Roman History Books and More

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the arch of Constantine

Gibbon evidently didn't think much of the arcus constantini; see Chapter XIV, the section headed his reception:

The triumphal arch of Constantine still remains a melancholy proof of the decline of the arts, and a singular testimony of the meanest vanity. As it was not possible to find in the capital of the empire a sculptor who was capable of adorning that public monument, the arch of Trajan, without any respect either for his memory or for the rules of propriety, was stripped of its most elegant figures. The difference of times and persons, of actions and characters, was totally disregarded. The Parthian captives appear prostrate at the feet of a prince who never carried his arms beyond the Euphrates; and curious antiquarians can still discover the head of Trajan on the trophies of  Constantine. The new ornaments which it was necessary to introduce between the vacancies of ancient sculpture are executed in the rudest and most unskilful manner.

Pictures of the Arch of Constantine as it appeared in Gibbon's day, by Etienne Du Pérac and Giovanni Battista Piranesi, and some modern photos. Click on thumbnails to enlarge images.

This page has plans showing what comes from where on the arch, a brief discussion of why Constantine re-cycled parts of other arches, and lots of photos. Ignore the last page of links. Many of them are broken.

LacusCurtius has The Arch of Constantine: A Piece of Quick Propaganda with false colors added to the photos "to show just how much of this edifice was patched together from the work of previous centuries"; and a page of links about the arch, with Bill Thayer's ratings of them.

ancient plagues

by Bingley

The term plague (pestis) was not used as precisely by Roman writers as it is by medical writers today. It is not certain what the plague was that repeatedly swept across the empire from 251 to 266, carrying off the emperors Hostilian (251), v. Gibbon X.III, Famine and pestilence and Claudius II (268-270), v. Gibbon XI, March. Death of the emperor, who recommends Aurelian for his successor.

St. Cyprian, Tascius Caecilius Cyprianus, who was alive at the time, wrote a treatise about the plague (De Mortalite):

XIV. This trial, that now the bowels, relaxed into a constant flux, discharge the bodily strength; that a fire originated in the marrow ferments into wounds of the fauces; that the intestines are shaken with a continual vomiting; that the eyes are on fire with the injected blood; that in some cases the feet or some parts of the limbs are taken off by the contagion of diseased putrefaction; that from the weakness arising by the maiming and loss of the body, either the gait is enfeebled, or the hearing is obstructed, or the sight darkened;--is profitable as a proof of faith. (IntraText Digital Library)

Unfortunately, this doesn't really give us enough to make any certain diagnosis about what the disease actually was.

Plague in the Ancient World: A Study from Thucydides to Justinian mainly focuses on the Athenian plague described by Thucydides (430 BC) and the plague under Justinian (542 AD), but does has a brief paragraph on this plague.

For more on plagues in antiquity, see N.S. Gill's Ancient Plagues at About.com.

baths of Diocletian (and Roman baths in general)

By Bingley

The Baths of Diocletian, Thermae Diocletiani, supposedly the grandest of the public baths in Rome, were situated on the high ground to the north-east of the Viminalis Collis, the smallest of Rome's seven hills.

From Gibbon, Chapter XIV:

II.The long absence of the emperors had filled Rome with discontent and indignation; and the people gradually discovered that the preference given to Nicomedia and Milan was not to be ascribed to the particular inclination of Diocletian, but to the permanent form of government which he had instituted. It was in vain that, a few months after his abdication, his successors dedicated, under his name, those magnificent baths whose ruins still supply the ground as well as the materials for so many churches and convents. (20) The tranquillity of those elegant recesses of ease and luxury was disturbed by the impatient murmurs of the Romans, and a report was insensibly circulated that the sums expended in erecting those buildings would soon be required at their hands.

Footnote 20. See Gruter Inscrip. p. 1 78. The six princes are all mentioned, Diocletian and Maximian as the senior Augusti, and fathers of the emperors. They jointly dedicate, for the use of their own Romans, this magnificent edifice. The architects have delineated the ruins of these Thermae, and the antiquarians, particularly Donatus and Nardini, have ascertained the ground which they covered. One of the great rooms is now the Carthusian church; and even one of the porter's lodges is sufficient to form another church, which belongs to the Feuillans.

Drawings of how the baths looked in Gibbon's day by Guiseppi Vasi and Giovanni Battista Piranesi (plus a few modern photos): Thermae Diocletianae -- click on the thumbnails.

Lots of modern photos: Baths of Diocletian -- again, click on the thumbnails -- and two plans of the baths: Baths of Diocletian and Thermae Diocletiani.

The entry Thermae Diocletiani from Platner's Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome on LacusCurtius.

The baths at Wikipedia with Google Satellite image.

Postscript from Irene:

Roman Baths and Bathing, more at FalcoPhiles.co.uk, and at Wikipedia. N.S. Gill on About.com has something about Revenge on the Roman Bath House Thieves by Sympathetic Magic.

And here are my photos of two bath complexes in Trier, Germany (Colonia Augusta Treverorum), what a strigil looks like, and of a Roman military bath in Weißenburg, Germany (Castra Biriciana).

Diocletian (AD 284-305) at DIR.

Shapur I, Persian ruler

by Bingley

Shapur or Sapor was the second ruler of the Persian Sassanid empire. Appointed co-ruler with his father Ardashir I in 240 CE, he reigned as sole ruler from 241 to 272. He fought three major campaigns against the Romans, in 242-4, 252-6, and 260. In the last campaign, the Roman emperor Valerian was captured and killed by the Persians.

Using labour and skills from Roman captives, Shapur undertook a massive building programme. He promoted Zoroastrianism, but under his reign the Sassanid state seems to have been religously tolerant, with Christians and Jews having freedom to worship. The prophet Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, was active during Shapur's reign.

Gibbon talks about Shapur (Sapor) in Chapter X. 

Wikipedia and CAIS (Circle of Irananian Studies) articles on Shapur both seem to be derived from the 1911 Britannica article. CAIS adds a lot more information from Persian sources, in particular inscriptions set up by Shapur himself. The Wikipedia article has better pictures, some of which come from a livius.org list with coin portraits and historical overview of the Sassanids.

Rider: As always, handle Wikipedia with care!

the Goths

by Bingley

As Gibbon resumes the chronological progress of his story in Chapter X, we meet the Goths, who are to play an important role in the later development of the story.

For Jordanes' History of the Goths, see About.com's Ancient Classical History list of resources. Irene's e-texts page links directly to Jordanes: The Origin and Deeds of the Goths.

Wikipedia has a good entry on the Goths with some useful links. A particularly interesting one is to an article by Tadeusz Makiewicz, The Goths in Greater Poland, which describes recent archaeological discoveries in Poland and discusses the vexed question of whether the archaeological Wielbark Culture is the remains of the people we know from history as the Goths.

I definitely felt in need of a map for the Goths' migrations. The Roman Empire at its Greatest Extent may be helpful.

Postscript from Irene: Wikipedia has something on the Wielbark Culture too. (handle with care as usual)

barbarians

by Bingley

In his introduction to Gibbon's Decline and Fall, David Womersley In this edition, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire : Volume 1 (Penguin Classics), draws attention to the four stages theory of social development put forward by Adam Smith, among others of Gibbon's contemporaries. The four stages are:

• hunting and gathering (savages)
• pastoralism and nomadism (barbarism)
• agriculture (feudalism)
• trade and manufacturing (commercialism).

In chapters VIII and IX, Gibbon looks at two different kinds of barbarian, the Persians and the Germans. Gibbon's chapter on the Germans is largely based on Tacitus' Germania, which we will be looking at in the Northern Hemisphere autumn.

The period Gibbon has been discussing was also a crucial one for the great empire to the east of Rome. The Parthian Arsacid dynasty was overthrown by the Persian Sassanid dynasty. For Persian viewpoints on this change see:

Ancient History Sourcebook: The Karnamik-I-Ardashir, or The Records of Ardashir
The Hires of the Achaemenids, Emperor Ardeshir & the Cycle of History.

two novels about Elagabalus/Heliogabalus

by Bingley

If you want trashy sexploitation, go for Child of the Sun by Kyle Onstott and Lance Horner.

Family Favourites (1963), which Amazon says is being reissued in January. I have fond memories of reading this back in the early 1970s, about the time Child of the Sun was first issued.  (Go to the above link to get used versions of the book.)

Elagabulus at DIR.

more points to ponder on Gibbon's attitude towards history

by Bingley

Chapter X  "Treatment of Valerian"

The voice of history, which is often little more than the organ of hatred or flattery, reproaches Sapor with a proud abuse of the rights of conquest. We are told that Valerian, in chains, but invested with the Imperial purple, was exposed to the multitude, a constant spectacle of fallen greatness; and that whenever the Persian monarch mounted on horseback, he placed his foot on the neck of a Roman emperor.

Chapter X  "Their real number was no more than nineteen"

To illustrate the obscure monuments of the life and death of each individual, would prove a laborious task, alike barren of instruction and of amusement.

Chapter XIII  "Valour of the Caesars" 

From the monuments of those times the obscure traces of several other victories over the barbarians of Sarmatia and Germany might possibly be collected; but the tedious search would not be rewarded either with amusement or with instruction.

What instruction and amusement do we get from Gibbon or from the study of Roman History in general?

panegyric

by Bingley

A panegyric was a speech in praise of the Emperor. Panegyrics were considered something of an art form showing off the speaker's skill in oratory. As Disraeli once remarked, "Everyone likes flattery, and when you come to royalty, you should lay it on with a trowel." However, as the Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2003.07.37 makes clear, there was plenty of room for subtle differentiations. 

The earliest Roman panegyric still extant is a speech by Pliny the Younger in praise of the emperor Trajan. Latin original. No English version is available on the internet that I can find. 

It was under Domitian and Constantine that panegyric came into its own, however, and Gibbon draws on a collection of 12 panegyrics (known as panegyrici veteres latini) delivered before those emperors as one of his sources. He obviously finds the panegyrics more useful to the historian than does the compiler of the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Mythology and Biography here (scroll down to the bottom):

Discourses of this description must for the most part be as devoid of all sincerity and truth as they are, from their very nature, destitute of all genuine feeling or passion, and hence, at best, resolve them­selves into a mere cold display of artistic dexterity, where the attention of the audience is kept alive by a succession of epigrammatic points, carefully balanced antitheses, elaborate metaphors, and well-timed cadences, where the manner is everything, the matter nothing. To look to such sources for historical information is obviously absurd. Success would in every case be grossly exaggerated, defeat carefully concealed, or interpreted to mean victory. The friends and allies of the sovereign would be daubed with fulsome praise, his enemies over­whelmed by a load of the foulest calumnies. We cannot learn what the course of events really was, but merely under what aspect the ruling powers desired that those events should be viewed, and frequently the misrepresentations are so flagrant that we are unable to detect even a vestige of truth lurking below.

Here is a blog entry on the development of the panegyric. [The main blog is difficult to isolate, it seems to be from a conglomerate of bloggers at the University of Oregon. IH]

Although admitting that strict adherence to the truth was not the panegyricists' strong point, the OCD agrees with Gibbon that they do contain information of use to the historian and at least show what message the emperor was keen to get across to the public.

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, British painter of classical scenes

by Bingley

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912) was a Dutch-born British painter of the Victorian era. He was famous for his paintings of scenes set in the ancient world. Although the people in his pictures are often unmistakably Victorian, he was meticulous about getting the settings authentic, researching current archaeological knowledge to get the buildings, costumes, and props right. In one famous instance, he calculated that for his picture Caracalla and Geta (see below), set in the Coliseum, there should be 2,500 spectators visible – and proceeded to paint them all in the picture.  He was (and is) much admired for his ability to paint the textures of objects, particularly marble. 

Russell Ash's book, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (Pre-Raphaelite Painters Series), has an introductory essay about the painter and a selection of his paintings.

Online, the Art Renewal Center has a section devoted to Alma-Tadema. It includes a book length biography, and reproductions of his works – 19 pages in all. Scrolling down each page link below, you can find paintings of particular interest as we read Gibbon:

The Roses of Heliogabalus (1888) with related text and a link to the poem Heliogabulus by Clark Ashton Smith. (hi-resolution image alone)
The Baths of Caracalla (1899). (hi-resolution image alone)
Caracalla and Geta (1909). (hi-resolution image alone)

Postscript from Irene:  One of my favorite museums, The Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachutts has several works by Alma-Tadema. The Women of Amphissa (1887) (hi-resolution image alone) is usually displayed in the Permanent Galleries, as is my favorite, an 1887 Steinway piano with fine-arts decorations by Alma-Tadema, supposedly one of the most famous pianos in the world. The museum acquired it a few years ago for $1,200,000 (!) – and a Florida collector had a nine-foot re-creation made for $675,000. It's either fabulous or ghastly, depending on one's taste … take a look.

Lawrence Alma-Tadema and the Modern City of Ancient Rome by Elizabeth Prettejohn, The Art Bulletin 84 no1 115-29 (2002). (JSTOR has the illustrated version of this article)

LibraryThing, a new way to catalogue your home library

Tim Spalding, whom you may know from Isidore of Seville and Ancient Library, has created a new thingy: You can put your books or your reading list into his new program, LibraryThing | Catalog your books online. You can just do it for yourself, or share it with the rest of us. Up to 200 books are free, for the remainder you pay a very modest fee.

My thanks to Bingley for alerting us.