June 2011 – Page 3 – The History Blog

When referee error kills

June 20, 2011

Ancient, Museums

Michael Carter, a professor at Brock University in St. Catharines, Canada, thinks he has figured out what killed the gladiator Diodorus 1800 years ago: a blown call. All we know of Diodorus we got from the epitaph and engraved image on his tombstone. He was born, fought and died 1800 years ago in Turkey, in the ancient city of Amisus (today called Samsun) on the north coast of Turkey, a major port on the south Black Sea. His tombstone was discovered in Turkey a hundred years ago and donated to the Musee du Cinquanternaire in Brussels, Belgium just before the beginning of World War I.

The engraved image depicts a gladiator holding two daggers standing over an opponent raising his finger in self-acknowledged defeat. The inscription says, “After breaking my opponent Demetrius I did not kill him immediately. Fate and the cunning treachery of the summa rudis killed me.”

The summa rudis was the primary referee on the sand, often seen in mosaics as a togate official carrying a long staff (the rudis) which he used to separate fighters. He didn’t get to choose who lived or died, though. That was the job of the editor or munerarius, the sponsor of the games, who usually deferred to the will of the crowd. So the mystery of this epigraph was how could a summa rudis, even a treacherous one, be responsible for the death of Diodorus?

According to Professor Carter, who has made a study of gladiatorial combat and its intricate rule set, the summa rudis snatched Diodorus’ defeat from the jaws of victory.

Another rule that appears to have been in place was that a gladiator who fell by accident (without the help of his opponent) would be allowed to get back up, pick up his equipment and resume combat.

It’s this last rule that appears to have done in Diodorus. Carter interprets the picture of the gladiator holding two swords to be a moment in his final fight, when Demetrius had been knocked down and Diodorus had grabbed a hold of his sword.

“Demetrius signals surrender, Diodorus doesn’t kill him; he backs off expecting that he’s going to win the fight,” Carter said.

The battle appears to be over. However the summa rudis — perhaps interpreting Demetrius’ fall as accidental, or perhaps with some ulterior motive — thought otherwise, Carter said.

“What the summa rudis has obviously done is stepped in, stopped the fight, allowed Demetrius to get back up again, take back his shield, take back his sword, and then resume the fight.”

And thus Demetrius got a do-over and he made good on it, defeating Diodorus and either killing him on the sand or inflicting a fatal wound. Diodorus’ survivors then lodged their complaint against the ref in perpetuity.

Library of Congress gets unique flat earth map

June 19, 2011

Modern(ish), Museums

Don Homuth, a former North Dakota state senator and current resident of Salem, Oregon, will donate the sole complete copy of the Map of a Square and Stationary Earth by Orlando Ferguson to the Library of Congress. Homuth was given the map by his eighth-grade English teacher John Hildreth who had received it from his grandfather. He didn’t realize it was the only one left intact until he contacted the LoC to arrange for the donation.

Robert Morris, senior technical information specialist in the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress, said they searched through 75 to 100 related maps before confirming they didn’t have a similar map in its collections.

“Probably very few copies were printed, and even fewer survived,” he said. […]

“For years and years I had it folded away,” [Don Homuth] said. “It was a shock to hear it may be the only (map of its kind) in the world.”

The only other copy known to exist is in the Pioneer Museum of Hot Springs, South Dakota, Ferguson’s home town and the city where the map was first printed in 1893 (the same year the building that now houses the museum was built as a school). The museum’s copy, however, is missing the bottom of the map and footer [Edit: No it isn’t! The Pioneer Museum’s map is almost intact, but its left and right sides appears to have been trimmed and it’s in overall poor condition] with Bible verses condemning “the globe theory” and the following irresistible offer from Prof. Orlando Ferguson:

Send 25 Cents to the Author, Prof. Orlando Ferguson, for a book explaining this Square and Stationary Earth. It Knocks the Globe Theory Clean Out. It will Teach You How to Foretell Eclipses. It is Worth Its Weight in Gold.

I have searched high and low but cannot, alas, find a copy of this most excellent book on the Internet. I can’t even find a quote from it, and I’d dearly love to read the explanation of how Ferguson’s earth is supposed to work. Just from looking at it you see that Ferguson espoused not just a flat earth, but a square earth with angels manning each of the four corners; however, the only explanations on the map itself are Biblical rebuttals of a spherical earth (the most adorable of which is a cartoon in the upper right margin depicting men clinging desperately to a swiftly moving globe), not affirmative defenses of Ferguson’s map.

It seems a less than fully honest rendering of the quadri-cornered earth concept. The earth itself, the continents and oceans, are arranged in a circle and only set against a square framework. The northern hemisphere is a convex mound in the middle of a concave bowl of the southern hemisphere, presumably a structure that solves the problem of why the oceans don’t fall off the edge of the flat earth like in that atrocious Pirates of the Caribbean sequel. Of course now there’s a whole new problem: how do you persuade the oceans to properly position themselves up the sides of the bowl to keep sub-Saharan Africa, Australia and South America from being constantly under water?

Experts train bacteria to restore 17th c. frescoes in Spain

June 18, 2011

Modern(ish), Renaissance

A multidisciplinary team of art experts and microbiologists from the Polytechnic University of Valencia are using bacteria to clean 17th century frescoes by Antonio Palomino in the Church of Santos Juanes of Valencia. The technique was developed by Italian microbiologist Giancarlo Ranalli and first used to clean frescoes from the Camposanto Monumentale, a 13th century cloister next to the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Premier Italian restorers Gianluigi Colalucci, Donatella Zari and Carlo Giantomassi, who worked on the Camposanto frescoes, are in Valencia sharing their expertise with the Spanish team.

The murals were damaged by a fire in 1936, then damaged again by the faulty restoration in the 1960s. The restorers back then used animal glue to replace detached frescoes. Over time the glue hardened leaving an insoluble layer. Restorers from the Institute of Heritage Restoration began the restoration trying to use a digital printing technique to fill in cracks in the paint only to find themselves thwarted by salt efflorescence, white incrustations caused by the buildup of crystallized salts after the fire, and the glue residue. Conventional methods to fix these problems either require the use of toxic chemicals, which are non-selective and can end up harming elements other than the salts and glue, or mechanical scraping that is time-consuming and can damage the paint further.

Hoping to find a solution, microbiology professor Rosa Maria Montes Estellés and Pilar Bosch, a biologist with a Ph.D. in Science and Heritage Restoration, went to Italy to learn about the new bacteria technology from Colalucci and his colleagues who were just finishing up on the Camposanto frescoes. The Italian team used cotton to apply strains of bacteria specifically selected to address the Camposanto issues.

In nature there are bacteria that feed on pretty much anything, so the first step is picking your bacterium and encouraging it to focus on whatever substances you need removed. Polytechnic University of Valencia biologists then trained their bacteria, a strain of Pseudomonas, to devour the salt efflorescence and glue residue. They developed a gel delivery system which is more effective than the cotton balls because it can be applied more quickly and more evenly and it coats the entire surface, preventing moisture from penetrating into the paint. The gel remains on the fresco for just an hour and a half, then the restorers remove it. Once the surface is cleaned and dried, any remaining bacteria die off.

The bacteria are not dangerous to humans and since they only feed on specific elements, they don’t bother anything else. They eat the salts and the glue then stop, never touching the paint itself. It’s kind of like surgical maggots used in hospitals to clean necrotic tissue: they remove the dead cells at a microscopic level but never touch living tissue.

Thus far the Valencia team has tested the Pseudomonas gel on two lunettes of the church. They’ll do another two next. The entire restoration is expected to take three years. Scientists will continue to experiment with different species of bacteria, different surfaces and different damaging elements.

At long last, a study of brain injuries in Asterix books

June 17, 2011

Books, Modern(ish)

I’m sure we can all agree that it’s high time brain surgeons stopped screwing around and finally dedicated their time to worthy pursuits, namely a thorough investigation of the causes, nature and ethnic breakdown of traumatic brain injuries in Asterix books. A team of researchers from the Department for Neurosurgery of Heinrich-Heine-University in Düsseldorf, Germany have published the results of their study in Acta Neurochirurgica: The European Journal of Neurosurgery. The full clinical article is available for subscribers (or regular people like me who happen to know one) here.

Out of the 34 total Asterix books, the research team identified 704 traumatic brain injuries (TBIs). The injuries were assessed according to their severity using the Glasgow coma scale to rate a variety of post-trauma symptoms like subgaleal swelling, aka large bruised bumps on the noggin, periorbital ecchymoses, aka “raccoon eyes,” and paresis of the hypoglossal nerve, aka an outstretched tongue sticking out the side of the mouth. I could find no cool neurological term for tweeting birds and circling stars, however, which was a disappointment.

Among the 704 identified cases of brain injury, the largest group was composed of Romans (n=450, 63.9%, Fig. 1a, Table 1). Thereof, most characters were members of the Roman imperial army (n=414), as troopers (n=365; 88.2%) or commissioned officers (n=49; 11.8%). Furthermore, 120 cases of head-injured Gaulish citizens were identified, as well as 21 head-injured pirates. The remaining head-injury victims had various sociocultural backgrounds, in that they were Belgians, Britons, Egyptians, Indians, native Americans, Normans, Swiss or Vikings (summarized in Fig. 1b). Also, four extraterrestrial characters suffered from TBI.

Not surprisingly, Gauls caused the vast majority of TBI (n=614, 87.1%). Alone, Asterix and Obelix were responsible for more than half of the detected TBIs (n=406, 57.6%). In contrast, 32 head injuries (4.5%) were caused by Romans and only one by a pirate.

Protective helmets were worn in most instances of traumatic brain injury (70.5%), understandable given the preponderance of armored Romans getting whupped, but were of dubious effectiveness since they often flew off the victims’ heads during a thumping. Out of 497 cases of brain injury sustained while wearing a helmet, the protective gear was lost in 436 of them. That’s an 87.7% helmet loss rate. Interestingly, the loss of the helmet did result in more cases of tongue-sticking-out, but not in more instances of giant goose eggs.

Then there’s the matter of the doping agent. A performance enhancing drug known as “magic potion” was a significant factor in the severity of the brain injuries. Doubtless its exclusive use by the Gauls, in particular Asterix and Obelix, the latter of whom fell into a cauldron of said doping agent when he was a baby, is a major contributor to the preponderance of Roman victims. The “magic potion” also has a secondary usage as a curative. When administered after a traumatic brain injury, the victim is instantly healed.

The good news is through all this devastation of the poor, underpowered Romans and other antis, none of the traumatic brain injuries in Asterix books have ever resulted in death or even long-term impairment. The researchers point out that this highly favorable outcome is remarkable given the limited therapeutic tools in 50 B.C.

Aurelii Hypogeum frescoes restored with lasers

June 16, 2011

Ancient, Roma, Caput Mundi

The Hypogeum of the Aurelii is a catacomb built for the important Aurelii family during the early third century A.D. It was discovered in November 1919 by construction workers building a body shop (now a large car dealership) on Viale Manzoni, near the Basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem on the Esquiline hill in Rome. The frescoes drew academic attention because of their copious use of both traditional Greco-Roman polytheistic imagery — Hermes, Hercules, Prometheus, Penelope’s suitors — and early Christian iconography — a Latin cross, the Good Shepherd, eleven men in togas (probably apostles), the creation of Adam. Scholars have been speculating ever since about what kind of theology these frescoes were depicting, perhaps a personal syncretistic combination of Christianity and paganism espoused by the Aurelii of this era, perhaps full-on paganism only decorated with some elements of the up-and-coming Christian culture, perhaps a form of dissident Gnosticism with its own unique symbolic imagery.

The arguments underscore what a historically significant find this is, representing as it does the multicultural milieu of a time and place in which a myriad of religions from a variety of Christian sects to Mithraism to paganism all wrestled with and bounced off each other. The Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archeology, the office of the Vatican responsible for the restoration of the hypogeum, presents the artwork as capturing the transition from paganism to Christianity — “the parabola of Christianization,” according to Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Commission — but I think that’s an oversimplification. There weren’t just two strains of temporally overlapping thought here.

The Aurelii were a very prominent and wealthy plebian family in the Roman Republic. They had consuls in the family starting with the First Punic War in the mid-second century B.C. Aurelia Cotta was Gaius Julius Caesar’s mother. In the imperial era, Marcus Aurelius was the most famous of the Aurelii. We don’t know if the builders of the hypogeum were of the imperial line. Manumitted slaves took the gens of their former owners so it could be freedmen, but even so by this time imperial freedmen could be extremely wealthy, politically powerful and socially respected. Enough to be able to afford large and elaborately decorated burial chambers.

The laser technology used during the ten-year restoration to clean the walls (the same technology that was used in the restoration of the catacombs of St. Tecla) has revealed a newly-discovered fresco depicting the death of two brothers, Onesimus Aurelius and Aurelius Papirius, and their sister Aurelia Prima mourning them, all bound with Homeric imagery.

At the top, where the icon painters of the past recognized the palace and the flocks of Laertes, was discovered Aurelia Prima who, in a sign of mourning, lets down her hair to mourn the two dead brothers who have been placed on the bier in a funerary enclosure. In the lower area …, we see the moment when Odysseus gets Circe to return his comrades, transformed into swine [by her sorcery], back into human form. The story, which unfolds in the tenth canto of the Odyssey, fits well with the funerary themes of the period, keeping in mind that it was Circe who showed a curious Odysseus the pathway to the underworld. The new scenes fall perfectly in the multi-religious system headed by the Aurelii’s personal syncretism, which also involves two enigmatic scenes where you can recognize both Prometheus creating man and Hercules in the garden of the Hesperides, and the creation of Adam and the expulsion from Eden.

It is likely that the three named Aurelii were among those buried in the chambers. In an inscribed marble plaque, Aurelius Martinus and his wife Julia Lydia memorialize their deceased daughter Aurelia Myrsina. The frescoes suggest that these Aurelii wanted to present themselves as members of an imperial elite who were entitled to depict themselves along with gods and demigods in the midst of mythological themes. Their villas and gardens, concrete representations of wealth, are the settings of some of these scenes, including the one of Aurelia Prima mourning her brothers.

In order to preserve the delicate frescoes, the hypogeum will not be open to general tourism, but it won’t be closed all the way either. Any would-be tourists will have to book a visit ahead of time with the pontifical commission.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffkJvHxUhPA&feature=player_embedded&w=430]