Tag Archives: Rome

Mother Goddess Temple or Brothel?

From the fascinating”mortuary archaeology” blog Bones Don’t Lie, diverse explanations for the collection of babies’ skeletons in a ruin from Roman Britain.

Dr. [Jill] Eyers continues to argues for the brothel hypothesis, finding that further research and the combination of the human remains with archaeological evidence only further supports her conclusions. However this has been called into question by archaeologists, like Brett Thorn, who argue that the site also has evidence of a Mother Goddess cult, and may represent an area where women went to give birth.

Read more.

Violent Gladiators Plague Rome

Sounds like “news you can use from the 3rd century CE,” doesn’t it. Actually, it is today’s news.

Quick Review: Caesar’s Druids

Cover image of Casar's Druids by Miranda Aldhouse-GreenI am a little more than halfway through Miranda Aldhouse-Green’s Caesar’s Druids: Story of An Ancient Priesthood.

As the British archaeologist Stuart Piggott pointed out back in the 1960s, there are no texts written about Druids by Druids. The sum of what ancient writers of the Greco-Roman world wrote would fill a few typed sheets—and many of those writers never saw a Druid.

One of the few who did was, of course, Julius Caesar, and he was busy trying to conquer and then govern their societies in Gaul and Britain, which gives his writing a certain slant.

Miranda Aldhouse-Green’s approach, however, is to look at the archaeological evidence, chiefly from Britain and France, and then reason like this: If the archaeology shows elaborate grave construction, or evidence of repeated sacrifices (including human) at a special site, or temple construction, or burials of certain high-status individuals who were not necessarily kings or queens, then that level of religious complexity implies that there were religious specialists to administer it.

And if we try to describe those religious specialists—using primarily Caesar’s writings and those of Tacitus, but also other writers who actually met Druids or their descendants in Gallo-Roman society—then we can probably assume that they were the Druids. She writes,

In order to make any sense of the Druids as a powerful class of religious leads we can examine contemporary material culture for, if they did exist in Caesar’s day, the Druids would have operated within a context of regalia, ritual equipment, sacrifice, and sacred places (xvi).

Much of the book, therefore, discusses ancient sacred sites, excavated burials, artifacts, etc., leading to open-ended questions on the line of “Do these artifacts mark this as the grave of a Druid?”

Generally these seem to be reasonable inferences, although even if one could be sure that it was the grave of a Druid, for example, that still says nothing about what that Druid thought, believed, or did.  So often the texts that claim to answer those questions come from a writer who lived at the other end of the Mediterranean Sea from the nearest Druid.

Nevertheless, it is a thought-provoking book. I had not realized the extent of the archaeological evidence that could be brought out and associated at least hypothetically with the Druids.

Her evidence of religious practice in the space between Roman and Gallic or British ways is most fascinating, for it would suggest perhaps that “Druidism” changed and evolved when in contact with the Roman world and Roman religion. (Despite what happened on Anglesey  [Mona] in 60 CE, not all Druids were ever killed.)

 

‘A Ritual of Transformation’

Preparing for last night’s solstice-eclipse, the Montreal Gazette went looking for the Pagan perspective.

There are two of them actually: The UPG, it’s-personal version …

“It’s a ritual of transformation from darkness into light,” says Nicole Cooper, a high priestess at Toronto’s Wiccan Church of Canada. “It’s the idea that when things seem really bleak, (it) is often our biggest opportunity for personal transformation.

“The idea that the sun and the moon are almost at their darkest at this point in time really only further goes to hammer that home.”

Cooper said Wiccans also see great significance in the unique coupling of the masculine energy of the sun and the feminine energy of the moon — transformative energies that she plans to incorporate into the church’s winter-solstice rituals.

Since the last time an eclipse and the winter solstice happened simultaneously was just under five centuries years ago, Cooper said she wasn’t familiar with any superstitions or mythologies associated with it.

… and the old-time communal Pagan version.

The winter solstice also played an important role in Greco-Roman rituals.

“It’s seen as a time of rebirth or renewal because, astrologically, it’s a time where the light comes back,” said Shane Hawkins, a professor of Greek and Roman studies at Carleton University in Ottawa.

For the ancient Romans, it was also a time of great feasting and debauchery.

“If (the eclipse) happened on the 21st, they might well have been drunk,” he said.

(Hat tip: Roberta X, who is most unimpressed.)

A reporter in Ohio left me an email about wanting to do a telephone interview, but she never called. Sigh. She must have found a more accessible expert.

Roman Britain on the Big Screen

During a recent conversation over margaritas in the old provincial capital, Peculiar mentioned two new forthcoming movies set in Roman Britain.

There is an added resonance to Americans flocking to films set during the rise and fall of ancient empires as they contemplate their own long-dominant place in the world amid economic upheavals at home and protracted wars abroad.

And I told him about how Troy (2004) subtly supported the archaeological theory of diffusionism.

The movies in question are Centurion and The Eagle of the Ninth.

Both should be regarded as “inspired by” rather than as any attempt at accurate history, I reckon. The so-called”disappearance” of the Ninth Legion is something that historians still squabble about—and bloggers too.

Archaeologists have shown that they were happily in garrison in York in AD 108, which is rather a long time after their supposed demise in Caledonia.

(And it’s amazing how many people think “centurion” means “Roman soldier” rather than what we would call a company commander.)

Clash of the Titans has not fared well on blogs that I read, so I am skipping it.

The Roman province of Britain lasted longer than the United States of America has thus far (just for comparison), so there are plenty of movie-making opportunities left.

800 Bags of Roman ‘Shit’

Noted Classics professor Mary Beard visits the sewers and cesspits of Herculaneum, it being one of the two Roman towns buried by the famous eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE.

A lot of the sieved organic remains are now being studied in Oxford, and they certainly show that the residents were consuming  eggs, nuts, figs and sea-urchins.

Read more about ongoing archaeological work there at Blogging Pompeii.

Most urban dwellers in the Roman empire lived in apartment blocks called insulae, from the Latin word for island.

Watch a  video-recreation of an insula in the Iberian city of Conímbriga (YouTube).

Nova Roma, a group “dedicated to the restoration of classical Roman religion, culture and virtues,”  has its own YouTube channel.

Style note: My headline attempts to copy the BBC News style, wherein certain words are set off in [Am] single quotation marks/[Br] inverted commas  for no discernible purpose except to express some sort of arms’-length, looking-down-the-nose Beeb-oid attitude.

Slavery, Vikings, and Charlemagne

Here is a little bit of synchronicity in my historical reading. I am not sure if it “proves” anything, other than the fact that it is difficult to sort people into “good guys” and “bad guys.”

1. At the library, I recently picked up The Long Morning of Medieval Europe: New Directions in Early Medieval Studies, ed. Jennifer R. Davis and Michael McCormick.

I wanted to look for some material on agriculture—the adoption of the three-field system, wheeled plows, etc.—but I was sucked into a chapter entitled, “Strong Rulers—Weak Economy? Rome, the Carolingians and the Archaeology of Slavery in the First Millennium AD” by a German scholar, Joachim Henning.

Here are two figures that I have lifted from his work:

As I used to tell my students when we talked about American religion and slavery, the Roman empire back in Jesus’ time ran on slavery the way that our civilization runs on petroleum. (And Jesus had nothing to say about it.)

Slavery requires chains and shackles, lest the slaves wander away. Figure 2.1 is a map of archaeological sites (farms, villas, plantations) containing shackles.

The second figure graphs shackle finds over time in Gaul (France, roughly). They rise during the Roman times, then plunge during the Merovingian dynasty, during the so-called Dark Ages.

But then shackle finds—and hence presumably slavery—rise during the Carologian dynasty. Its founder, Charles Martel (ca. 688-741), stopped the Islamic expansion into Europe. His grandson Charlemagne (Charles the Great) is a huge figure in medieval western European history, but his actions included the slaughter of more than 4,000 Saxons who resisted conversion to Christianity.

There was a European slave trade in Pagan, polytheistic Roman times—and it continued into Christian times, up through the 1400s, at least—and then it was time for Columbus!

2. Meanwhile, a British historian suggests that Viking raids on Europe might have been payback for Charlemagne’s forced-conversion program. (Via the Covenant of the Goddess NPIO blog.)

But before you annoint the Vikings as the pro-Pagan “good guys,” remember that they were in the slave trade too, particularly in what is now Ireland and Russia.

As some people say about their relationships on Facebook, “It’s complicated.”

Are Epiphany Dreams Found only in the Past?

The Bryn Mawr Classical Review’s book-review feed recently served up a review of William V. Harris’s Dreams and Experience in Classical Antiquity
 The reviewer writes,

Some combination of [cultural expectations, generic demands, and the imperatives of performance and publication.], Harris argues …  accounts for the relative frequency in antiquity of the epiphany dream, in which an authoritative figure visits the dreamer and makes a significant statement, and for its rarity in the post-Enlightenment West.

He goes on to argue that if readers say that they too have epiphany dreams, it don’t prove nuthin’:

No doubt some reader of this review is now saying, “But I had an epiphany dream just the other night!”  That is the problem with studying dreams:  one must work hard to free oneself from dependence on anecdote and from the powerful attraction that dreams have for those who dream them.  Appealing to concepts of “selfhood” or “personality” will only reinforce these tendencies by compelling the question, “What does this dream tell us about you?”  Harris chooses instead to concentrate on ancient descriptions of dreams and reports of actions based on them.  This is a book about dreaming, not about dreams; that is, about behavior and experience in antiquity, not about the ancient self.

If I tell it, it’s only an “anecdote,” but if someone back then wrote it, it’s a “description” and thus useful? But if you act upon the advice of the dream, does that count?

“Epiphany dreams” are not common, but when you have one, you know it.

My example (oops, an ancedote!) was a dream that — at a time when I was not consciously thinking about it — told me to quit my job and go to graduate school in religious studies.

When I awoke with the dream-voice echoing in my ears, I knew that “some god or daemon” had spoken. I immediately started researching university programs, thinking without irony that now I knew what was meant in those biblical accounts of “the Lord spake unto Abraham” or whomever.

Someone or something sure enough spake unto me, and I knew I had to follow the instructions. Or else.

Anyone else had a real epiphany dream? Show of hands? Yes, I thought so.

As to the academic study, there is, I have learned, an almost-complete disconnect between the academic study of ancient Paganism and the study of contemporary polytheism, Paganism, etc.

The former people are mostly in Classics and history, they have an academic heritage a couple of centuries old, and they publish in their own journals, attend their own conferences, and so on.

The latter field only began to take shape in the 1990s.

Some study of ancient Pagan religion does sneak into the Society of Biblical Literature, and when the SBL goes back to having its annual meeting together with the American Academy of Religion’s meeting in 2011, maybe, just maybe, there might some crossover.

For Any Roman Reconstructionists Reading This

Make sure that you get the night-time garments (or lack of) right.

After 2,000 Years, Hermann is Followed by Ghosts

This autumn is the 2,000th anniversary of the battle when German tribes decisively defeated 20,000 Roman soldiers in the Teutoburg Forest.

But the anniversary–particularly the memory of the leader of the German commander, Hermann (Arminius)–is a complicated thing in Germany.

The events surrounding Hermann, though, are a weird mix of the two, presenting a revised, sanitised, consumer-friendly warrior, a national hero recast as neither “national” nor a hero. “To me, he is just a garden gnome,” Schafmeister said during an interview in his office, his desk piled with Hermann chocolate bars and other paraphernalia. The exhibits and plays organised for the anniversary no longer depict Hermann as the founding father of the German peoples: instead he appears as a minor warlord who got lucky, an interesting figure with no relevance to the present. 

“He is really history,” says Herfried Münkler, a historian at Berlin’s Humboldt University and the author of The Germans and their Myths. “He is no longer relevant to the question of German identity.” 

“It’s a thin line to walk – a year of festivities for a man no one thinks is worth celebrating. “We don’t even call it an anniversary, because that implies a celebration,” said Schafmeister. “It is just a recognition of something that happened from 2,000 years ago.”

The religion journalists at Get Religion often talk about “ghosts” in news stories–a religious element or motivation that the journalist fails to see or explain. (The news media, in other words, do not “get” religion.)

Do you see a religion ghost or two here also?

A few years ago, I was talking with a German student of mine at the university and her boyfriend. The boyfriend had wanted to read a diary kept by some of my own German ancestors about their immigration from Lower Saxony to Missouri in 1843.

I mentioned how Germans who came to Missouri had established vineyards, and how a center of wine-making was the town of Hermann.

“Hermann, of course!” said my student, rolling her eyes.

Had she been one of the schoolchildren who “learnt what a shame it was that the erstwhile hero had prevented Latin culture from reaching northern Germany”?