Bread & Circuses

Earliest Roman Military Camp Discovered at Carnuntum

A good deal in the press, both German and English, about the discovery of one of the earliest Roman military camps in the Carnuntum on the Danube east of Vienna. The archaeologists at the Ludwig-Boltzmann Institute for Virtual Archaeology believe that the camp dates to around AD 6 which would make it a winter camp of Emperor Tiberius. Full press release in English and German here. Thanks to Unrv and MA for hat tips.

Coverage at the Austrian Times, Wiener Zeitung, and the Telegraph.

Gold Coin at Vindolanda

The first gold coin ever found has been uncovered at Vindolanda. Although it was found in the late fourth century level, it is an aureus of the Emperor Nero. From the press release:

The Roman site of Vindolanda, with an active archaeological research programme which has been ongoing for 43 years, is used to remarkable discoveries – notably the world famous Vindolanda writing tablets which hold the title of Britain’s top archaeological treasure.

With a vast array of finds from 300 years of Roman occupation on this site the discovery of a gold coin had previously alluded 2 generations of archaeologists, that was until 3^rd June 2014.

A news story in the Journal here. More on the current dig in the late Roman fort here.

Help With Latin Manuscripts

A useful online tool, from Marjorie Burghart, for those working on manuscripts. Her programme Enigma makes life considerably easier:

Enigma helps scholars to decipher Latin words which are difficult to read in medieval manuscripts. It is sometimes impossible to decipher all the letters in a word, for various reasons (difficult palaeography, unclear writing, damage to the document, etc.) If you type the letters you can read and add wildcards, Enigma will list the possible Latin forms, drawing from its database of more than 400 000 forms. Nota bene: Enigma does NOT solve abbreviations. To do so, you can resort to A. Cappelli's famous dictionary, available online (ed. Milan, 1912, and ed. Leipzig, 1928). If you cannot resolve an abbreviation, replace it by a wildcard in your Enigma query.

You can access it here.

Arminius and the World Cup

An interesting article in Thelocal.de frames support for Germany in the World Cup in terms of the Battle of Teutoburg Forest - the idea that Germany might win football because it has a history of seeing off the toughest of opponents:

Around the time of Christ’s birth, Germany was a land of warring tribal groups slowly being subsumed from the south and west by the Brazilian football team of the era, the Roman Empire.

Inexorably the Romans advanced, introducing their roads, their fancy under-floor heating and a spectacular series of defences known as the Limes Germanicus.

It seemed that the entire expanse of what we call Germany today would become yet another province of wine drinkers.

Full article here.

Tesco and Late Antiquity

I was having a chat with the perennially delightful Sarah Bond earlier in the week about how late antiquity has gone mainstream. Proof positive is the way that the Financial Times covered Tesco earnings last week. The supermarket's figures were not all they should have been, but Jonathan Guthrie's coverage was splendid thanks not only to the classical references, but specifically to late antiquity:

There is a case for a structural review of Tesco conducted by a reformer – a Constantine to Mr Clarke’s Diocletian. The group, still with 29 per cent of the groceries industry, resembles a retail conglomerate in today’s segmenting market. It even owns a bank and a garden centre. And we know what we do with conglomerates, don’t we children? That’s right, we break them up.

Full article here. Good name checks for Augustus and Trajan too.

Property Developer Threatens Disabled Charity

Riding for the Disabled is a very good thing indeed. The British charity has been helping more than 30,000 people every year for the past 40 years.

Convicted fraudster Bill Roddie, on the other hand, does not comes across as a nice man at all. One of Scotland's largest landlords, he does not appear to like Scotland's right-to-roam legislation and has been accused of breaching the Land Reform Act on his Sauchieburn estate.

The chief executive of Spectrum Properties does not seem to be a fan of Riding for the Disabled either. 

Bannockburn Riding for the Disabled Association, which has been on the Sauchieburn estate for the past 20 years, used to provide therapy for more than 200 disabled adults and children every week and has trained riders for the Paralympics. But a long-standing row betwen the RDA and Roddie over access to the estate means that the centre is under threat.

What gives events a sinister turn is that Roddie, who bought the estate in 2007, has been accused of deliberately removing temporary repairs to the access road in order to force the charity off his estate. His accounts suggest that his business empire is heavily indebted and suspicions are that with the charity gone, he will have more room to manoeuvre. 

Roddie has also maintained a policy of total silence towards the press.

Given how crucial decent road access is to the disabled riders, numbers at the Riding for the Disabled Centre have now dropped to 20 riders a week and there are fears that the centre might close.

The centre really needs support. You can donate at JustGiving here.

More on the centre in the Herald, the Courier and Horse and Hound. There is also a video news story at STV.

UPDATE I had missed the story in the Daily Record and a previous one here.

Secrets of Underground London on Yesterday tonight

I tend to forget how long it takes between filming and when a show actually appears. I had a great deal of fun last August shooting the Roman segment of a documentary with Pioneer Productions called Secrets of Underground London for PBS. At the time I posted about filming in London's amphitheatre here.

For those in the UK the show is on the channel Yesterday tonight at 2100. Here is the blurb:

The program begins with an archaeological find beneath Guildhall, an original Roman amphitheater built around 50 AD for gladiator events. The site could accommodate 5 - 6,000 people, which was the majority of Londoners at the time. Next is a site hidden beneath The Museum of London, where 20,000 skeletons were found - graves from the Black Death Plague which began in 1348. Next are 22 miles of tunnels cut beneath Chislehurst, where miners extracted chalk needed to build brick and mortar buildings which replaced wooden ones destroyed in the 1666 Fire of London.

For those in the US it will be on PBS on June 22.

Roman camp in Thuringia round up

To my mind there is no rhymn nor reason about which archaeological discoveries in Germany get picked up by the British press. The Battle on the Harzhorn has had pretty much no coverage in English at all, even though the discoveries are wonderful, the battle is dateable and it is connected with a Roman emperor.

And yet the announcement, a couple of weeks ago of a Roman camp near Hachelbich in Thuringia, has captured the imagination. This morning there was a large piece in the Daily Mail:

Archaeologists have been searching for signs of a Roman military presence in eastern Germany for centuries.  And now researchers believe they have made the long-awaited discovery of what appears to be a military camp, near the town of Hachelbich in Thuringia.  Located in a valley, the temporary camp measures 18 hectares (180,000 square metres) and is thought to have housed 5,000 Roman troops.

Full story here. You can see my previous posts over the last couple of weeks here and here.

Thanks to CM for pointing out that I had not linked to the initial press release. For those with German it is as detailed a read as we have at the moment. Even without German the photos are especially hi-res. See it here.

Roman camp in Thuringia redux

Pleased to see that the discovery of a significantly sized Roman camp in the central German state of Thuringia is getting some English coverage. A good overview by Andrew Curry:

Archaeologists have confirmed the presence of a long-lost Roman military camp deep in eastern Germany. The 18-hectare site, found near the town of Hachelbich in Thuringia, would have sheltered a Roman legion of up to 5000 troops. Its location in a broad valley with few impediments suggests it was a stopover on the way to invade territory further east.

“People have been searching for evidence of the Romans in this part of Germany for 200 years,” says team leader Mario Kuessner, an archaeologist working for the state of Thuringia. “It took a long time before we realized what we had, and we wanted to be sure.”

After a stinging defeat in 9 C.E., Rome largely abandoned hope of conquering the fractious German tribes north of the Rhine River. Yet written sources suggest that the Romans occasionally campaigned in Germany, probably to punish German tribes for raids on Roman territory. Until recently, the reports have been largely dismissed as braggadocio. The Hachelbich site, along with a battlefield near Hannover uncovered in 2008, show that the reports had more than a kernel of truth to them—and that the Romans were willing to cross their frontier when it suited their political or military needs.

See the full story here. See previous post on Monday.

Reception of Arminius

One of the most fascinating aspects of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest is the way that Arminius was co-opted as the poster boy for German nationalism. The Landesmuseum in Detmold had an exhibition last year called "Arminius, Thusnelda und die Schlacht im Teutoburger Wald". Pretty successful both artistically and financially, it has allowed the museum to buy a couple of new paintings.

Franz Schröder's "Schlacht im Teutoburger Wald" and Ludwig Fahrenkrog's "Germania es kommt dein Tag" are both worth a look. The latter especially, painted just after World War I is a fantastic example. Germany is in chains kneeling in front of a saint-like Arminius. It is deliberately reminiscent of saints being visited by a vision of Christ.

Both pictures can be seen in Lz.de.