Roman History Books and More

Eleusinian mysteries

Roman rulers and aristocrats were fascinated by the Eleusinian Mysteries of Greece and were proud initiates, and probably none more so than the Hellenist emperor Hadrian.

These highly secret rites were held annually in honor of Demeter and Persephone and were the most sacred and revered of all the ritual celebrations of Ancient Greece. They took place at Eleusis near Athens, possibly as far back as the early Mycenaean period, and continued for almost two thousand years.

This page (The Ecole Initiative) gives ample information, however, all links on it are broken. These are the ancient sources listed: Aeschylos, Sophokles, Herodotus, Aristophanes, Plutarch, Pausanias, (all initiates), and accounts of Christian commentators such as Clement of Alexandria, Hippolytus, Tertullian, and Astorias.

Essay by Sanderson Beck

Classical Myth: The Ancient Sources

Demeter
Persephone (the Romans called Persephone Proserpine)

final thought on "Memoirs of Hadrian" before the chat

A final thought on "Memoirs of Hadrian" (echoing Anthony Birley in the Epilogue of his biography)

His nature as described in the Historia Augusta, 14.11:

He was, in the same person, austere and genial, dignified and playful, dilatory and quick to act, niggardly and generous, deceitful and straightforward, cruel and merciful, and always in all things changeable.

and in the Epitome de Caesaribus, 14.6 (Aurelius Victor):

He was diverse, manifold, and multiform; as if a born arbiter with respect to vices and virtues, by some artifice he controlled intellectual impulse. He adroitly concealed a mind envious, melancholy, hedonistic, and excessive with respect to his own ostentation; he simulated restraint, affability, clemency, and conversely disguised the ardor for fame with which he burned.

I think Yourcenar does show us this Hadrian, even though in many ways her "Hadrian" is not the historic Hadrian.

A Note: Birley promotes the theory that the HA was written by Marius Maximus, and also that Aurelius Victor drew on Maximus as source.

books on the Varus battle in the Teutoburg Forest

Readers of my website know of my interest in Kalkriese, the place of the Varus battlefield. The location was a mystery for many centuries. The eminent 19th century historian Theodor Mommsen was convinced that he had discovered it, largely through coin finds in a specific topographical area. He was laughed out of court. Thanks to a British army officer and amateur military historian, Tony Clunn, who began a diligent search for the battlefield in the late 1980s, Mommsen has been vindicated. The result is a large archaeological site at Kalkriese near the German city of Osnabrück, and digging is still going on. Major Clunn has described his story in The Quest For the Lost Roman Legions: Discovering the Varus Battlefield, now available in a revised and updated 2005 edition.You can read my book review.

I was rather disappointed by another book on the subject, The Battle That Stopped Rome: Emperor Augustus, Arminius, and the Slaughter of the Legions in the Teutoburg Forest by Peter S. Wells. Review by N.S. Gill.  It seemed to me that Mr. Wells was simply jumping on the bandwagon. [However, Mr. Wells is the author of the excellent work The Barbarians Speak: How the Conquered Peoples Shaped Roman Europe.]

Now, a new treatment of the story will be on the market soon: Rome's Greatest Defeat: Massacre in the Teutoburg Forest by Adrian Murdoch, whom I discovered via rogueclassicism and its classicarnival. Murdoch's blog is called Bread and circuses, and his current emphasis is on the Late Antiquity, as he is working on a book about Romulus Augustus, The Last Roman: Romulus Augustulus and the Decline of the West.

 

Second Sophistic

'Second Sophistic' was a Greek cultural movement of the second and third centuries CE, very important to the emperor Hadrian.

A teaching guide, The Second Sophistic (PFD) gives a brief overview. Quotes:

[Greek] cultural Renaissance, centered in Athens and the cities of Asia, such as Ephesus, Smyrna, and even Laodicea. Rome itself [was] heavily involved, chiefly through Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius but as early as Nero and as late as the troubles of the third century [.An] encompassing literary and cultural movement …

A number of sophists, such as Nicetes of Smyrna, Scopelian of Smyrna, and Polemo of Laodicea were active between the reigns of Nero and Hadrian. Second century sophists such as Lollianus of Ephesus, Herodes Atticus, and Aelius Aristides were even more prominent.

The friendly livius.org has a section Second Sophistic.

Herodes Atticus was a friend of Hadrian and later became a teacher of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus.

A JSTOR search on the Second Sophistic yields only this article: Cultural Choice and Political Identity in Honorific Portrait Statues in the Greek East in the Second Century A.D., R. R. R. Smith, Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 88, 1998 (1998). [check with your local public or university library for JSTOR access]

Postscript 2/27: the above JSTOR file seems to be damaged and unrecoverable.

For German speakers: Archäologie Online

www.archaeologie-online.de - Entdecken Sie Archäologie neu!

A portal to what's going on in the world of archaeology, the German way. Originally a commercial site, is is now managed by three volunteers. It has these features:

Magazin: Focus points (Schwerpunktthema, Fundpunkt), news round-up, TV programs, calendar of events, etc.
Guide: Over 5,000 categorized links to other archaeology sites
Bibliothek: New books, reviews (Rezensionen), CD-ROM's, downloads, etc.
Newsletter
Suchen & Finden: expanded search feature
Forum: Forums, classified, polls, etc.
Archäologie Online Club (special access options to the site)

Hadrian Coins

Bingley wrote in a comment in this blog: "Something that the Birley book has brought home to me is the amount of communication between Hadrian and the people via coins. It was something I was vaguely aware of, that the government did use coins as a propaganda vehicle, but I hadn't realised there was quite so much of it going on. It seems almost everything Hadrian did meant a commemorative issue of coins."

Coins frequently provide missing pieces in Roman history. I have put up some links showing images of Hadrian coins.

Here are several denarii and dupondii courtesy Doug Smith, who has given me permission to show a number of his coins on my website. This includes the  above coin, depicting the traveling emperor.

In his early travels through the empire, Hadrian was greatly concerned with the training and fitness of the army in the provinces. This generated a number of Exercitus coins, which can be seen here. The coins usually show Hadrian addressing soldiers.

The next two pages give a general overview of Hadrian coins: From the Museum of Antiquities at the University of Saskatchewan and from WildWinds.

Then there is the Alexandrian series from a commercial page. This page concerns itself also with Sabina, Antinous and Aelius.

Finally, in a dark chapter, seen from the other side, the Bar Kokhba War Coins from Jerusalem Through Coins, including the Bar Kochba Sela, a Bar Kochba Denarius, and a Bar Kochba Middle Bronze, all from 134-135 CE.

Carnivals in the Blogosphere

'Carnivals' are blog round-ups about what's going on in the blogosphere and/or fields of related interest.

There is David Meadows with his daily classicarnival at the rogueclassicism blog. Some of you may know David from his Yahoo! Anthropology and Archaeology Group, The Explorator, with his weekly news roundups. As Phil Harland remarks in his blog, "How does he keep up with it all?"

There is also the Biblical Studies Carnival, and the general gateway History Carnival.

What is a blog carnival?

Having now 'kept up with it' too, I'll return to 'work' work myself …

Wikipedia Portal: Classical Civilisation

A new blog that was brought to my attention, Memorabilia Antonina, lists in its "Links" column this interesting page:

Portal: Classical Civilisation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

I too have linked Wikipedia, through various individual pages, in my more recent posts. It seems that they are going into Ancient History and the Classics in a big way.

I am still somewhat hesitant using Wikipedia, so all I can say is, "use it with a hefty grain of salt." I hope that recent untoward events at Wikipeda have made the operators of the site more watchful. But unfortunately, there will always be people with an agenda, pranksters aside.

... and when it rains it pours: SPQR X out soon

SPQR X: A Point of Law
By John Maddox Roberts

to be released May 2006

New Libertus Mystery: A Roman Ransom ...

to be released April 2006:

A Roman Ransom (Libertus Mysteries Series)
by Rosemary Rowe

Pausanias (Greek traveler and geographer)

The first ancient "Baedeker" was written by Pausanias.

Reputedly born in Lydia, Pausanias was an ancient traveler and geographer. Apart from Greece, he visited Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Macedonia, and Epirus. He lived in the time of the emperors Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius.

His most important work is the Description of Greece (Periegesis Hellados), which remains an invaluable text on ancient ruins and is "a crucial link between classical literature and modern archaeology" (Wikipedia).

The Description of Greece survives in ten books in the form of a tour of Greece starting in Attica. The first book seems to have been completed after 143 CE, but before 161CE. No event after 176CE is mentioned in the work.

A Bryn Maw Classical Review of K.W. Arafat's Pausanias' Greece : Ancient Artists and Roman Rulers gives more insight into Pausanias.

"Imperial Cults within Local Cultural Life: Associations in Roman Asia"

I came across this excellent blog, Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean, by Philip A. Harland of Concordia University, Montreal. It is linked to his website, which contains the full text of several of his published articles.

Imperial Cults within Local Cultural Life: Associations in Roman Asia, Ancient History Bulletin / Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 17 (2003) 85-107, fits neatly into our current subject and has several references to Hadrian and Antinous. (also as PDF)

gymnosophists (and Megasthenes & Strabo)

Gymnosophists ("naked philosophers"): Greek expression for the sages of India (saddhus) and a group of probably imaginary sages of Ethiopia (at livius.org). They were said to believe in the transmigration of the soul and to abstain from meat and wine.

The Greek historian, geographer and philosopher Strabo of Amasia (c.62 BCE - c.24 CE) refers to them as religious people among the Indians (XVI, 2, 39). He otherwise divides Indian philosophers into Brahmans and  Sramanas (XV, 1, 59-60), following the accounts of the Greek traveler and geographer Megasthenes (c. 350 BC-290 BC).

Strabo: The Geography (Books 1-5 and 15‑17) at Lacus Curtius

Book XVI, Chapter 2, 39
Book XV, Chapter 1, 59-60

Strabo, Geography (Book 6 through 14) at Perseus

Megasthenes: Indika (surviving text)

(On Wikipedia: Megasthenes, Strabo)

Memoirs of Hadrian - movie planned

Googling for 'Antinous', I discovered that there is a movie in pre-production in the UK:

Memoirs of Hadrian:  'In a daring adaptation of Marguerite Yourcenar's bestseller "Memoirs of Hadrian," John Boorman recreates the life of Roman emperor Hadrian which is written in the form of a letter from the aging emperor to his young successor, recounting the story of Hadrian's early political career in the second century A.D.'

Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar

Book chat preview: Sulla the Fortunate

Get ready for
Sulla the Fortunate, Roman General and Dictator
The 1927 biography by G.P. Baker

March 15 & April 5, 2006

This 2001 edition is a facsimile reproduction of the original book and in fairly large print.

Baker is one of the last 20th century biographer/historians who has a very personal style and involvement with the subjects of his books. Or so I think…

  2006 Reading List   PDF

Hadrian as administrator

In his Imperial Biography Hadrian : The Restless Emperor (Roman Imperial Biographies) (Roman Imperial Biographies (Paperback), Anthony Birley reconstructs the travels of the emperor from ancient historians, inscriptions and other archaeological evidence, fasti, and similar sources. Theodor Mommsen, in his lectures on the Roman Empire, talks about Hadrian's administrative actions mostly together with those of other emperors. The only personal comment I could find is also quoted in Andrew Hill's Historians and their Craft: The Evolution of the Historical Hadrian: While Mommsen dismisses Hadrian as a person, "By and large, Hadrian was not a pleasant character; he possessed a repellant manner and a venomous, envious, and malicious nature which cruelly avenged itself on him", he also calls him a "great reformer".

Hadrian, it seems to me, peripatetic though he was, planned his tours minutely, and he revealed himself an avid micro-manager to whom, when the occasion arose, no detail was to small. This ranged from personally training troops and reinforcing borders to re-organizing cities, founding new ones, creating games, etc.

Arrian of Nicomedia (Lucius Flavius Arrianus)

Lucius Flavius Arrianus (c.87 - after 145), Greek philosopher and historian.

He is commonly known as Arrian. His best-known work is the Anabasis Alexandri, about Alexander the Great. He was a lifelong friend of the emperor Hadrian. Though a man of considerable wealth, besides his writings he pursued a senatorial career which culminated in his governorship of Cappadocia. He retired to Athens and held the archonship in 145/146, listed under the name of Flavius Arrianus Paianieus. He may have survived into the reign of Marcus Aurelius.

Most of his writings, which include lecture transcriptions of the philosopher Epictetus, are no longer extant. For a complete list, scroll down in the above link. (at livius.org)

The bottom of the Wikipedia page lists other available online texts.

Anabasis (Greek) means expedition from a coastline into the interior of a country. (corrected from original post). Xenophon wrote Anabasis Kyrou, the expedition of Cyrus.

Caius Suetonius Tranquillus

Caius Suetonius Tranquillus (c.71-c.135), Roman scholar and official.

Suetonius was a scholar of various antiquarian interests, best known for his vitae caesarum, commonly referred to as Life of the Twelve Caesars. He held several imperial posts, the last one as ab epistulis to Hadrian, responsible for all imperial correspondence, but was dismissed later for unknown but much conjectured reasons. He was a biographer rather than a historian. More at the above link at livius.org.

Anthony Birley, in Hadrian, The Restless Emperor, suggests that "...Suetonius' Divus Augustus incorporates what can be read as Hadrian's interpretation of Augustan policy, rewriting history indeed." (The related endnote references E.M. Smallwood, Documents Illustrating the Principates of Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian, Cambridge 1966).

Suetonius' Life of the Poets, as well as related resources, can be found at Ancient / Classical History at About.com.

Sample Chapter: Hadrian and the Cities of the Roman Empire

I found this sample chapter titled: The Roman Empire And Hadrian from the book:

Hadrian and the Cities of the Roman Empire by Mary T. Boatwright.

The Bryn Mawr Review is so-so, but I think that the above chapter might be helpful for our chat on Wednesday.

for German speakers: Gregorovius, Der Kaiser Hadrian

Project Gutenberg has the text of:

Der Kaiser Hadrian, by Ferdinand Gregorovius, 1884

For more on Gregorovius, see Historians and their Craft: The Evolution of the Historical Hadrian