old as the seven hills of Ancient Rome.

̽��ֱ��first imperial regime of Rome started in 27 BC after a long period of civil unrest and brutal bloodshed. After Octavian defeated his rivals for power, Antony and Cleopatra, he cleverly rebranded himself as Augustus and began what would become a monarchic regime. He disguised this new order as the continuation and restoration of the Roman Republic and recast the historical and cultural memory of Rome to suit his own needs of self-preservation and self-promotion.

Dr Elena Giusti, in the Faculty of Classics, is working on a book examining the part that the Aeneid, written by Roman poet Virgil, played in shaping the narrative of Emperor Augustus’ regime. Her book will contribute to a long-standing academic debate over the extent to which the poem is propagandistic.

“My interest in Augustan poetry and its tendency to reshape traditions and place facts in a position of secondary, subsidiary importance was inspired by my experiences as a millennial growing up in Berlusconi’s Italy,” says Giusti. “My research focuses on what, after the events of 2016, we might dub ‘post-truth poetics’ – and a reading of Virgil’s Aeneid as a form of poetics and politics that aimed to shape public opinion by appealing to feelings rather than facts.”

Virgil’s epic poem tells the story of Aeneas the Trojan hero and his struggle to found the Roman race. In Giusti’s view, Virgil was in all likelihood commissioned by Augustus to write the Aeneid, and there is certainly plenty to suggest that he wrote his epic work in compliance with the new regime.

Giusti’s research explores Virgil’s exploitation of one historical period in particular, the age of the Punic Wars from 264 BC to 146 BC. This long-running conflict was fought between the Roman Republic and Carthage, an ancient city located on the coast of modern Tunisia.

In alluding to the Wars, from which Rome emerged victorious, Virgil transports the reader back to a “mytho-historic” time of strength and glory in Rome’s past. ̽��ֱ��real threat from Carthage ended after the defeat of Hannibal in 201 BC, but Virgil uses Carthage to evoke metus hostilis or ‘fear of the enemy’. ̽��ֱ��poem aims to unite the Romans, shaken by the trauma of recent civil conflict, by reminding them of a time when the greatest threat was from a foreign power.

“Civil conflict had brought Rome to its knees, and the use of Carthage in the poem appears to suit the ideological needs of foregrounding foreign conflict while whitewashing the reality of the strife against fellow citizens on which the principate itself was built,” explains Giusti.

In the Aeneid, Virgil presents Carthage through a thick layer of mythical and historical allusion, blending historical events and points in time to suit his political purpose. ̽��ֱ��blurred spatial and temporal narrative allows Virgil to mingle not only Ancient Greek mythology and the Punic Wars, but also the more recent historical events of the civil war, by making clear allusions to the history of Antony and Cleopatra in the relationship between Aeneas and Dido, Queen of Carthage.

Virgil conjured a series of associations between the Punic Wars and recent Roman civil disorder. ̽��ֱ��effect was to ascribe to the latter the qualities of foreign conflict and interference by an external enemy. This fictional history, where it was the destruction of Carthage that brought about the crisis of the Republic, served to legitimise Augustus’ involvement in the civil war and vindicate him of any wrong-doing.

On the face of it, then, Virgil’s ‘post-truth poetics’ appear to overwhelmingly support the ambitions of Emperor Augustus to ‘make Rome great again’. However, Giusti also thinks that Virgil’s epic ultimately exposes the illusory nature of Augustan Rome and the suggestion that the new imperial order was founded in the wake of foreign rather than civil wars, which any learned reader in Rome at the time would have known to be ‘post-truth’.

Just as a modern-day political speechwriter charged with harking back to the past with romanticised stories of empire might be required to suppress their better judgement and awareness of historical fact, Virgil appears to have negotiated a vision of the Punic Wars that he himself realised was little more than a nostalgic mirage.

Giusti argues that when Virgil starts to make Carthage look like Rome, and the Carthaginians like Romans, rather than the foreign enemy, memories of the recent civil wars are brought to the surface. Paradoxically, Virgil’s Carthage unveils the delusory nature of Augustus’ restoration of the Roman Republic and its mythical history. ̽��ֱ��artificiality of the image that Virgil conjures stimulates us to interrogate the legitimacy of the stories and messages encoded in the narrative.

Perhaps this indicates the author’s frustration at writing in support of the Augustan regime. “We know that Virgil, like most Romans, suffered personally during the civil wars and that his family’s property was confiscated, although subsequently restored. To me it is clear from the poem that his primary historical concern was actually the traumatic memory of the civil wars and the subsequent subversion of Rome’s Republican institutions,” adds Giusti.

Perhaps this image of an author conflicted in his work serves to explain why, according to legend, Virgil tried to have the Aeneid destroyed before he died. He was prevented from doing so by Augustus and his vision of “empire without end”.

A political leader who seeks to make his nation “great again” and a time when ‘post-truth’ rhetoric appears to support political ambitions. Not Trump’s America, but Rome 2,000 years ago.

Civil conflict had brought Rome to its knees, and the use of Carthage in the poem appears to suit the ideological needs of foregrounding foreign conflict while whitewashing the reality of the strife against fellow citizens on which the principate itself was built.

Elena Giusti

Modification of image by Till Niermann on Wikimedia

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution-Noncommerical