Rome in the news: This Old House

Archaeologists have discovered a new 6th century house near the Quirinal, according to several news reports. Sixth century BCE, that is, which is pretty impressive — that makes this house, which is well-preserved, the standing equivalent of the post-holes on the Palatine (the ‘huts of Romulus’).

Romulean huts.

The new house seems to be on the same plan, but is considerably more impressive-looking:

Archaeologists previously thought that this area was a necropolis.

The house was found within the circuit of the Servian walls. The lead excavator, Mirella Serlorenzi, thinks that this means the walls encircled the inhabited 6th-century city. Others had previously argued that the walls actually circled individual hills (behind paywall, sorry; discussion here, in Italian; full, but outdated, description of the walls in English). Excavations are ongoing, so the matter isn’t quite closed yet (and may not be fully determined). Ancient sources suggest that the 6th century walls did encircle the city, but that conflicts with the evidence for the Gallic sack of 390 BCE (which some have argued didn’t happen quite as the Romans claimed it did — see around p. 318).

Map of Rome, including hills and Servian wall (agger).

Aside from trying to figure out what the house was used for and who lived there (priest?), this discovery may also give archaeologists incentive to search near other parts of the Servian walls — and may increase some of scholars’ trust in Roman accounts of Servius Tullius, whose life story is in many ways unbelievable.

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Quick Takes: Recasting Pompeii

Today’s Reppublica has an article about the restoration of the plaster casts from Pompeii. (Warning: some of these pictures are a bit graphic. Bones included.)

The article is accompanied by a slideshow, which shows both most casts and much closer views than I, at least, had seen before. Even if you don’t read Italian or don’t want to read the article, the pictures are really worth a look. The detailed views are incredible, and you can see details of clothing and hairstyle on several of the preserved bodies. Some of the images are fairly routine, but others are heartbreaking — for example, #25, preserving an adult playing with a small child, or #49, a child.

Issues of the ethics of human remains are often less pressing in classical archaeology, because we are so distanced from that past. Some of the value, I think, in reporting like this lies in problematizing that a bit for the non-archaeologists who work with classical antiquity — I assume, perhaps unfairly, that archaeologists are less troubled by bodies than I am. It’s less about the research being done — preserving the bodies, doing scans of various types, and DNA work are all mentioned as part of the research program in the article — but the gawking factor. (And yes, I realize that I am encouraging readers to go gawk. But this is also part of what troubles me.)

All the same, I’ll look forward to the results of the research when it’s published. Not many details are offered in the article (I haven’t watched the video), but I assume the DNA testing will look for family groups among the casts, and possibly also for prevalence of disease. If anyone knows anything else, please share!

(H/T to Kristina Killgrove, whose twitter feed passed on the story!)

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Rome in the news: Monetary matters

It’s rare that we here at The Library of Antiquity get a twofer. But today’s NYT Magazine’s feature story is on money, and guess who’s the original minter?

Augustus.

Unfortunately, the NYT seems to have fired its fact-checker:

When Caesar Augustus minted the denarius coin, around 15 A.D., he did so with a decree that it be made almost entirely of silver. But over the coming decades, as the financial health of the Roman Empire declined — largely because of its increasingly independent army, which demanded ever more money to subdue the rebellious provinces — the emperors began, slowly at first, mixing in copper to stretch the silver further. By 280 A.D., a denarius was 98 percent copper, with a thin silver wash on the surface. The implication was clear to every Roman: Here, in their hands, was a physical manifestation of the empire’s deepening desperation. Whatever proclamations the emperor might make, the coin told the truth.

The lesson, perhaps, is that money shapes — and is shaped by — the society at large.

Last I checked, Augustus died in 14, so it would have been hard for him to mint anything. Also, Augustus? The first denarius??? That’s like saying that Abraham Lincoln invented the penny because his picture is on it.

We can ignore the remarks about debasement of coinage, since I think that’s at least still taught in textbooks (although Jairus Benaji has some interesting thoughts on this matter). But the grim reactions of the Romans is a different story. How is the change from silver to a mixture of silver and copper anything other than an ancient version of quantitative easing? If the author is trying to prove that the Romans! They’re just like us!, he’s doing a good job.

That’s not quite what he seems to want to prove, though. In fact, he seems to think exactly the opposite:

And the last century has seen far more transformation in money than any other to date. A hundred years ago, paper money was still just a reference document, the real value hidden away in a vault full of gold. But with the rise of information technology, money has increasingly become an abstraction. We’ve created A.T.M. and debit and credit cards, electronic transfers and 401(k) accounts. Since 1980, computers and deregulation have allowed Wall Street firms to experiment exuberantly with new securities that blur the line between finance and gambling. By the early 2000s, banks were selling securitized mortgage-backed assets as “money-good,” and it was largely this mistaking of junk for cash that brought about the financial crisis of 2008.

Hmm. So, I admit my understanding of modern finance isn’t the greatest (although at this point, neither is Wall Street’s?), but how is this different from a Hellenistic king trading off his properties to one of his ‘friends’ in exchange for a service? (Besides being faster, that is.) Certainly it sounds pretty similar to the ‘speculation’ that ruined the families in 90% of Victorian novels (Nicholas Nickleby, anyone?). Not the same, but also not as different as I think the NYT Mag thinks. Or wants to make us think.

I do understand that a newspaper needs a hook, and a historical survey makes novelty sound impressive. But really, guys. If it’s ‘fit to print’, it should at least be accurate.

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Rome in the news: Vandals!

Just when you thought tourists couldn’t be more annoying, a pair of Californians — old enough to know better — defaced the Colosseum. And apparently they weren’t the first ones (and at least there are several countries represented in this hall of shame).

Carving your initials into famous monuments was never really something on my bucket list. But seriously, ladies: did you think there wasn’t going to be security?

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Quick Takes: Rome and China, coming soon to a theater near you!

As I’ve been learning in my film class, genres go through boom-bust cycles: novel genius, spinoff, and finally parody. This happened in the mid-20th century with the giant epics (Quo Vadis and Ben-Hur, followed by Cleopatra and Fall of the Roman Empire — and Life of Brian), and Gladiator started another boom. With Centurion and The Last Legion, we seem to have hit the ‘bust’ stage again. So when will the first parody* come along?

The answer might be “February.”

Rome in the news: O tempora! o mores!

In a truly bizarre turn of events, US Senator Ted Cruz has delivered  an address against President Obama. This in itself isn’t that weird. It’s the particular speech he chose to give that’s odd: a modified version of the First Catilinarian. Ignoring the fact that the ‘average American’ probably has no idea who either Cicero or Catiline is (outside of misty memories of HBO’s Rome), Cruz — or his speechwriters — have made a number of unlikely editorial choices. 

Rome in the News: Football vs. Gladiators

In the wake of the classroom scandals at UNC, revelations about the dangers of concussions, and the sex abuse at Penn State, football has been on everyone’s mind lately. It seems to be popular to compare the American fascination with football with Rome’s love of gladiators. The implication, of course, is that we’re somehow better. As Elizabeth Pardoe puts it,

Unlike the Colosseum crowds, football fans cheer not when a player is injured, but when the injured player manages to walk off the field or gives a sign of life.

The Romans are bad and bloodthirsty; as Americans, we prefer to cheer for success. This dichotomy is well-known from Hollywood (behind paywall), although Pardoe is harsher on spectators than the movies are. As a person who has never liked football, I should have been sympathetic. But I found the comparison strangely off-putting.

Rome in the News: Did the Roman Empire fall?

(Hat tip to Mike Vasta for alerting me to this article!)

It’s election season in the US, which means that it’s time to play the “America is Rome” game. The most recent entry, Michael Auslin’s long piece at Politico, compares American foreign policy against everywhere — China, Syria, Russia, and more — to Roman ‘foreign policy’ on its northern and eastern frontiers (scare quotes mine). 

Rome in the News: Did Romans all look the same?

The United States has a long and productive history with Rome. The Founding Fathers took symbols like the eagle from Rome’s standards for US coinage, modeled the three-tiered division of powers after Polybius, and even got the name ‘Republic’ from Rome’s res publica. So it’s not a huge surprise that we see Rome reappear as a springboard for comparison in popular media, from movies like Spartacus and Gladiator to recent political books like Are We Rome?.

Last week, a professor of education joined the party.