Bread and Circuses

Military camps in Eastern Austria

An exciting discovery reported in the Burgenländische Volkszeitung. After the disovery of a large settlement last year, three military camps have been found in Strebersdorf, on top of each other, and which date from the first to the fourth centuries. What is notable is the size of the site - two hectares:

Nachdem in Strebersdorf im Vorjahr die größte römische Siedlung des Burgenlands entdeckt wurde, machten Archäologen dort nun neuerlich einen Sensationsfund. Sie entdeckten direkt an der Bernsteinstraße drei römische Militärlager, die in zeitlicher Abfolge übereinander am gleichen Platz errichtet wurden und über zwei Hektar groß sind, und damit den ältesten, lange gesuchten Standort einer römischen Reitereinheit. Laut Experten wird die Römische Geschichte Österreichs durch diesen Fund neu geschrieben.

Late Roman site near Wiesbaden

Stars and Stripes carries a piece about a late Roman, possibly third century civilian site near Wiesbaden:

A team of archaeology students and experts believe they have unearthed remnants of a Roman settlement from the second or third century near the construction site of an Army housing project, but the discovery isn’t expected to affect the project.

The team, from nearby Mainz University, discovered a Roman coin, pieces of pottery, roof tiles, decorated bricks and 23 pieces of raw lead. The students also believe they have found the wall outlines of a building.

"We think it’s from the first to third century after Christ," said Dr. Guntram Schwitalla, a district archaeologist in Hessen. "If it’s from the second century A.D., it would be a civilian building and we didn’t expect this. We expected only military buildings."

The discovery is connected to the training camp I wrote about in March. Thanks to IH for the hat tip.

Hadrian and airport restaurants

Alain de Botton is a depressingly good writer. He spent a week this summer working at Terminal 5 at Heathrow as its writer-in-residence.

As I took a seat in the restaurant, I felt certain that whatever it had taken for humanity to arrive at this point had ultimately been worth it. Still, I recognised the fragility of the achievement behind the lounge. I sensed how relatively few such halcyon days there might be left before members of the small fraternity ensconced in its armchairs came to grief and its gilded ceilings cracked into ruin. Perhaps it had felt a bit like this on the terraces of Hadrian’s villa outside Rome on autumn Sunday evenings in the second century AD, as a blood-red sun set over the marble colonnades. My fellow guests fitted none of the stereotypes of the rich. Indeed, they stood out chiefly on the basis of how ordinary they looked. These were not the chinless heirs to hectares of countryside, but rather normal people who had figured out how to make the microchip and spreadsheet work on their behalf. Casually dressed, reading books by Malcolm Gladwell, they were an elite who had come into their wealth by dint of intelligence and stamina. Our society is affluent in large part because its wealthiest citizens do not behave the way rich people are popularly supposed to. Simple plunder could never have built up this sort of lounge (globalised, diverse, rigorous, technologically minded), but at best a few gilded pleasure palaces standing out in an otherwise feudal and backward landscape.

Article in the Times .

Europe’s Barbarians AD 200-600

Via Muhlberger's Early History a review of Edward James' Europe’s Barbarians AD 200-600. The bibliography is especially mentioned as noteworthy, significant in a field that is moving at such a fast pace:

He [James] calls movements of Visigoths and Vandals, movements of “barbarian peoples,” showing reluctance to depart completely from old paradigms. But in the analytic portion... he caves in, stating: "My own conclusion would be that the break-up of the Western Roman Empire occurred because, in the different provinces, local populations began to give their allegiances to local warlords, rather than to the emperor, because those warlords were more effective as protectors and patrons. Not all these warlords were barbarians, but the majority were, because of the domination of barbarians within the Roman army."

The Antonine Wall defeats distillery

A slow news day at Scotland on Sunday with a story about how the Antonine Wall is halting plans to create jobs in Scotland:

It was built in 142 AD to stop Caledonian tribes marching on Roman outposts. But the Antonine Wall is now stopping the march of development by putting in jeopardy plans for a new distillery and 87 jobs.

Falkirk Distillery Company (FDC) is trying to revive production of one of Scotland's most prized Lowland single malts on a site close to where the wall ran. But the plan has encountered objections from Historic Scotland and now faces a public inquiry.

The government agency says the nearby wall – designated a Unesco World Heritage Site last year – is unique and aims to find out how it was built.

FDC fears it is being used as a "test case" by Historic Scotland on how development close to the wall should be treated in future. Several other businesses, including a hotel and a garden centre, have already been set up close to the wall before the UN designation.

Erm. Except it isn't really and Falkirk Distillery Company realised that if they blamed the Wall, then they would get coverage.

Arminius and Ulrich von Hutten

Good post at Studenda Mira on Ulrich von Hutten and his 1522 work Arminius, also the first dramatic portrayal of the Cheruscan. I like the passage he quotes:

SCIPIO: Among the Romans, Arminius stands accused of breach of faith and is charged with having abused his victory over Varus by excessive cruelty.
ARMINIUS: If that accusation were to stand, Scipio, all tyrannicides and liberators would be judged faithless, most notably your own patriots who drove out the Tarquins and assassinated Julius Caesar. And yet these heroes enjoy fame and glory among you. I, for my part, call those men faithless who trim their sails to the winds of good fortune, who offer their loyalty for sale to the highest bidder. I myself was driven by the sacred merit of my nation's cause...my enemies' jealousy is responsible for the invention of this malicious calumny...I am not the first to be slandered, nor will I be the last.

More to the point, aside for the nice things he says about me, the post is entirely worth it for the description of the Cheruscan breakfast available in New Ulm.

Fourth century coin found in Snape, Suffolk

I'm quite late with this one - a coin which dates to the reign of Constantius II and Constans has been found on an RSPB nature reserve in Snape, Suffolk. No other details have emerged and no sense of context, but still, in and of itself interesting:

A Roman coin dating from the fourth century has been discovered at the recently acquired RSPB Abbey Farm nature reserve at Snape.

This historic coin was found by a local archaeologist earlier this year, and has been identified as dating from ca 347-348 AD, during the joint reign of Constantius II and his brother Constans.

Constantius II and Constans had become joint emperors of Rome, with their brother Constantine II, following the death of their father in 337 AD. Constans killed Constantine II in 340 during a battle for supremacy in Italy. Constans later visited Britain early in 343, probably to repel the Scots or Picts. He died in 350. There is no evidence that Constantius II ever visited Britain before he eventually died in battle in 361.

The above from the Lowestoft Journal. See also Evening Star 24 which has images of the find.

Diversity in Winchester in AD300

Interesting piece of research from the Lankhills Roman cemetery in Winchester carried out by a team from the University of Reading:

Burial site evidence suggested that 20 individuals were of local origin, whereas eight were classified as 'Pannonian' by previous research and 12 had unusual graves that were not attributed to a specific cultural background.

The isotope analyses revealed that at least a quarter of the individuals buried at Lankhills were immigrants and grew up elsewhere in the UK and in continental Europe.

But the findings tell a complex story between archaeological and isotope analyses. Some individuals with local burial features have higher strontium and lower oxygen isotope ratios than typical for the Winchester area - it seems likely that they were originally from elsewhere in Britain or continental Europe.

Full story here.

A letter to Ausonius

Marvellous to see Ausonius back up and blogging. This time a translation of Symmachus 1.13.

The Decline and Fall Industry

Great piece by Bryan Ward-Perkins on the industry of the fall of the Roman Empire. In Standpoint. Recommended:

Seven learned authors, seven substantial books and more than 3,000 pages packed with information on the collapse of Roman power in the West, all published inside four years. Even enthusiasts in this field, like myself, find such an outpouring excessive — a flood of similar titles invoking Fall, Barbarians and Ruin. While these books are subtly different in style and register, ranging from the academic prose and dense end notes of Walter Goffart's Barbarian Tides to the cavalier folksiness of James O'Donnell's The Ruin of the Roman Empire, five of them are aimed at, and priced for, a broad audience and will sell in their thousands (rather than the few hundreds that an academic monograph will attain). Why have so many scholars been busy writing books on essentially the same subject, and why have most of them chosen to pitch their wares at a wider public?