The History Blog

One of the most celebrated Grecian vases made and signed by the ancient artist Euphronios has returned to Rome with great fanfare.

The Met has had it since 1972. It was the flagship of their ancient collection. Only problem is, it turned up at the Met with zero provenance, ie, there was no record of previous ownership.

Italy had an idea of where it came from: Cervetri, the Etruscan town just outside of Rome packed with lootalicious unexcavated tombs and the source of most known Euphronios pieces. Since there are laws against digging stuff up under cover and night and selling it to the highest bigger — laws with which the Met was familiar, hence its 3 decades of stonewalling about where the hell they got the Euphronios krater — Italy went to the mattresses to get the vase back.

Finally, they succeeded. They had to make a deal with the Met, loaning them pieces of equivalent value for a few years, but still, the krater and 60+ of his little looted friends are back in Rome now and on glorious exhibit: Nostoi: Recovered Masterpieces.

The antiquities trade is a dirty, dirty business, y’all. Everyone from the major auction houses to the snootiest super rich private collectors to the rarified curators of the greatest museums are elbow-deep in looted shit.

It’s not about colonialist Elgin-style theft from 200 years ago. We’re talking massive ongoing operations of stealing and fencing, and they’re all in on it, or at least craning their necks so far to look the other way that they might as well be in on it.

This is the first entry of a series on looting and antiquities. Watch this space for more riveting tales of filth and lucre.

I came across this list of reasons historians have suggested over the past couple hundred years for the fall of Rome in The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization by Bryan Ward-Perkins.

It was compiled by German historian Alexander Demandt for his 1984 history Der Fall Roms, but since I have neither 350 spare dollars to purchase a copy of my own nor the German to read it, I turned to Google to slake my thirst. It led me to Crooked Timber and now, without further ado, here are 210 reasons Rome fell.

Abolition of gods, abolition of rights, absence of character, absolutism, agrarian question, agrarian slavery, anarchy, anti-Germanism, apathy, aristocracy, asceticism, attacks by Germans, attacks by Huns, attacks by nomads on horseback.

Backwardness in science, bankruptcy, barbarization, bastardization, blockage of land by large landholders, blood poisoning, bolshevization, bread and circuses, bureaucracy, Byzantinism.

Capitalism, change of capitals, caste system, celibacy, centralization, childlessness, Christianity, citizenship (granting of), civil war, climatic deterioration, communism, complacency, concatenation of misfortunes, conservatism, corruption, cosmopolitanism, crisis of legitimacy, culinary excess, cultural neurosis.

Decentralization, decline of Nordic character, decline of the cities, decline of the Italic population, deforestation, degeneration, degeneration of intellect, demoralization, depletion of mineral resources, despotism, destruction of environment, destruction of peasantry, destruction of political process, destruction of Roman influence, devastation, differences in wealth, disarmament, disillusion with state, division of empire, division of labour.

Earthquakes, egoism, egoism of the state, emancipation of slaves, enervation, epidemics, equal rights (granting of), eradication of the best, escapism, ethnic dissolution, excessive aging of population, excessive civilization, excessive culture, excessive foreign infiltration, excessive freedom, excessive urbanization, expansion, exploitation.

Fear of life, female emancipation, feudalization, fiscalism, gladiatorial system, gluttony, gout, hedonism, Hellenization, heresy, homosexuality, hothouse culture, hubris, hyperthermia.

Immoderate greatness, imperialism, impotence, impoverishment, imprudent policy toward buffer states, inadequate educational system, indifference, individualism, indoctrination, inertia, inflation, intellectualism, integration (weakness of), irrationality, Jewish influence.

Lack of leadership, lack of male dignity, lack of military recruits, lack of orderly imperial succession, lack of qualified workers, lack of rainfall, lack of religiousness, lack of seriousness, large landed properties, lead-poisoning, lethargy, levelling (cultural), levelling (social), loss of army discipline, loss of authority, loss of energy, loss of instincts, loss of population, luxury.

Malaria, marriages of convenience, mercenary system, mercury damage, militarism, monetary economy, monetary greed, money (shortage of), moral decline, moral idealism, moral materialism, mystery religions, nationalism of Rome’s subjects, negative selection.

Orientalization, outflow of gold, over-refinement, pacifism, paralysis of will, paralysation, parasitism, particularism, pauperism, plagues, pleasure-seeking, plutocracy, polytheism, population pressure, precociousness, professional army, proletarization, prosperity, prostitution, psychoses, public baths.

Racial degeneration, racial discrimination, racial suicide, rationalism, refusal of military service, religious struggles and schisms, rentier mentality, resignation, restriction to profession, restriction to the land, rhetoric, rise of uneducated masses, romantic attitudes to peace, ruin of middle class, rule of the world.

Semi-education, sensuality, servility, sexuality, shamelessness, shifting of trade routes, slavery, Slavic attacks, socialism (of the state), social tensions, soil erosion, soil exhaustion, spiritual barbarism, stagnation, stoicism, stress, structural weakness, superstition.

Taxation, pressure of terrorism, tiredness of life, totalitarianism, treason, tristesse, two-front war, underdevelopment, useless diet, usurpation of all powers by the state, vaingloriousness, villa economy, vulgarization.

Any of those look familiar? I’m pretty sure I’ve seen them all used at various times by various people to bemoan the degenerate condition of the US. Hell, I’ve used a fair few of them myself.

Except for maybe tristesse. That’s a new one. Oh, and hyperthermia.

You might not know this given the centuries governments and cultural institutions have spent covering up the material remains of Roman licentiousness, but explicit sex and nudity were very much a fixture of everyday public life in ancient Rome.

Deemed too shocking for women, children and the lower classes, artefacts that were later labelled pornographic were kept behind locked, and even bricked-up, doors in what became known as the Secret Museum established in 1819 in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples.

There was also a series of secret rooms in London’s British Museum.

On occasion, admittance to the Naples secret chamber was permitted to responsible gentlemen of good moral character, including young males of the wealthy elite enjoying a gap year by undertaking the European Grand Tour to complete their “education”.

These same gentlemen could also gain access to a series of peep shows kept under lock and key at Pompeii where specially built steel cabinets kept various frescoes and murals from general view.

The Secret Museum was opened only briefly during the social revolution of the 1960s. It was closed again until 2000. Since 2005 the collection has been housed in a special room. Entry is gained by a separate ticket.

Interesting how porn was a privilege of class and male gender. These sexual images were seen as genuinely dangerous to public morality. In order to see them, you had to prove yourself above it all in some way, a scholar and a gentleman, who might examine them in dirty, dirty secret, but never get the hint of a boner or even a giggle, heaven forfend.

This is a glimpse into how the modern notion of pornography was born: explicit sex removed from its social context and ghettoized in the name of protecting those who cannot be trusted to cope with (read: repress) arousal. The word “pornography” was actually coined as a description of classical erotic art in the 1850’s. It wasn’t until several decades later that it began to be used to described prurient art in general.

For a wonderfully entertaining running commentary through the Secret Museum of the National Museum of Archaeology in Naples, listen to this BBC radio story by Lynda Nead. The analysis of the significance of the Secret Museum in the dawn of pornography in the 19th century is fascinating. Besides, there’s nothing like hearing about creamy-fleshed girls straddling giant phalluses as described by British professors.

They considered them history buffs back then, even though they expressed their buffdom by stealing entire walls from ancient sites like Pompeii. The looters have come home to roost in an amazing exhibit of rescued art on display at the Roman National Museum.

More beauty in this picture gallery, courtesy of the BBC.

A new museum of two ancient Roman villas under Palazzo Valentini answers that question using computer generated video projections.

Experiencing the archaeological site, which opens to the public on Saturday, is a bit like passing through a classically themed amusement park. Lasting roughly a half-hour, the computer-generated sound-and-light show offers plenty of opportunities to ooh and aah as the villas take physical form.

At one point a virtual wall dissolves to show what the residents of one villa might have seen when they strolled out from their door in the fourth century A.D.: a bustling city, the busiest in the ancient world, with more than a million residents vying for space, a narrating voice recounts.

I like the idea of it (although I could probably do without recreations of crowd scenes) because when you’re standing in a ruin it’s hard to imagine how it would have looked with painted walls and lavish furnishings. Filling in the blanks with a realistic projection seems a neat use of technology.

Pity they felt compelled to tart it up with hootin’ and hollerin’, but that’s what you get when you hire historical mini-series producers to make your stuff.

Click here for a video tour of the video tour (narrated in Italian).

It’s not unusual to find Roman cursing charms inscribed on lead in England, but ones cursing the emperor were pretty much unheard of, until now.

Some 1,650 years ago someone was so comprehensively fed up with the state of the Roman empire that they committed an act of treason, blasphemy and probably criminal defacing of the coinage. They cursed the emperor Valens by hammering a coin with his image into lead, then folding the lead over his face.

Valens was emperor from 364 AD to 378 AD. He was a hardcore Arian and not keen on religious tolerance, so doubtless that garnered him some hatred. He also let the Visigoths settle across the natural border of the Danube and then treated them like crap so they revolted, kicking ass all over the Balkans until finally kicking Valens’ own ass for good and annihilating his army at the Battle of Adrianople.

Discovered in a small village in Tunisia in 1966, the Magerius mosaic is an intricate combination of word and image describing a gladiatorial game sponsored by a local magistrate by the name of Magerius. Current Archaeology magazine breaks it all down for us: The Magerius Mosaic: How a Roman amphitheatre really worked.

“Roll up! Roll up! Roll Up! There will be a magnificent spectacle at the amphitheatre today, and you mustn’t miss it! Magerius is giving it. Of course, you all know Magerius who has just finished his term of office as mayor. He’s a pompous old ass but he thinks the world of himself and he’s going to lay on a big spectacle and he is paying through the nose for it, and he wants everyone to know how generous he has been.”

“He is bringing in the Telegenii. You’ve heard of the Telegenii - they are the best theatrical producers in North Africa. They have all the best beasts and all the best hunters too. Today they have for your delight four leopards, all home grown and well trained. They are called Crispinus, Luxurius, Victor - who of course is going to be conquered - and then, Ho! Hum! there’s Romanus, ‘The Roman’ who is going to bite the dust at the hands of a hunter. And then he’s got four of his best hunters, Hilarinus, Bullarius, Spittara, who always hunts on stilts, and finally the champion, Mamertinus. It’s going to be a great spectacle, so hurry along to the amphitheatre. Who’s going to win - the beasts or the hunters?

The article continues with a detailed examination of what the mosaic and its location can tell us about the operation of gladiatorial games in the provinces. It’s a quick read and very much worth the time.

Well, it didn’t. They knew perfectly well there were all sort of places far from their imperial reach. I don’t know how this silly meme got spread, but I blame crappy junior high school textbook sloganeering.

Rome did trade with all of the known world that cared to, though. See Pune, India.

The evidence suggests that Satavahanas, the earliest rulers of Maharashtra (230 Before Christ Era), who reigned from Junnar, were engaged in a flourishing import-export trade not just with the Romans but also with the Greeks and the Persians.

The port of Kalyan on the Konkan coast offered the link for the Romans touching the Indian shores at Bharuch, to reach Junnar via the western ghat pass of Naneghat.

The Satavahanas had a taste for wine, it seems, and the Mediterranean types had an ivory, spices and silk jones.

Grain of salt with this article, though. It makes the outlandish claim that the Roman traders sailed around Africa to get to the port of Kalyan. A combination of shorter sea voyages through the Mediterranean and Arabian seas and overland travel on the Arabian peninsula is what most likely went down.

As in minted by Marcus Junius Brutus, assassin of Gaius Julius Caesar, complete with a crystal clear image of his ignominious mug.

Brutus and his conspiratorial friends assassinated Julius Caesar on March 15th, 44 BC. On March 20th he cleverly observed that everyone hated him for having killed the most popular man ever, and he hightailed it out of town to Greece.

He whiled away a couple of years studying philosophy and raising money for an army which would lose to Antony and Octavian at the Battles of Philippi in 42 BC. How better to raise money than to mint it? Hence the Brutus coin, one day’s wages for a foot soldier, dated 42 BC.

This amazing coin was unearthed under highly shady looting-like circumstances, and sold to a British coin dealer. The Greek government caught the sellers on their way out of the country, confiscated the ill-gotten gains, and then scored the coin back from the British dealer.

I actually feel a little bad for the poor dealer who gets neither a refund nor the coin, but them’s the breaks when you’re dealing with suspicious provenance. Especially nowadays. Countries like Greece and Italy are seriously hounding other countries to turn over stolen artifacts, and they’ve been remarkably successful.

They’re 2700 year old Etruscan tomb frescoes found in Veio, outside of Rome. The vibrant frescoes depict birds in flight and roaring lions (no, there weren’t any lions in Italy at that point).

Giovanni Colonna, a professor at Rome’s Sapienza University, said although the frescoes were not as old as Egyptian art or some cave paintings, they had to be the oldest examples of the Western tradition of art that was then developed by the Greek and Roman civilisations.

Fragments of decorated pottery found in the tomb, and the clearly visible remnants of a wheel which once was part of a cart buried along with the bodies, indicate the burial site was that of a nobleman or prince.

In Etruscan art, the birds would have symbolised the passage between life and death and the lions represented the underworld.

The shady yin to this bright shining yang is that archaeologists only found the tomb because a looter led them to it to get leniency in his upcoming trial. Tomb raiders, known as tombaroli, have a long history in the area.

They also have unique tracking abilities. Archaeologists had already examined the field where the tomb was found and declared it officially uninteresting. A convenient declaration, I would think, for a tombarolo who after following mole tracks and/or the roots of fig trees can then help himself to the loot nobody official suspects exists.