Bread and Circuses

The Eagle Of The Ninth - the film

A short piece in Empire magazine about an upcoming film version of Rosemary Sutcliffe's Eagle of the Ninth. I am depressed to find, after a quick check on imdb, that the television series I recall was shown in 1977. What I remember most of all was one scene early on which in which a gladiator fought a bear. The bear was called Hercules and lived in a pub up the road.

Anyway, production on the film is due to start in August:

Many of you may remember The Eagle of the Ninth from recommended reading lists as a young teenager / your parent's bookshelf, so it's good news today that Kevin Macdonald is set to turn the classic 1954 novel into a film, starring Jamie Bell and (probably; he's in talks) Channing Tatum.

The story is set in Roman Britain, where a young man called Marcus Aquila (Tatum, possibly) ventures north of Hadrian's Wall to discover the whereabouts of the Ninth Legion, which his father commanded, which vanished 15 years before*. With him is a young Celtic slave, Esca (Bell), rescued from a gladiatorial arena and helping him in his quest, as he disguises himself as an occultist to travel north of the Wall.

The script's been written by Jeremy Brock, who also worked with Macdonald on The Last King of Scotland, with production due to start in August. Apparently Hungary will stand in for Roman England, but Scotland will be playing itself. We're not sure what that says about Scotland. In the meantime, Macdonald's State of Play opens on April 24.

Full story here. Start gearing yourself up for a large number of confused articles about what happened to Legion IX.

Ahmad Hasan Dani RIP

Obituary of Ahmad Hasan Dani, Pakistan's leading archaeologist, who worked with Mortimer Wheeler:

Professor Ahmad Hasan Dani, who has died aged 88, was Pakistan's leading archaeologist and an authority on south and central Asian archaeology and history. Whether addressing international conferences or guiding schoolchildren on cultural rambles around Islamabad, Dani conveyed an enthusiasm for learning that was infectious.

In 1945 he had worked with the great British archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler on the ruins at Moenjodaro, the 4,500-year-old city settlement in Sindh province, southern Pakistan. Dani revealed fascinating details about the site, proclaiming it "the first planned city in the world" and demonstrating that its Indus Valley civilisation was one of humanity's great foundational cultures, alongside Egypt, Mesopotamia and China. He described a sophisticated people who understood irrigation, traded with Arabia and ruled from Afghanistan to Rajasthan. He also showed how they practised yoga and created statuettes of bangled dancing girls and stern-faced priest-kings that delight viewers to this day.

Obituary in the Guardian.

Rome and Persia in Late Antiquity

Beate Dignas and Engelbert Winter's Rome and Persia in Late Antiquity: Neighbours and Rivals reviewed by Alan Farahani at the University of California, Berkeley:

The Sasanian Empire has often been neglected or marginalized compared to its Western (and in more recent years, its Eastern, Chinese) neighbor. Studies that focus on the Roman Near East usually include the Sasanians only when warfare between the Romans and the Sasanians is involved, and such analyses are frequently undertaken from an exclusively Roman perspective. Lately, however, there has been an increased interest in understanding not only Roman-Sasanian relations more fully, but also in generating multifaceted approaches to the Sasanian impact on the Near East.To this end, the present volume, coauthored by Beate Dignas and Engelbert Winter, seeks to fill an intellectual gap and provide a narrative and sourcebook on Roman and Sasanian relations "based on a foundation that shows respect for the history of the East and does not shape this history according to Western needs" (p. 2). This English-language edition published in 2007 by Cambridge University Press is the successor to a German-language original (Rom und das Perserreich. Zwei Weltmächte zwischen Konfrontation und Koexistenz) published in 2001 by Akademie Verlag. This edition is not merely a translation; the authors have greatly expanded on their original text and have added new chapters, new maps, updated appendices, and have in places responded, above all, to comments provided by one of the original reviewers, Stefan R. Hauser, a historian and archaeologist of the Parthian and Sasanian periods of Iran. As Hauser's evaluation surveyed the entirety of the book, much of the content of which remains unchanged, this review focuses instead on the impact of the revisions upon the original.

Full review at the Bryn Mawr Classical Review.

Battle of Teutoburg Forest 2009, part 18

Several new pieces this week, most of which, however are follow ups. First off, the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung has an article on the Augustan marching camp found at Porta Westfalica in early January. My original story with photos and the press release is here. The paper, like all the German press, is pushing the Varus connection heavily. I would always rather be more cautious.

Next up, the Main Post has another piece on the exhibition on Roman Marktbreit at the Museum Malerwinkelhaus. Last week's article is here.

Finally a brief note in the Oznabrücker Zeitung about the myth of Arminius.

Marcus Aurelius: Warrior, Philosopher, Emperor

i should have posted this over the weekend. A review by Tom Holland of Frank McLynn's new biography Marcus Aurelius: Warrior, Philosopher, Emperor. Holland has a few caveats, but it looks rather good to me:

Among the most entertaining passages in McLynn's book are those devoted to a gloriously scabrous character assassination of the famous orator, and one-time tutor to Marcus, Cornelius Fronto. Drawing on the correspondence between the two men, which came to light as recently as 1815, McLynn portrays Fronto as compulsively orotund and prolix, a showoff who is never content with a single sentence when a whole battery of them will do. Here, perhaps, was a warning from history that McLynn would have done well to heed. Had he done so, then his book would surely have been a good deal lighter. Rather than listing every single province that Hadrian visited, for instance, he might have contented himself with saying that the emperor was well travelled; instead of likening Marcus to Nathaniel Hawthorne, or Cicero to Georges Simenon, he might have reined back on far-fetched and unhelpful comparisons; rather than discoursing windily on the career of Rousseau or Smuts, he might profitably have cut his entire last chapter. "We have come a long way from Marcus Aurelius," he comments at one point - to which the reader can only wearily assent.

Full review here.

Flowers and Tiberius on Capri

I was incredibly lucky, many years ago now, to go a wedding on Capri - my first visit to Italy. It was a magical, week-long event, one afternoon of which was spent in splendid solitude pottering around the Villa Iovis. Robin Lane Fox's piece on anemones on Capri in today's FT brought it all home to me:

For 10 years, between AD27 and AD37, the elderly Tiberius withdrew to the most remote of his 12 properties on the island and continued to rule the empire from its rocky peak without going anywhere near Rome. I wanted to see for myself where he resided. His years of retreat became the subject of gossip so salacious that it was never translated from its original Latin in texts for general readers and schoolchildren. Only recently have editions of Suetonius’s Lives of the Caesars and Tacitus’s Annals made the allegations available. They are still strong stuff, of which compulsory sex with babies is only one of the more disagreeable items.

I was trying to forget the Latin words for swinging threesomes as I took the long uphill track to Tiberius’s ultimate refuge, the so-called Villa Jovis, or Villa of Jupiter, on the far western tip of the island. Actually it is a palace in plan, not a villa, at a time when the emperors did not yet have a proper palace in the heart of Rome. I was not thinking of orgies, not even when a trio of goats appeared on cue at the path to what the text of the best ancient manuscript of Suetonius calls “villa Ionis”. Contemporaries called its grounds the “old goat’s garden”, referring to Tiberius’s goat-like behaviour with boys and girls in its bushes. I did not follow the goats into the undergrowth.

My thoughts, rather, were historical. How ever did the Roman empire continue to function while the managing director was away for 10 years on an island with the most spectacular view in the Mediterranean and nothing so elementary as a phone? Tacitus artfully tells us that some people said the emperor had retired in his 60s because he looked so repulsive; his face was pockmarked and covered in bits of healing plaster. It is as if the British prime minister were to decide to withdraw to Lundy island, off the coast of Devon in England, for the rest of his term in office. It is an interesting question: which modern states would function no worse if their leaders simply pulled out and kept quiet?

Full story here.

Virgil on Facebook

Several people have sent this over - Virgil's homepage on Facebook. Very funny indeed.

Byzantine bathhouse near Kibbutz Gevim

Wow, I have been slow on this one. The story broke a couple of days ago. Anyway, a Byzantine bathhouse has been found near Kibbut Gevim on the road between Beer Sheva and Gaza. The Israel Antiquities Authority has the full story:

A bathhouse that dates to the Byzantine period was exposed in an archaeological excavation undertaken by the Israel Antiquities Authority near Kibbut Gevim (at the site of Horvat Lasan) and underwritten by the Israel Railways, prior to laying a railroad track from Ashkelon to Netivot.

According to archaeologist Gregory Serai, director of the excavation on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “The bathhouse, which covers an area of 20 x 20 m, was apparently destroyed in a cave-in and was later used as a rubbish dump that was filled with household refuse. It was ascertained in the excavation that the furnace (hypocaust) was dug into the natural soil and its ceiling was built of a cement-like material that was lined with ceramic tiles. The ceiling was supported by means of one meter high colonnades built of mudbricks. The bathers entered the changing room (apodyterium) and passed from there into a room with cold water (frigidarium) where there were probably stepped tubs. From there they continued into the room with warm water (tepidarium) and on to the room with hot water (caldarium – comparable to today’s sauna). The floor of the caldarium was paved with marble flagstones, some of which were as big 1 x 1 m. Evidence of the ceiling’s destruction is attested to by the manner in which the hypocaust columns were toppled in different directions”.

Following its destruction, the structure served as a source of building material as evidenced by the stone walls that were robbed. Secondary use of the stones was noted in the center area of the excavation. A number of residential buildings were discovered in this part of the site and they contained storage jars that were still in situ.

The village’s buildings and bathhouse join the finds that were revealed in a previous excavation that was conducted on the other side of the road. In the opinion of Gregory Serai, “We are dealing with a village whose economy was based on the production of wine and the manufacture of pottery vessels. The site was situated on a road that linked Beer Sheva with Gaza and probably began as a road station in the Roman period.

Angeliki Laiou RIP

The Independent reports the death of the noted Byzantine scholar Angeliki Laiou:

Angeliki Laiou was a leading historian of Byzantium's economy and society, and a pioneering woman in the international academic world and in the Greek government. She impressed first with her precocity: she obtained her PhD at Harvard at the age of 25, held various positions in American universities (Harvard itself, Brandeis, Rutgers), and was back at her alma mater as Professor of Byzantine History when she was only 40. In addition, she spent two years as an MP and was briefly Deputy Secretary of Foreign Affairs in her native Greece.

Full story here.

Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare, Vol II

Philip Sabin, Hans van Wees, Michael Whitby (edd.), The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare. Vol. II: Rome from the Late Republic to the Late Empire, reviewed by Josh Levithan, Kenyon College. The late Roman chapters by Mark Humphries, Hugh Elton (natch), Michael Whitby, Philip Rance and A.D. Lee' all look good. The best, however, appears to be on war and society by Andrew Fear:

Fear leads us from the familiar Principate to shadowy Late Antiquity by means of the mild literary device of imagining a denizen of the early Empire witnessing the change that the centuries had wrought. This is engaging and well-written, the feeling of pleasant literariness deriving at least in part from the lack of any subdivisions in the chapter. This departure was welcomed by the weary reviewer, but it may also hamper reference-seekers. Fear paints a picture of the military impinging on ordinary society, and he skillfully integrates evidence from sources as diverse as the Abinnaeus archive, the Theodosian Code, various works of literature, and the Dura excavations, describing at length the uncomfortable economic/extortionate relationship between soldiers, officials, and ordinary citizens. The chapter is creative and compelling both in terms of its subject matter and its execution--it is certainly, to a reviewer familiar with Roman military history, the most (pleasantly) surprising, most novel contribution to the volume.

Full review here.